Old Money Roulette: Complete Trilogy

by Natalie Bennett

  Keeping my mouth closed, I decided to watch how things played out for a while. If I needed to make a move, I’d make a move. Intuition was telling me I would have all my answers much sooner than later. I knew I couldn’t fall apart when I was this close.

  Mateo steered the UTV around to the back of the massive stable and parked. The same two guards I’d seen the last time we’d been here stood by the large metal door.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I replied, getting out of the tram.

  From the first experience, I knew this place was more than just a building that housed pretty thoroughbreds.

  I was prepared for what I could possibly see inside. My stomach fluttered with nerves and a jolt of excitement.

  One of the guards greeted Mateo, acknowledging me with a nod before making a move to open the large steel door.

  We stepped inside, and the first thing I saw was my Uncle Samuel in the center of the room. His lips were bloodied and his face was swollen on the entire right side.

  One cheek sat slightly higher than the other, mashing his eye shut. He was secured with a thick chain wrapped around his legs and torso, still in the clothes from the night he’d been dragged out of an art gala Mateo and I had attended together.

  “Ugh, he smells.” I cuffed my nose and swallowed the urge to dry heave.

  “He’s sitting in days old shit and piss,” Mateo pointed out with an amused expression.

  “I was wondering when you two would come down.” Elias’ voice carried from the back portion of the room.

  He exited through the metal gate that was in pace to secure their yayo, marijuana, and drug packers behind it. He was pushing a trolley loaded with name brand shoes.

  “These are ready to go,” he said to Mateo, parking his merchandise by the entrance to the hallway before coming to stand by me with a boyish smile painted on his face.

  “Good,” Mateo replied, lazily circling my uncle. He stopped right behind him and looked across the room, spouting something off in Portuguese. Whatever it was had two guards moving towards one of the large oil drums.

  His golden eyes flashed to mine as he removed my uncle’s gag. “Samuel, why don’t you tell Elena what happened to her father?”

  Everyone inside the room knew it was more a demand than a question.

  I moved closer, stopping when the tip of my foot bumped a toolbox I hadn’t noticed before.

  “If I talk, you kill me,” Samuel rasped.

  “If you don’t talk, he kills you,” I replied before Mateo could. The statement earned me a bright dimpled smile from him.

  “Actually, she’s going to make you talk, and if you don’t, she’ll kill you,” he corrected. “Grab the pliers, anjo.”

  Not questioning what he intended to do with them, I knelt down and opened the toolbox, grabbing the pair of red handled pliers that were resting right on top. Elias followed behind me, going to Samuel’s left side when I went right.

  “Are you going to speak now?” Mateo asked him.

  “You can go fuck yourself. I won’t betray her,” Samuel seethed.

  “We’ll see.” Mateo gently slapped his swollen cheek.

  He settled his gaze once more on me.

  “Take out his teeth. If you want to hear what he to say, you’ll have to make him talk.”

  I knew he could have just told me whatever it was Samuel knew, but maybe it was better this way. If I was going to be with him, truly, I would need some major balls of steel.

  I refused to be the typical pretty housewife who racked up his credit card bills and baked cherry pies, waiting for him to stop playing big bad kingpin. I wanted to be beside him, occasionally on top of him, but I would never stand behind him. I’d agreed to play a role before; now, I was deadset on making it my reality.

  I stepped forward, glad I was in sweatpants and not a damn party dress like the last time I’d tortured a man.

  Without me noticing, Elias had slipped on a pair of black leather gloves.

  He looked at me with silent encouragement written on his face. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  “I’m ready,” I affirmed, trying to ignore the sensation of Mateo’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my face.

  Elias nodded and wedged his fingers into Samuel’s mouth. Using both hands, he wrenched it wide open, keeping a death grip on his jaw.

  I lined the tip of the pliers up with Samuel’s front bottom molar.

  “You can do this, anjo,” Mateo encouraged when he saw I was about to hesitate.

  I looked down at my uncle, right in his eyes, flashing back to the unmistakable hurt and rage I’d seen on my father’s face, and got to work.

  I couldn’t get the damn thing out until after trying for a good five minutes to separate the tooth from its root.

  I squeezed the pliers all the way together, clamping and twisting to loosen it up. The tooth cracked, and a piece of it broke off completely.

  There was blood and saliva running down either side of his face by time I got around to the third tooth. Aside from trying to call me every name in the book with a mouthful of bloodied spit, he still wouldn’t talk.

  Mateo, who’d been watching the entire time, suddenly called out something in his native tongue again.

  “We have to meet Sergio and oversee a shipment, amada. Do you think you can handle this?”

  When he asked me that, it felt like every pair of eyes in the room homed in on me to see how I would react. He’d said ‘we’. At first, I thought this was a test, and I suppose it could be considered one.

  I was the only woman in a room full of his men that wasn’t currently packing yayo into the bottom of high heels.

  The Remmingtons were an old money powerhouse involved in drugs, gambling, trafficking, and extortion. This life could be as beautiful as it was dark and cruel.

  I needed to set the record straight, assert myself, and prove to people that I was capable of handling this lifestyle and being the queen to Mateo’s king.

  His name would carry me far; I’d be respected out of people’s fear and love for him, but that wasn’t good enough for me, and he knew it. I wanted the same fear and respect on my own name. Elena Rias. One day, Elena Remmington.

  This was the best place to start. And with that realization, I understood why he wanted me to do this alone.

  Mateo didn’t want a docile pageant princess to warm his bed.

  He wanted a ruthless fucking queen who wasn’t afraid to get her hands a little bloody before picking the kids up from school.

  “I can do this,” I replied, smiling reassuringly.

  He came to stand in front of me, shooting off another command before kissing me deeply.

  With blood and saliva on my hands, I didn’t make a move to hold him, but I returned his gesture in earnest, softly moaning when he cupped my ass and pulled me flush against his body anyway.

  “You look beautiful right now. If I weren’t such a possessive, deranged asshole, I’d bend you over and fuck you raw right here,” he murmured.

  “Go do what kingpins do,” I laughed, stepping away.

  “I’ll see you soon. They’re to do whatever you say.” He nodded towards the guards on the far side of the room.

  He grabbed my dirty hand and placed a solid kiss on the back of it before finally making his way to the exit.

  “Good luck.” Elias patted my shoulder and followed after him. A second later, a man came to retrieve the trolley.

  I stared at the large metal door once it closed again. Feeling eyes on me, I pulled myself back to the current situation.

  I tossed the pliers down and walked back to the toolbox. This time, I removed a hammer and a pack of long skinny nails.

  Chapter Twelve

  The man was resilient as hell, I’d give him that.

  After taking a nail and wedging it between his nail-bed and skin, I tapped the end of it with the hammer. The point slid right through the flesh, forcing the nail up from undernea
th and splitting it right down the middle.

  I couldn’t really explain the mindset I settled in as I did this.

  I wasn’t the least bit be surprised at what this part of me had been suppressed so long was capable of.

  The blood on my hands didn’t bother me. His agonizing screams carrying across the rafters and making a few of the guards shift uncomfortably didn’t bother me. I already struggled with being empathetic, and lack of remorse came with the territory. You switched it off, and did what you needed to do.

  By the fourth nail, I soon realized the issue was that he was too resilient. It was actually rather stupid on his end not to say anything at all. It meant the person he was protecting was someone he cared about. Immensely.

  I stared at his ruddy, messy face, feeling the truth of my self-made discovery sinking down to my brittle bones.

  “The Ace is my mother,” I stated calmly, for once feeling anything but.

  Me speaking the truth aloud had Samuel’s entire demeanor changing.

  He began to laugh and sob hysterically at the same time, spewing slobber tinged blood all down the front of him.

  “Congragu-fucking-lations. When she finds out what you’ve done, she’s going to do the job her errand boys failed to do twice,” he wheezed.

  Errand boys?

  Alex was clearly one; I had no idea who the other could be.

  He tried to smile at me; I corrected his smugness by bringing the hammer down onto his knee as hard as I could, happily shattering his knee cap. His cry of pain was muffled when I took hold of his jaw and squeezed with every muscle in my hand.

  Acutely aware of all the eyes and ears on me, I leaned down and smiled brightly, looking him straight in the eyes.

  “You’ve been so much help, but I no longer need you.”

  I stepped back, silently communicating with the main guards Mateo had earlier.

  I wanted to run from the stable, scream, cry, and beat the shit out of something. Anything to make it all feel…less. Less painful, less enraging, less fucking obvious that my mother was a legitimate psychopath who failed as a parent.

  I had to remain strong, though. I was to never give someone a window of opportunity to exploit a weakness.

  “Get it over with,” Samuel spat at my feet.

  “There is no easy way out for you, Uncle Sam,” I stated sweetly, smiling again at the look on his face when he caught sight of the barrel being brought over.

  “No.” He began shaking his head back and forth, repeating the word over and over again.

  The plea fell on deaf ears.

  He’d betrayed my father, possibly assisted in the death of my sister, and schemed on my life.

  They say violence isn’t the answer, but yes, it fucking is.

  I didn’t stay to watch them submerge him in the ‘stew’. I turned and left when the oil began to boil, reaching the steel door just as his scream cut off and he was dunked inside.

  I told them to repeat the process until his skin melted down to nothing but cords of tendons and muscle, and then let the bastard burn in the remnants of himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shit hit the fan inside my head.

  I stood beneath the shower with my eyes closed, feeling reality hit me like a tidal wave.

  When cool air swept over my back, I remained how I was. He stepped up behind me and slid his arms around my waist, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  He didn’t tell me to stop or call me weak; he stood there unmoving and let me silently cry it all out.

  “Remember the first clue I gave you and what it meant,” he said softly.

  “Eva’s cellphone with the joker card,” I whispered. The phone represented her; the card told how she was the most expendable person in our round of roulette. She was the true pawn, always meant to be a sacrifice.

  “The second,” he continued, massaging the back of my neck.

  “The birth certificate at my parents’—our— estate,” I mused. That explained not only my family’s incestuous bloodline, but also where the estranged triplet was I’d never known about, currently taking my mother’s place in a casket.

  “King of hearts,” I said, before he could say anything. The card had been with the box of ashes, a strategically placed move that I fell for, even knowing Mateo didn’t operate that way.

  The surveillance showed the beginning of my family’s decimation.

  She used my father, her own brother, to get ahead in life. The fact that my grandmother was in on it sickened me. Why my father ever went along with it left me stumped.

  My father risked everything to keep me and my sister safe. He did what he could to keep us away from this world. Eva fell for the lure of Vice City, and I chased after her.

  It was all so fucked up.

  “You’re going to be okay—we’re going to be okay,” Mateo finally said again.

  “I know, I know. I’m just really…pissed.”

  “That’s why you’re crying?” He sounded miffed.

  I let out a sullen laugh and turned in his arms, placing my hands on his chest. “I’m sad too, but I’m a hundred times angrier.”

  “We can do whatever you need to do.” He smoothed his hands up and down my back, and I could tell he meant that.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but he placed the pad of his thumb on my lips.

  “Don’t answer right away—not when your emotions are this high.”

  “What did she hope to gain from all this?” I asked when he dropped his hand.

  “What everyone wants. Money, power, glory. I assume she wanted to use Eva to get it, use her to blend with my family, but she couldn’t control your sister. No one could.

  “Your father was a hundred yards ahead of her. He came to me with everything. I took it with the intention of tearing his legacy apart. He saw that coming, too. I got a box the night Alex hurt you, with a letter that told me everything.”

  My heart painfully throbbed in my chest.

  The man was screwed up and had a mountain of issues of his own, but he was a family man through and through. I would never hate my father for the decisions he made; I just hated how they all rolled into my life like a wrecking ball, breaking down every damn wall as I stood by and watched.

  There was one good thing that came from all of this. My addiction to Mateo fucking Remmington. He was turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. His darkness was my happy place.

  “So why did you help me?” I asked after a minute, tracing imaginary lines on his pecs.

  “Every family has secrets,” he began, twirling a strand of my dark hair around his finger. “My father has—had—an illegitimate child. She was young, carefree, and happy. A little too carefree. She got pregnant at seventeen by a man like me.”

  He shook his head, his eyes gaining a distant look as if he were reliving her memory.

  As soon he mentioned the pregnancy, I knew where Camilla came into the picture.

  “My father flipped shit. She may have been illegitimate, but she was family, our baby sister. We loved her. He dragged her into this world against my mother’s advice, and the rumor mill spread like wildfire.”

  “She was deemed my barely legal mistress.” He laughed, but there was no joy in it.

  “What happened to her?” I asked softly.

  He looked down at me and blinked. “A power hungry bitch got rid of her to clear the way for herself.”

  I nearly choked on my spit.

  “My mother killed your sister?”

  “No, amada, your mother never gets her hands dirty. She had someone else do it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ was really fucking meaningless.

  I didn’t need to ask why she did it. The Remmingtons were at the top of the pinnacle with no signs of falling off.

  She wanted to be a part of it.

  If there was one thing I knew, it was about power. Power is not given. You have to take it. People fought over power for
centuries. Countries went to war for it.

  Men killed one another in the streets for it. Even animals would fight tooth and nail for it.

  “You know, I’ve been told countless times that I’m just like her.”

  “There’s a little bit of both your parents inside you, but you’re far from being just like her,” he immediately responded, turning me around. His large hands cupped my face and he ran the pad of his thumb over my cheek. “You’re already so much more than she will ever be.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? I hurt for his sister and the life that was viciously stolen from not just her, but her baby. I was angry that my sister was turned into a victim, and that our father had been alone in the end.

  Yet, at the same time, my heart swelled with pure adoration for the man in front of me.

  His face, his body, his voice, his cock—that was perfection. His cunning brain, the power he exhumed ruthlessly, and the sweet parts of himself he reserved just for me, were everything.

  He was a Brazilian god with a heavy dose of asshole and a gorgeous smile.

  I tried to form one sentence that could convey any of these feelings, but my word bank continued to come up empty. Cupping the back of his neck, I pulled his mouth to mine, pouring all I could into a kiss.

  He tried to maneuver me back into the wall, but I pushed away and took advantage of my small window of opportunity.

  I dropped my knees to the slick tile, grabbed the base of his cock, and forced myself to choke on it. I took him deep, pulled all the way out, and then repeated the process with a satisfied moan.

  “Fuck,” he hissed, knotting a fist in my hair.

  The harder he pulled, the more vigorously I sucked. It didn’t take long for him to take over and fuck my throat. I used every inch of my tongue, one hand to work his shaft, and the other to roll his balls.

  I could barely see, my eyes were blurring so badly. My runny nose was taken care of by the water raining down around us, thankfully.

  “So good, amada,” he praised, drilling in and out of my mouth.