Old Money Roulette: Complete Trilogy

by Natalie Bennett

  “Yes,” she said softly, refusing to show her true feelings on the matter.

  I placed the photo back in the folder and flipped it closed. Whores should never have the privilege of gazing upon queens.

  “Well, since you’re here…” I stood and let her imagination figure out the rest.

  Without shame, hesitation, or question she dropped her knees to the terracotta and reached for my belt buckle. As soon as her nimble fingers grasped the leather I brought my arm from behind my back, pressed the barrel of my gun to her forehead, and pulled the trigger before she could scream. My dick twitched as the light left her eyes.

  Like a puppet that had been lifted up just to have its strings cut, her body slumped to the ground. Blood formed a shallow puddle around her head.

  Her companion screamed and took off, like a newborn calf, trying to scramble across the stained concrete in heels.

  “Why do you let them run?” Sergio shook his head in amusement.

  “Sometimes I like them to believe they have a chance of survival. Makes it more fun,” I replied, reclaiming my chair.

  My gardener, a guard, or my hitman would retrieve the body and wash away the blood.

  “So this woman, she’s the right pick?” Sergio gestured to the manila folder, going back to the discussion we’d been having before our temporary guests arrived.

  “She’s the only pick. There is no one else it has to be her. It will be her.” I opened the folder again and studied the picture of the woman inside. After being face to face with her, it was brought to my attention that I had yet to receive a photograph that did her any justice.

  Hispanic–, short yet proud, she had a classic pin-up like beauty. What I found most intriguing were her eyes.

  They radiated a natural innocence and showcased how pure she was, yet there was wickedness there that others would easily miss.

  Her eyes were a highway to a hidden treasure buried deep within her soul that I intended to dig out and take for myself.

  I envisioned them peering up at me while her pouty lips were wrapped around my dick, my come sliding down her throat. I wondered how wide they’d get when she felt me force myself inside her for the first time.

  This world hadn’t had the chance to sully her yet. I was going to dirty up her angel wings, take that questionable innocence and make it wholly unvirtuous.

  “She’s been here a week and hasn’t gone to a single party or event. She’s rarely seen without Belluci or Ross.

  What do you think she’s been doing?”Sergio asked, interrupting my deep reverie.

  “Recuperating. A week isn’t that long–” Elias shrugged. “You have to remember Gio, she spent half her life away from here and only came back for a double funeral. She was never fully inducted into this life. Her father wouldn’t allow it. And you know how everyone felt about her sister.”

  “He’s right. This is a work in progress. Like I told you, she didn’t seem to care who I was. She isn’t like the rest. She isn’t near ready to be what I need her to be–who I need her to be.”

  “How can you be sure she ever will be ready, considering…recent events?” He shot a pointed glance at the whore on the ground.

  “I know you’re new at this and don’t know better, but as often as we’ve done this, there’s nothing to worry about. In or out of the game she will be everything my brother needs her to be for him and our family.” Elias cut in to save our cousin’s ass.

  “It’s just, she tried to––never-mind––I have faith in you completely. I know what you’re capable of. Forgive me Patrón if I’ve offended you.” Sergio bowed his head as a sign of respect.

  I waved him off unperturbed. I fully understood his concerns. She had a dark spot in her past that couldn’t be overlooked. This didn’t bother me in the slightest, instead, it prodded my curious nature like a ringmaster draws attention from a beast. Her being the way she was greatly swayed things in my favor.

  She thought I was a nice man, yet she fully understood what I did. She spoke to me with both desire and fear, but without a filter.

  She was deadly nightshade, beautiful belladonna. Elena was my enigma, and I was a master at solving riddles. It would all be well worth it in the end.

  She was my last play, the one card I needed to win. This went much deeper than the usual game.

  She was my sole responsibility from this moment on. I’d made a sordid promise to a friend and I intended to keep it.

  “Enough of this. Let’s go see my father.”

  As I began to stand another gunshot rang through the air, the second whore meeting the same fate as her friend.

  Chapter Four

  Settling into the back seat of Peyton’s Telsa I closed my eyes, letting the air conditioner vent blow over my face.

  “Are you going–––.”

  “Nope, you two aren’t allowed to ask me any customary funeral questions, remember?”

  I peeled my eyes open to Melody scowling at me from the front seat. “It was about the house.”

  “Ugh, not that, either,” I huffed, glancing over at the home in question. It looked like something out of Martha Stewart magazine, white stucco with light grey accents and a tiny rose garden in the very front.

  “So, is this plan of yours we recently discussed still a go?” Peyton asked.

  I met his gaze in the rearview and nodded. “I can’t just accept my sister is lying in a ditch somewhere, or that she’s terrified right now, running from something, and didn’t ask for help. Eva isn’t dead. I would feel it.” A disparaging sigh slipped out when I saw my grandmother watching us from the front window.

  “And what are we going to do about that?” Melody asked, not hiding her dislike for the woman.

  “Placate her for now, at least until I know what she really wants.”

  “Damn, Eva.” Peyton turned and grinned at me.

  “What?”

  “Your mama would be proud.”

  “Would she? Papa wouldn’t.” I said, feeling the familiar pang in my heart when I thought of them. It had been years and the ache was still there, a slow burning fire that would never go out.

  “I think they’d both be proud of you for coming back here when you have every reason to run,” he said softly.

  I gave him a small smile in place of the emotion threatening to take hold of me. “This is going to be…dangerous. You two don’t have to help me.”

  “If you’re doing anything you won’t be doing it alone,” Peyton scoffed. “You’re going to need a few rich friends and who better than the two you know will always have your back?”

  “He’s right. Let’s make a pact here and now. No matter what happens we do this together. We don’t lie to one another, and if we do tell a lie we let each other know so we can back them up,” Melody said.

  I looked at them and couldn’t help but feel their love for me. These two were my best-friends through and through. Distance––even practically being worlds apart––couldn’t sever our connection. It felt like we were picking up right where we left off. This was my tribe, even if it was small and missing two other people. I was blessed to have them.

  “I can agree to that. Now let me go in here before she comes out,” I opened the door, immediately engulfed in heat. “I’ll text you guys.” Shutting the door, I made my way into the house feeling as if I were on the set of a horror movie.

  Any second now, some creepy dead chick would appear and point me back in the direction I came, warning me to stay the hell away.

  My grandmother and uncle were already in the foyer like two eager dogs before I was all the way inside.

  “So–––.”

  “Can we not do this yet? I need to shower and, I need to be alone right now.”

  My uncle opened his mouth, no doubt to say something condescending but my grandmother held up a hand to keep him quiet.

  “Of course, diosa. We can talk in the morning.” She smiled, it wasn’t genuine.

  I felt their eyes on me the entire
way up the stairs. The whispering began before my doors were fully shut.

  I got in the shower to wash the days grime away and, of course, that’s when my mind decided to wander straight back to a man with golden eyes I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about. How fucking cliché was it to be overly attracted to a dangerous, enigmatic, stranger?

  Very cliché. Textbook cliché.

  Mateo was the perfect advocate for all the dubious warnings mothers gave their daughters about men.

  He had the whole tall, handsome, and mysterious thing going for him with a smile that could mask the most sinister of intentions. Exactly the kind of narcotic I craved.

  I understood why so many women fixated on him. He was the pointed top of the metaphorical pyramid: rich, savage, and seductive. I’d been in his presence for all of five minutes and that was long enough to let me know Mateo Remmington was a disturbingly alluring man. There were too many reasons why I needed to stay away from him and a million others why I couldn’t. And triple that why I didn’t want to.

  Ugh, this was bullshit.

  “Goddamnit Eva,” I cursed my sister’s name, excessively over-scrubbing my olive skin with a purple loufa.

  I glared at the grey and white mosaic tiled wall, blinking away tears.

  I’d told her countless times not to come back to this place, but she wouldn’t listen. Glamour and wealth were powerful addictions to girls who felt they had nothing but poverty and squalor.

  She soaked up this lavish lifestyle and all the attention people gave her like a sponge, immersing herself further and further past the point of no return.

  It was everything our father had tried to protect us from. He’d never wanted us back here. It was the last thing he told us before we were carted off. We hadn’t received one phone call, letter, or e-mail since that day in spite of my many efforts to reach out to him any way I could.

  Eva thought he’d been happy to shove us out of his life. She swore he had a mistress and didn’t want us anymore. She grew even more irrational when he died.

  Instead of being upset, she was pissed he didn’t leave us any of his assets and gave our grandmother control of his estate.

  I saw it as him further ensuring we never returned. My father was, by all means, a controlling man, a hard-hearted, family man. He was never a coward, so whatever caused him to do the things he did I found warranted. That was before I grew up.

  In true Eva fashion, she went against his wishes with a dramatic flair before he was cold in the ground. And now here I was with a tangled web to unweave that I could already feel reeling me in, being accosted by the notorious Remmington heir.

  It was like the beginning of a Grimm brother’s fairytale.

  I could only pray I got a better ending because no one would be coming to save me. No knight was waiting to ride in on a white horse and sweep me away. There was only him– a cruel seductive king who ruled over a court of nightmares.

  I assumed Eva was the reason Mateo reacted to me the way he did. But that wasn’t reflected in his eyes, and he claimed not to know her. From what Peyton had dug up–if they did interact it was rare. Mateo was the top and Eva had barely made it out of the bottom.

  Besides, I could easily disprove my own theory. Eva and I weren’t one hundred percent identical. We had easily noticeable differences. My slightly wavy dark hair hung to mid-back, hers was cut into a sleek bob with fuchsia tips.

  She had a large beauty mark on the left side of her face. I didn’t.

  We were both curvy waists, and rounder hips kind of girls thanks to our mother’s genes but, Eva’s recent breast implants had boosted her cups above me.

  How she afforded them was something I never wanted the answer to.

  Looking back, I should have asked. I should have done so many things differently.

  That was always the problem though, wasn’t it? People never cared until it was too late to matter.

  Stepping out of the shower, I wrapped a plushy towel around my body and piled my wet locks on top of my head, clamping them in place with a clippie.

  Everything around me was blindingly white with a gray marble accent. This bathroom was the same one that had been attached to my childhood bedroom. While everything in my life had turned upside down, not a single thing in this one room had changed. It brought back a painful nostalgia of a childhood long gone.

  Even after being here for almost eight days it was still hard to get used to. I’d grown accustomed to living a lower class lifestyle.

  Now every time I looked around at my surroundings I felt as if I’d tripped and fallen into an alternate reality.

  In a way I guess I had.

  I exhaled a shaky stream of air and felt a fresh set of tears prickling at the corner of my eyes.

  This time I didn’t blink them away or try and hold them back. I needed to do this. I needed to cry now and then dust my ass off and try to soldier on. That was the Rias way: If you get knocked down, you’d better bounce right back up and handle your business.

  “You’re a hot mess Eva. Fucking look at yourself!” How could those potentially have been the last words I’d ever speak to her?

  I had screamed at her for the shitty choices she continued to make again and again.

  I’d reached my usual monthly quota for dealing with her bullshit.

  She screamed back, as usual, and stormed out of the house. I couldn’t go after her because I had to work. We lived on a strict allowance.

  Large sums of money deposits to a bank in the ghetto would be a little too obvious if someone were looking for us.

  Arguing was our thing though, and that night was no different.

  We would argue, we would go off and do stew, and before the night was over one of us would always text the other to apologize and say I love you.

  She never got my reply.

  I hadn’t seen her or heard from her since and that realization hit me like a pile of bricks.

  We were two halves of a whole. We’d shared a womb. Once upon a time, we were two regular, inseparable little girls. We had the innocence that came with untarnished youth. We had everything. We had each other.

  Now, we had nothing but a tale of tragedy with no happy ending in sight.

  My tears fell silently, landing in my hands. I clung to the hope that I would sense if she were truly gone, repeatedly telling myself she couldn’t be.

  There would be no more making fun of life, dreaming, wishing, or crying together. No more “I’m the better twin,” taunts.

  The worry and heartache were overwhelming– a powerful wave determined to drown me with a crushing force of darkness and depression. I’d never been much of a crier. I detested feeling this way–like my entire body needed to purge the pain from the inside out. I yearned for a magical switch inside me that could shut it all off.

  The alarm on my cell began to sound, startling me and cutting short my pity party, indicating to me that it was time to take my medication. Swiping my damp finger across my phone’s screen I silenced the insistent chirping.

  Facing the shelf caddy-corner to the vanity, I slid a lighthouse novelty out of the way and there they were, the oblong green and pale yellow pills that balanced my moods and helped keep me semi-sane.

  Ignoring the Expensive brand razor beside them, I took the dosage I needed with water from the tap. After sliding the lighthouse back in place to hide the ugly orange bottle, I made my way back into the bedroom, tossed on some cotton varsity shorts, and a tank top, and got into bed, letting the fluffed up pillows cradle my noisy head.

  My life was a fragile balance of holding on and letting go, and I was doing my best to tie a knot at the end of my rope.

  My medicine wasn’t the kind that would take my thoughts away. Sometimes I wish it was.

  It was just after midnight and I couldn’t close my eyes. The television was muted on the wall, flickering like a flame.

  I was hurting and I couldn’t make it go away. I’d lost track of all the tears I’d cried. I was hanging
on to my papa’s advice with everything in me. Never stop fighting the demons in your head.

  I should have never returned here, but I felt I had no choice. Until I had Eva’s body in my arms, dead or alive, I wasn’t giving up on her. The answers were all to be found in the underground of a dangerous clandestine society.

  Debating whether to call Peyton or Melody, who both understood the moods I could go into, to talk me back down, I decided to try and handle it myself and not wake them up.

  Kicking the fluffy duvet off my legs, I wandered into the attached bathroom.

  Without turning the light on, I continued to ignore the razor on the shelf beside my SSRI’s and ran a brush through my silky locks.

  After I splashed some water on my face, I headed for my Gucci flip-flops, making sure I snagged my cell, ear-buds, and a hoodie.

  I slipped into the eerily silent pitch black. I couldn’t even hear the AC unit I knew was on. Creeping down the stairs like a thief in the night, I felt a tingling sensation down my spine. This didn’t feel like a house. It was more like a tomb. I felt like someone was watching me from the shadows.

  Making it to the front door without any run-ins, I quickly exited.The sound of crickets chirping away was instantly soothing. Feeling an Aquilo song was fitting, I hit play on Silhouette, slipped my hands into the pockets of my zip-up hoodie, and I made my way down the drive. I had no destination. I just needed to walk, to do something other than drown my face in a pillowcase of tears and fight the devil on my shoulder.

  At this hour and in this secluded area I wasn’t surprised to find the streets barren. Most of the homes weren’t visible from the road which added a layer of privacy. I wasn’t sure how long I walked or if I would have noticed the car slowly creeping behind me if I hadn’t decided to cross the street.

  Fear was what most people would have felt, but, I chose to fall in love with the car. A classic diamond blue half Mustang convertible.

  I turned towards it, pausing my music. It stopped when I did. After sweeping my gaze over the flawless exterior, I tried to see in the windows, but they were tinted too dark.