by Cassia Leo
I take a deep breath and nod. “Right. Let’s play.”
We play a few rounds of blackjack. Daimon counts cards, though he doesn’t use it to win any bets. He’s merely keeping track of the count so that once the prince or princess come to this table, he’ll be prepared.
Sixteen rounds in, we’re down eighty thousand dollars and we couldn’t be happier, because a security guard has just come to our table to announce that Prince Andre-Louis and Princess Amica will be joining us. Daimon squeezes the crook of my elbow to pull me closer to him. Then, I hear her voice and everything gets hazy.
I close my eyes and take a few long, slow breaths.
“Do you mind if we join you?” says a smooth male voice with a thick French accent.
I open my eyes and turn to my left. Just beyond the princess on my left is Prince Andre-Louis. He has a thick head of perfectly coifed brown hair and a lean frame. But his wide brown eyes make my stomach clench. Those are my eyes on his face.
“Of course we don’t mind,” Daimon replies. “We are down eighty thousand. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“I think we can do better than that,” Princess Amica says with a slick smile.
Her soft auburn hair is pulled into a neat ponytail that cascades over her right shoulder in a tumble of voluptuous curls. Her red dress is made of a sumptuous silk that accentuates her curves. I’d envy those hips if they didn’t look just like mine.
I suddenly have a paranoid thought: If I smile at the same time as her, someone will recognize we have the same lips. It’s not too far fetched. My bedroom was pitch black when Daimon recognized I’m the princess’s daughter. The lighting in here is more than sufficient for someone to make the connection.
She continues to smile as she glances around at the cards in play. The prince has an eight, so he hits and gets a nine, then he stays. She has a jack facing up, so she doesn’t hit. I have a five and Daimon has a ten. I want to wait for Daimon to place his bet before I place mine. He knows the running count. But I have to play first since he’s standing on my right. It doesn’t matter if I lose this bet. The one million dollars we invested in tonight’s plan is nothing compared to the payout.
I hit and get a seven, then I stay. Daimon stays with his ten, then I watch Daimon as his hand seems to move in slow motion. He reaches for the chips and picks up one chip, two chips, three chips… He keeps going until he has all the chips in his hand. Then he places them on the table and the prince chuckles in response to this bet.
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Daimon says. “Enough to buy a hit man if I should lose this hand,” he says, winking at the dealer.
I glance to my left and, as expected, the princess is staring at Daimon with an expression of pure terror. The dealer glances nervously at Daimon’s stack of chips then at the surveillance cameras on the ceiling. A bet this high is a dead giveaway that Daimon thinks the count is running high.
The dealer flips his card and he has twenty. Prince Andre-Louis flips his and he busts. The princess’s horror turns to anger as she glares at Daimon.
He smiles at her. “Flip your card, princess.”
She reaches forward slowly and I hold my breath as she turns the card. An ace. Blackjack.
The prince slaps the table and says something in French to express his delight, but the princess does not look the least bit happy with this hand. I flip my card quickly and get a ten. I bust. Daimon flips his card and smiles when he sees the two. He just lost $500,000. A small price to pay for the trust of the dealer and the house.
Now it’s my turn.
I can smell Princess Amica’s spicy perfume as I lean in and whisper in her ear. “Nice win, Mother.”
Daimon pockets our chips then nods toward a corridor on our right. I watch in silence, wondering if the princess is going to do something stupid, like trying to alert her bodyguards, but she doesn’t. She hooks her arm in her husband’s and whispers something in his ear. Then they both follow our lead.
“Good game,” Daimon says to the dealer as we set off. “Now I must retreat for a cigar and a good cry.”
The dealer smiles and the royals’ bodyguards follow right behind the four of us. Prince Andre-Louis looks a bit stunned, but also a bit excited. Is it possible he’s happy to see me? No, I can’t start thinking stupid things like that or this mission will only become more difficult. We don’t need any more obstacles.
Once we’re in the corridor, Daimon produces a cigar from the inside of his jacket and holds it out to the prince. “Genuine double corona Cohiba. Limited edition,” he says as we continue walking in unison.
I keep my eye on Amica as she strides confidently on my left, but she only stares straight ahead as we walk. But Andre-Louis seems quite intrigued. He steals glances at me, his mouth hanging slightly open in a dumbfounded expression, but his eyes are smiling. I can see that he wants to say something. He wants to know if it’s really me, but he knows that would be a bad idea.
We reach a door marked Grand Prix B and I check the time on my phone as we enter the dark room. We have twenty-one minutes to finish this job and get out of here.
Daimon hits the lights and the room is revealed to be a mid-sized conference hall with about a hundred chairs lined up facing a stage. He closes the door behind us and one of the bodyguards says something to Amica in French, probably expressing his concern about this discreet meeting. But she doesn’t have a chance to respond before Daimon and I shoot both bodyguards in the head.
Amica begins to scream, but Daimon quickly grabs her from behind and clasps his hand over her mouth. Andre-Louis looks shattered as I point my gun at his forehead and I can’t help feel as if I’ve disappointed him. I’m not the little girl he lost nineteen years ago. And I’m certainly not here for a loving reunion. I’m here for revenge.
My hand is steady as I look my father in the eye. “I’d feel sorry for you if it weren’t for your stupidity. What kind of man accepts his wife’s word that their child has died without any proof?”
“You do not understand. I was told that your body was so badly decomposed that seeing you would have haunted me. I knew nothing of you until one month ago.”
I shake my head in disgust as I search his pockets for a phone, then I slide it into my purse. “Get on your knees and keep your hands clasped on your head.”
He kneels before me with his hands resting on top of his perfect hair, then Daimon drags the princess over to his side.
“I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth and you’re going to be very quiet or Baby Alexandria is going to put a bullet in your brain.”
She nods and Daimon lets go of her mouth. She stands next to her kneeling husband looking very unsure about whether she should be more angry or frightened. She takes a few breaths and decides on angry.
“You won’t get out of this building alive. The cameras followed us into this room. They will come looking for us very soon.”
“Good, because what we have planned won’t take very long,” I reply with a smirk. “Get on your knees!”
She falls to her knees and her hands tremble as she laces them behind her head. “What do you want?”
Daimon tucks his gun into his waistband and pulls his phone out of his pocket to open up the app. “Oh, I’m thinking that Alex’s pain and suffering go far beyond any amount of money or sympathy you can give. But I think $50,000,000 would soften the blow.”
Amica laughs and Andre-Louis spouts off a few French expletives. “I’ll give you no such thing!” he shouts.
“Oh, yes, you will,” I say, pressing the muzzle of the silencer against his forehead. “And you’ll do it in the next two minutes or Princess Amica will lose her nose, like this.” I peel off the prosthetic bump on my nose and toss it over my shoulder. I look at the princess then back to Andre-Louis. “The resemblance is uncanny, don’t you think? And yet, somehow, I was the one deemed too hideous to exist. Believe me, the irony of this moment is not lost on me.”
“The password?” Daimon
says, sounding almost bored with the conversation.
“Go to hell!” the prince shouts.
I toss Daimon my gun and he catches it in his hand, then he shoves the silencer inside the prince’s mouth. I draw my knife and grab the princess by the back of the neck as I hold the blade to her nose.
“Password?” I ask again.
“Give it to them!” she shrieks.
“Okay, okay!” the prince mumbles through a mouthful of metal.
Daimon pulls the gun out of his mouth and smiles. “Go ahead.”
Andre-Louis holds his hands up and his mouth is saying okay, but his eyes are saying I’m not giving you anything. The moment Daimon glances in my direction, the prince takes a hard swipe at the gun. It goes soaring out of Daimon’s hand and sliding over the carpet then underneath a row of chairs. Andre-Louis tries to get up off his knees, but Daimon lands a hard elbow across the prince’s cheek and he falls onto his face.
Daimon steps on the back of his neck to hold him still, and I recognize the seething anger in his eyes. “That was a very stupid thing to do, Andre-Louis. Right, chérie?”
I position myself behind the princess and she squirms as I lock my arms around her neck to get her in a sleeper hold. Within a few seconds she starts to go limp, so I let go immediately so she doesn’t lose consciousness. She falls onto all fours as she tries to get her bearings, but I pick her up and get her into a one-armed headlock. I press the flat side of the blade against her lip this time and she whimpers.
“Please don’t,” she mutters.
“If you don’t give us the password now,” I say, turning the blade so the sharp edge barely punctures her lip and I clamp my hand over her mouth as she cries out, “the princess will be completely unrecognizable when we leave here.”
“Please don’t do this,” the prince pleads. “We will set up an off-shore trust in your name. Just please don’t do this.”
“The password?” Daimon replies.
I cut a shallow slash across the princess’s right cheek and her piercing shrieks are muffled by my hand, but they’re sufficient to get the prince’s attention. He spouts off the password and Daimon proceeds to use a covert app to wire the funds to an off-shore account.
It takes a couple of minutes for the wire to go through, then we sit them back to back, gag them and tie them together.
I look into the princess’s eyes as I kneel before her. “If you try to put a hit on us ever again, you won’t see us coming next time. Understand?” She nods and I stand up straight, trying not to let the stress of the clock ticking down show on my face. “Someone wise once told me that nothing has caused more foolishness in this world than the pursuit of beauty… It’d serve you well to remember that.”
Chapter Nine
Alex
We make it out of the Galerie Cristal without incident. But the moment we turn the corner, a couple of bodyguards at the end of the corridor stop us in our track. Daimon grabs my hand and yanks me in the other direction. My vision flickers as my heart rate speeds up, but we make it to the end of the corridor where we burst through a door into a concrete stairwell.
I kick off my heels and Daimon holds my hand to help me along as we race up the steps. The sound of the door exploding inward and footsteps below us gives me that extra push of adrenaline I need. We make it up to the helipad on the roof at the north end of the property just as Julien’s helicopter is touching down.
My hair whips my face and Daimon’s wig flies off as he race toward the chopper. Daimon and a guy inside the helicopter help me up. Once Daimon is inside, we take flight and my heart jumps at the sound of a gunshot hitting the side of the window. The glass shatters and everything goes black as someone falls on top of me.
No. Please don’t let it be Daimon.
Another gunshot clinks off the landing skids on the bottom of the helicopter, but I can feel myself being pressed down by the inertia as we continue to climb. Seconds feel like hours as I wait for the person on top of me to move. Finally, the person rolls off of me and onto the floor.
I open my eyes expecting to see Daimon dead on the floor, but he’s kneeling before me. “Are you okay? Were you hit?”
“Me? No. Were you hit?”
“Of course not,” he replies, as if I’ve asked a silly question. He’s Daimon Rousseau. He’s invincible.
I throw my arms around his neck and he laughs.
“We did it!” I shout to be heard over the rotors. “We did it!”
“Don’t get too excited. We still have to get out of Monaco air space without being shot down.” He lets me go and pushes me back so I can sit on the seat. “Put your seatbelt on. I have to talk to the pilot.”
He helps me get my seatbelt on, then he heads up front to sit in the co-pilot seat. I can hear him and Julien speaking French to each other and I realize just how important it is that I learn the language. It will be the first thing I do if we make it out of here alive. Well, after we finish executing the plan.
The chopper zooms through the air toward the open ocean. I close my eyes and listen to the beautiful sound of Daimon’s voice as he speaks to Julien. A few moments later, someone shakes my arm and he’s kneeling before me again holding the parachute vest I’m supposed to strap on for the next phase of the plan.
We strap on our vests and safety goggles, then grab hold of the bar above the helicopter exit door. The wind is blasting me in the face so hard, I can’t feel my lips anymore. Daimon turns to me and I wouldn’t be able to hear him if he spoke, but he doesn’t have to speak. I know what that look in his eyes is saying.
He leans over and we exchange a quick, but nonetheless passionate kiss before we let go.
I immediately yank down hard on the ripcord and a small black parachute deploys above me. The chute slows my descent into the water by a great deal. Once I hit the seawater, my life vest automatically inflates and the chill of the Ligurian Sea seeps into my skin. The water is fifty-eight degrees right now; significantly lower than my body temperature. And it’s only going to plummet overnight until the sun comes up in about five hours. If I lose Daimon, or if one of us is not rescued, we could be dead by morning.
I struggle a bit to detach the cover of the vest attached to the chute, but I finally manage to get it off and swim away so I don’t get tangled in it. I try not to panic when I don’t see Daimon in the black water, but it only takes a moment before I hear him calling my name. I turn around and my heart leaps when I see him swimming toward me.
“Daimon!” I call, struggling a bit to swim fast with this bulky life vest.
Before we even reach each other, I hear the whine of the speedboat engine approaching. Daimon takes my face in his hands and kisses me hard. The kiss is salty, but his mouth is warm and comforting in this cold sea.
A small wave of water is dumped on our heads as the speedboat stops next to us. A man in a black wetsuit helps us board the boat, then another man drives away into the night.
“They followed the helicopter,” says the man in the wetsuit.
“And Julien?” Daimon asks while helping me out of my life vest.
“Julien and Mark are prepared to deal with the fallout.”
I don’t know what this means, but it seems to satisfy Daimon. He tosses his life vest onto the floor of the speedboat and pulls me into his lap so he can rub my arms and keep me warm. We reach the shore in Nice thirty minutes later, where Victor is waiting for us with a change of clothing, disguises, and identification documents.
* * *
Seventy-five minutes later, we board a train to Vienna and I can finally breathe. We settle into our sleeper cabin for the six-hour train ride. Daimon locks the door behind him, then we both take in the size and smell of the tiny space. Each of the bunk beds alone isn’t big enough for two adults, but that doesn’t stop Daimon from insisting we sleep together on the bottom bunk.
Without proper sleep attire, we both decide we’d rather sleep nude. He hangs his gun holster from the bunk above us, so it’s wi
thin arm’s reach should he need it. Then he presses his back up against the rear wall and I press my back against his chest.
His hand immediately slides forward, landing on my abdomen as he presses his lips to my ear and whispers. “This is quite intimate.” His hand skims over my ribs and up to my breast. “Would you like to have sex on a moving train?”
I arch my back a little, pressing my ass against his growing erection. “Do you think our neighbors will hear us?”
He pinches my nipple and the throbbing between my legs becomes painful. “Oh, yes.”
“Then, yes. I definitely want to have sex on a moving train.”
I twist my head around and he kisses me hungrily as his hand slides down my belly, over the scar on my side, then between my legs. I lift my top leg and lean back a little to drape it over his leg as he enters me.
I cry out in pain and he stops moving. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
His index and ring finger spread my flesh as his middle finger gently stimulates my clit. He does this for a few minutes without moving until he can feel me contracting around him. Then he slowly moves in and out of me.
“Oh, God. That feels so good.”
We’ve had lots of oral sex over the last couple of weeks while I was healing, but this is the first time he’s been inside me since our last night together in L.A. It feels more exquisite than I anticipated, his thick cock stretching my walls, moving in just a bit farther with each heavenly stroke.
“We are equals everywhere, except here,” he growls in my ear. “But now that you’re ready… I’m going to teach you how to receive me.”
I whimper as he digs deeper into me. His finger continues to caress my clit and I’m getting so aroused, I have to keep myself from screaming and squirming out of his grasp.