Pretend To Be Mine

by Suzie Nelson

  “Hit me,” I said after the dealer had dealt me a 10 and a 7. Everyone knew you should never take another card when your total was 17, but I was asking for another ‘hit’ just to make the dealer think I didn’t know how to play Blackjack. He frowned for a moment and then dealt me another card. It was the queen of hearts, a picture card with a value of 10. I had, predictably, busted out as my total was now 27 and I had exceeded the desired 21, or ‘Blackjack’.

  I shrugged my shoulders the way a bored trophy wife might do if she was sitting at a Blackjack table gambling away her billionaire husband’s money. I’d lost $100 on that hand, but I’d gained the edge of setting the dealer’s mind at ease. Even the Pit Boss, who’d been standing nearby to see how the first hand would go, had now turned away to look for other action. The Pit Boss was there to look for gamblers who were cheating in some way and his disappearance made everything so much easier for me.

  “The French gentleman sitting over there has bought you this bottle of champagne, madam,” a waiter spoke up next to me as I was watching the Pit Boss walk away.

  I looked approvingly at the bottle of Moët &Chandon Champagne. This was no ordinary bottle of bubbly; it was a $3,000 gift of heavenly French nectar so someone must really have enjoyed watching me play that one hand of Blackjack, I thought with a smile. I nodded to the waiter to indicate that he could pour me a glass of the splendid liquid. I could just picture the overweight businessman who was now watching me to see if the expensive bottle of champagne he’d bought me would score him a roll in the sack with me later that evening.

  “The champagne is from the gentleman over there,” the waiter said and looked over at the bar as he spoke.

  I thought for a moment that the waiter must have been looking at the wrong person, but there was no-one else sitting close to the single man at the bar so it had to be him the waiter was referring to. The only thing is, this was no overweight businessman. I felt a tingle of excitement rush down my spine as I looked at the stranger’s wavy black hair and impossibly blue eyes. His obviously athletic body filled the design of his dark blue Armani suit to perfection and I thought immediately that he must have been some kind of gorgeous hustler. There was just something about his seductive smile and entire demeanor that screamed ‘French playboy’ for some reason.

  I took the glass of ridiculously expensive champagne and lifted it to my lips. Just before I took a sip of the heavenly liquid I inclined my head slightly and gave my gorgeous benefactor a courteous nod. He winked at me and I felt another little shiver going down my spine right then.

  “What is your bet, madam?” the croupier asked and I casually pushed two hundred dollar chips across the table. It was time to get the real game started. I enjoyed the thought of some rich bad boy watching me, as I was about to hit the casino hard with my card counting skills.

  The game was soon progressing along familiar lines. As more and more cards were dealt my odds of winning kept increasing, as I could recall which cards had already made their way across the green felt of the Blackjack table. Soon I was up by about $4,000 in my winnings.

  Now came the most important part.

  I knew that I would not be able to win much more money before the Pit Boss would be alerted to the fact that I was winning unusually large and consistent amounts of money, prompting him to return to the table to watch me like a hawk. I was ready to strike; all I had to do now was to wait for the right hand.

  “My husband is going to kill me for this but what the hell, I’m feeling lucky!” I said and pretended to be slightly drunk from the three glasses of French champagne I’d had by then. The truth was that I could drink five times that amount and still be sober, as I’d grown up in a tough neighborhood of Los Angeles where young girls had to learn how to hold their liquor if they wanted to have any ‘street cred’.

  “I’m gonna bet big on the next hand,” I said and pushed $10,000’s worth of chips across the table. I’d counted the cards carefully and was confident that I could win the next hand. The dealer hesitated for a moment before dealing me my first card. He was just a kid with a fresh face and he had no idea what was coming.

  My first card was a 5 and my second card a 7. This is normally a terrible Blackjack hand to be dealt, as any picture card or any 10 dealt on top of my 5 and 7 would give me a total score of 22 and I would go ‘bust’ and lose all my money. But by counting the cards and memorizing them I knew that all of the picture cards and all of the 10’s had already been dealt so there was no way I could go bust if I took another card.

  “What the hell, I’m gonna double down,” I said and added another $10,000 to my original $10,000 to make my total bet on the hand $20,000.

  The croupier swallowed hard. “Are you sure, ma’am…you have 12,” he said in a hoarse voice and I just nodded my head.

  It was as if time slowed down and the dealer’s hand seemed to move in slow motion as he took the next card from the top of the deck and turned it over before placing it in front of me.

  “It’s a 9, the lady wins!” the dealer announced almost too exuberantly as the last card took my total to a perfect 21. Some people around my table cheered loudly as I raked in my original $20,000 plus the $20,000 I had just won.

  “Will you play another hand?” the croupier asked, exactly like he had been trained to do after a player had just won a large amount of money. The casinos knew that they had to strike back immediately while the greed and excitement of the moment was at its strongest in order to lure a winning player back for another bet so that the casino could ultimately win back every cent.

  “No, thank you, I think I will just quit while I’m ahead,” I answered with a slight smile and disappeared from the table with my winnings before the nasty Pit Boss could be alerted to the fact that the casino had just lost $44,000 at the Blackjack table.

  I looked over to where the gorgeous French playboy had been sitting and felt slightly disappointed to notice that he was gone. I was almost looking forward to getting some kind of compliment from him and, to be totally honest, I would have enjoyed having a couple of drinks with him and toying with his emotions before going to sleep.

  “Ah screw him, Las Vegas is full of his kind,” I thought as I collected $44,000 in cash from the cashier in return for my chips. It was $6,000 short of my original target of $50,000 but I’d been in this game for long enough to know that it was best to quit while you were ahead.

  I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder just as I was about to exit the casino doors and my heart sank. I really didn’t feel like being interrogated by some Pit Boss about my incredible lucky Blackjack evening and I was ready to attack with a flurry of expletives as I turned around. These people knew very well that it was now a done deal and there was absolutely nothing they could do to get their money…

  “It was incredible to watch you play, mademoiselle.” It was the French playboy and my heart skipped a number of beats as I found myself staring right into his deep blue eyes.

  “I can only hope that the bottle of champagne I sent you had something to do with your good fortune,” he continued and I thought his slight French accent sounded just about perfect as he spoke with a deep, strong voice.

  “I’m sure it did,” I replied with my most seductive smile. “Jennifer, pleased to meet you,” I said and held out my perfectly manicured hand for him to shake.

  FRANCOIS

  “What a beautiful name, I am Francois and the pleasure is all mine,” I said in my most disarming tone as I took her hand. Jenny Blake looked at me with those beautiful green eyes and I immediately understood why this woman had been able to make millions at the Blackjack tables of the world without ever being caught out for the expert card counter that she was.

  Card counting is one of the greatest problems for casinos when it comes to the calculation of risk, as a good card counter has an almost perfect chance of leaving any casino with more money than he, or she, had brought there in the first place. All card counters invariably
considered their skill as a legitimate way of winning against the gambling houses, but card counting was strictly forbidden by all modern casinos and was actually considered a way of cheating.

  I looked again at the woman in front of me and it was hard to believe that someone so beautiful had also been blessed with such an incredible mind and memory. Jenny had golden blonde hair and an incredible figure, to put it very mildly. She was not skinny like most of those hungry models that kept following me everywhere. Her well-toned body had voluptuous curves and her breasts looked like ripe watermelons, ready for the picking. When I cast a fleeting glance over the low-cut blouse she was wearing I couldn’t help but think that the Blackjack dealer had had no chance whatsoever that evening. He was probably standing there with a hard-on, trying his best to concentrate while this goddess took him, and my casino, for a very expensive ride.

  “I thought that watching you play tonight was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” I said and meant it.

  “I was just lucky,” she replied and gave me another one of her seductive smiles.

  I knew that luck had had nothing to do with it. I had received a warning email from Golden Nugget casino’s detective agency earlier that day to warn me that Jenny Blake, aka Jennifer O’Leary, aka Jenny Tredoux had been spotted at some of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Every gambling house in this city had to retain the services of such a detective agency to warn them of these kinds of threats, as well as other scammers and cheats who were planning to hit casinos on the Strip. Jenny was one of the best card counters I’d ever seen in my time and I would almost go as far as saying that I’d enjoyed watching her scam my casino out of $44,000.

  “Would you allow me to buy you an exquisite dinner to round off the perfect evening?” I asked and watched her reaction closely. She hesitated for just a moment before nodding her head and saying, “Why not, where are we going?”

  “I know the perfect little place just a short walk from here,” I said and led her out of my casino. I’d managed to keep my recent acquisition of a controlling shareholding of 60% of the shares in Golden Nugget a relative secret, as I wanted to check out the day to day operation of the casino without being swamped by the staff and patrons. My decision was already paying off, as I had remained unnoticed and was about to have the opportunity of picking the brains of this sexy card counter to find out more about her and the methods she used to scam the casinos.

  I had the advantage of knowing quite a substantial amount about Jenny’s background as we sat down in the candlelit restaurant and started browsing through the menu.

  The private detective agency had included an intel report with the warning message which contained a brief summary of Jenny’s history and upbringing. She’d been born 24 years ago in one of the slum suburbs of Los Angeles and was the only child of her alcoholic gambling father and struggling Irish mother. Jenny’s father, Jack Blake, had spent every waking moment of his last days on earth gambling away every cent which remained after he’d spent the rest of his pension on cheap whores and whiskey, leaving Jenny and her mother to scrape by on whatever they could hide from Mr. Blake in order to buy food and clothes. It was easy to understand why Jenny held a grudge against all gambling institutions and, was it not for the fact that I had just been at the receiving end of her furious vengeance, I would actually have applauded her efforts.

  “I would recommend the quail in red wine sauce,” I said and Jenny accepted my suggestion. I decided to follow my own recommendation and ordered the same, plus a bottle of Bordeaux Blend Red cultivated at the Harlan Estate, Napa Valley.

  “You know your wines, I have to give you that,” Jenny quipped and I just smiled.

  “No better than you know your Blackjack, ma chérie,” I replied and nodded to the waiter as he held the bottle of wine ready. He poured us each a glass of expensive red wine and Jenny took a sip of hers after expertly swirling the liquid in her glass to smell the bouquet.

  The intel report had also mentioned that Jenny had won a scholarship to study Law at Yale University, but that she’d turned it down to take up gambling full time. I admired this decision as it proved to me that Jenny had true ambition in the sense that she didn’t just want to be some ordinary member of society; she wanted to hover somewhere above and I was a bit like that myself in that regard, I guess.

  Despite the fact that I was sitting pretty as the new owner of the Golden Nugget casino, my story was almost just as complicated as Jenny’s own. I’d never imagined that I would ever live in the United States, much less run a casino in Las Vegas. My only ambition had been to be a professional musician in France, just like my father; only I wanted to become even more successful than my dad who’d been something of a local celebrity in Paris with his regular performances at the local theaters and nightclubs. He was a brilliant flamenco guitarist and had taught me, from an early age, how to play the guitar.

  I was well on my way to achieving all the dreams of my youth when tragedy struck. Both of my parents were killed in a car accident and I was suddenly left an orphan. Even though I was already playing guitar at many nightclubs in Paris I was still too young to live on my own, as I was only 14 at the time.

  The only solution to my sudden predicament was to accept the invitation of my grandmother, Vivienne Du Bois, to come and live with her in Florida, USA. She’d often extended the same invitation while my parents were alive, but I never saw the point of going to live in America when all of my dreams could come true in France, the place of my birth.

  “In every tragedy, you find the seeds of opportunity, Francois,” was one of the first things my grandmother told me when she picked me up at the airport after my flight from Paris.

  “Yes, Grandma,” I replied.

  “Don’t call me that, I’m not quite ready to die just yet,” she said with a smile, “from now on, you call me Vivienne.”

  I finished school and received daily lectures from my grandmother about the ‘real world’ and its requirements. I soon started to understand why my own artistically inclined father, while he was still alive, had steered clear of his mother and the seductions of the family fortune. Vivienne was like a finely tuned machine with only one goal in mind; making even more money with the millions she already had in her bank account. She’d inherited the family fortune after my grandfather passed away. Most of the money had been made from the purchase and sale of real estate and Vivienne soon taught me the ins and outs of property development.

  “One day, if you prove yourself worthy, you will inherit the entire family fortune,” Vivienne said to me one day, “but if you disappoint me I might just donate it all to charity.”

  I knew her well enough by then to know that she was serious. I have to confess that, by that time, I’d developed quite taste for the finer things in life and had come to appreciate the benefits of having a limitless supply of cash. For some reason, Vivienne did not restrict me at all when it came to the acquisition of ridiculously expensive assets. At the ripe old age of 18, she’d bought me a Ferrari Testarossa and I only dressed in the most expensive clothes.

  I realize now that this was all a ploy to cultivate a true interest in me for the business she wanted me to take over one day. I was Vivienne’s last living relative and, more than anything else, she wanted to leave a legacy behind when she passed away.

  “What are you thinking about?” Jenny asked and interrupted my recollections from the past.

  I was just thinking again how you played that last hand to perfection tonight,” I replied, “Just what made you decide to double up on your bet?”

  “Just a hunch, I guess,” Jenny said with a seductive smile and I felt the excitement of the chase rising up in my chest right then. My mind was made up; I wanted Jenny and I was going to have her.

  “If you really want something in this life, there is no force in the world that can stop you!” Vivienne always said and I’d come to truly believe that. I still played my guitar and wanted to be a musician,
but when I decided that I wanted to start playing live music at some restaurant Vivienne used this as an opportunity to show me the true power of money. She simply bought me a fancy restaurant and I could play music there whenever I wanted; I was never going to grovel before some restaurant owner for a gig like my dad often had to.

  When I turned 27 Vivienne had a serious talk with me. She explained to me that she was pleased with how I’d been developing as a young man and was impressed with my business acumen, but felt that I needed to prove myself to her in order to persuade her to leave me the entire family fortune in her last will.

  “What do you want me to do to prove this?” I asked.

  “Choose a business, any business. I will not buy it for you but I will buy you the controlling shares in the business you choose. Then it’s up to you to show me that you can make a success of the business.”

  “Why not just buy the business in full?” I asked.

  “Because I want you to face the challenges of the other shareholders. That’s the only way you can prove to me that you will be able to hold onto the family fortune despite all of the vultures that will be after it when I’m gone.”