I stood silent for a couple of minutes, trying not to stare at him as he kept exercising. I looked up and around. Through the glass wall of the gym I could see part of the sober but magnificent mansion. I walked around a bit, peering outside and through the corridor out of the gym.
“This is a really nice house,” I said.
“Oh, you should see the one in the Hamptons,” he chuckled.
“Well,” I declared appreciatively, “it looks like you’ve made some good investments.”
“None,” he replied. “All of them were failures.”
I arched my brow and crossed my arms.
“What do you mean?”
“That multiplying your money thing?” he said. “I never had the touch for it. I can’t put my money somewhere and make it grow. I need to keep making new money because everything I put on stocks or bonds ends up plunging shortly after. Any companies I decide to buy go down. Any research I fund meets a dead end. Any bands I sponsor never make a hit. And so on.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. “So you... just keep playing and winning?”
“Pretty much. Just like everyone else. Except for the losers.”
“But, in a different sense, you’re always playing and losing,” I quipped.
He considered my words for a few seconds.
“Then,” he said at last, “would you say I won or lost with you?”
I blushed. I don’t know why. Maybe because I realized that I was being read like a book and measured like prey. It was obvious that Ace Hart looked at me with desire. He was practically eating me with his eyes. Fucking me with his eyes, actually. He had looked me up, but not only to make sure I wasn’t a spy or a bait. I had impressed him more than I had guessed that night. And he could plainly see how much he had impressed me.
But that’s what that kind of men do, right? They set their sights on a powerless prey, they step in, they charm, they woo, they take what they want, and they discard whatever’s left. You end up broken and hurt, a shadow of your former self.
That’s the danger.
I wouldn’t let it happen to me again.
8. THE BLONDE BITCH
ACE
“Hey, stud.”
The voice was coming from the pool. A seductive voice I knew well.
I had come to the penthouse to take a post-workout shower and chill out a bit in the crystalline water. I didn’t know Veronica would be there, but then again, I never knew when and where I would run into Veronica. I never complained, of course. The girls did double duty, serving drinks and keeping tallies at the poker tables and generally doing whatever the business required, and just taking care of me in their time off. One of the benefits was that they had freedom of the house.
I had just come out of the gym. Vanina had left so suddenly, it was as if her ghost was still lingering in the air. I found myself staring at the door longingly, just as the other night in the pub, and forgetting how many series I still had to do in the chest press. After a few minutes, reality set in again, in the form of a call from Frisco.
Pip Glover had flown there to find out what was going on. It was his first really important job, and he did it astoundingly well, getting results in less than a day. He found some worrying signs that the Chinese were behind it too. Apparently they had developed not only the virus to delete our accounts, but also a backdoor to reroute the assets that people had bet, so if, for example, a player lost a yacht, the computer would transfer its property to some unknown account in China, instead of doing what it was supposed to do, which was to transfer it to the winner and send a percentage to the organization. I would have to talk to our computer whiz ASAP.
In a way, this was good news. If the Chinese were also behind the kidnapping of the player in Chicago (he had been found dead hours after), it meant that we had found out who was after Little Vegas and we had to fight only one faction. Also, since the Chinese tend to only use their own people, it would probably mean that Vanina was who she claimed to be and not a spy or anything like that.
I felt relieved by this thought as I entered the penthouse, took my pants and shorts off, got inside the shower box beside the pool and turned on the water. It rumbled about in my brain as my body was cleaned of sweat and dirt. I wished there were some shower for the mind too.
I noticed another thing. My little friend down there. Not so little, in truth. About as little as Little Vegas. It stood up proudly, announcing that the woman in my head was in his head too. I hadn’t been able to get rid of the stiffness since I saw her at the gym. Just seeing her made my brain send wild signals down to my midsection. Hopefully, she hadn’t noticed.
No sooner had I closed the faucet and stepped outside of the shower, than I heard the voice coming from the pool. “Hey, stud.”
Veronica was peering up from the border of the pool, her beautiful eyes giving me an appreciative look. I was completely naked, and from what I could gather, so was she.
“Oh my, you’re more than ready,” she observed, and bit her lower lip.
For a whole second, I truly didn’t understand what she meant. If she saw my disconcerted expression, she didn’t show it. Of course I was supposed to play along. She was used to give me this kind of surprise, and I always welcomed it. Having a blonde with a pornstar’s body walking around the house, thinking of new and fresh ways to give you surprise sex, must be the dream of any heterosexual man. Multiply it by three (blonde, brunette, redhead) and you have Ace Hart’s everyday life.
“I guess I am,” I replied.
“Why don’t you let me do something for you? It will be fun,” she promised, as she stepped out of the pool, her perfect body splashing water on the rugged floor tiles.
She ran her long nails softly across my chest as she walked past me and entered the little booth on one corner of the penthouse. “Lie down and close your eyes,” she said as she waved at a deck chair that she had set up in horizontal position like a stretcher. I saw her grabbing a bottle of massaging oil and one of those wiry things that give you a tingling sensation when applied to your body. She closed the door, evidently to conceal some other item that she planned to use on me. The last thing I saw was her perfect ass as she leaned over to grab something.
There was a small bar with a fridge on the opposite corner of the penthouse. I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured myself a glass. I drank it on the way out of the penthouse and into my room.
What is happening to you, Ace? I asked myself as I got dressed. Are you losing your touch?
The gorgeous bitch who prepared her erotic session for me up beside the pool certainly didn’t seem to think so, but I kept wondering as I walked into the elevator, got in the garage on the bottom floor, and took the Lambo for an afternoon trip to nowhere. Damn, she’s going back to Russia unless I give her a job. I should let her go. But I don’t want to. That was the only conclusion I could draw from it all. I kept telling myself this as I drove around the city, as the sky turned dark and the lights took possession of the whole landscape.
When I came back, hours after, I found the remains of the bottle of Jack Daniels scattered on the bottom of the pool. All around the penthouse I found more broken bottles and glasses. There were various liquids spilt everywhere; among all of them, undoubtedly, a full measure of tears.
9. A CALL FROM HOME
VAN
I woke up the next day when my cellphone started ringing unexpectedly. Only Steve knows this number, I thought, and when I realized what that meant, a chill went down my spine. Then I remembered that I had given that number to Misha as well, and my heart raced for a very different reason.
Yes, it was a Russian number. My finger trembled in anticipation when I tapped the green button to connect the call.
“Misha!”
“Vanina,” he said. “How are you?”
“Woohoo! I’m fine,” I replied. “How are you? You’ll spend a fortune on this call!”
Misha and I had kept in contact through email, because it was cheap or f
ree if he could use a WiFi spot to connect the old ramshackle junk that he called laptop. I had given him the number for obvious reasons, but I never expected him to be able to pay for an international call.
“Oh, nevermind,” he laughed. “It’s alright. I can afford it. I’m a model now, you know?”
“A model? Like a fashion model?”
“Exactly.” I identified the trembling in his voice. It was not mere joy: it was pride. And I was so fucking proud of him too. “There’s this people who make jeans and tees and all that, all very cool, very cool. And they roam around in the suburbs and recruit young men. And I impressed them.”
“Misha, that’s fantastic,” I said, still incredulous. “Do you have pictures? I want to see my little brother well dressed for once.”
He laughed heartily at that. “I’ve always dressed well.”
A filthy lie, for sure. Like any gopnik, my brother had always been fond of his sportswear, always wearing the same worn tracksuit while roaming around the suburb. Over the years, that dark tracksuit accrued a myriad of signs that told the life of a gopnik, including a couple of blood stains whose origin I’d rather not know.
“I’m so happy for you, Misha,” I said. “You must have four or five girlfriends by now.”
“Oh, no, no,” he denied, and laughed with a laugh that made me miss him so much. “One will be more than enough. I’m at zero right now. What about you?”
What about me? Good question. “No boyfriend... yet. Is that acceptable?” I joked.
“Oh, I guess it’s fine,” Misha said. “But will you stay in America? I miss you, sister.”
“And I miss you so much... Misha, I’m so happy that you’re doing well. But I may have a good job here. Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if I stayed? I could help you from here.”
It was true. Ace had sent me an email the previous night, asking me if I would be interested in working for him. If I said yes, the payment would be enough to sustain both of us, so I could send money to Misha every month, even if he couldn’t come to the United States. Part of me wanted to go back to Russia, but the part that wanted to stay also acted out of love for my brother.
What I left unsaid, though, was the constant puncture of loneliness and disappointment, the long string of failures that had left me where I was, and I also left unsaid the fascination I felt for this alluring man that had just appeared in my life and attracted me with a powerful force, like a giant planet.
“Oh, you’ve helped me a lot already,” Misha said. “I used the money well. If you came here now, you wouldn’t have to help me anymore. But I love you, and if staying is the best for you... Just don’t worry about me, next time we meet I’ll be a fashion superstar.”
Misha sounded so different from the guy I’d left when I came to America that I felt the tears coming out. I could barely believe it. He spoke differently, in a loud, clear voice instead of the baleful mumble he tended to use just two years ago.
“You need to send me pictures!” I insisted, laughing. “Don’t be lazy, open your email and send me a couple. Who knows? I might get you an American bride.”
* * *
I said yes. And I regretted it immediately.
I said yes even though I didn’t know what the job was. I said yes even though we hadn’t spoken about schedules or overtime or vacation. I said yes even though he didn’t even mention getting a new work visa for me. I didn’t mind. The allure was too strong.
Behind the cold, neat words in the email I saw the sweaty muscles moving back and forth at the gym, the piercing blue eyes of Ace Hart; I heard his charming voice and felt again the thrill of seeing him for the first time right after punching a man unconscious. I also remembered his enraging cockiness, and I wanted to slap his handsome face through the computer screen. Slap him and then kiss him. That would be good.
Thanks for the opportunity. I’ll be there on Monday. Van.
That was the whole content of my reply. I hit Send, and as soon as I did, I wish I hadn’t.
What had happened to the promise I had made to myself, that I would never again become entangled with such a jerk? That my days as a victim of that kind of men were in the past?
I had walked on him twice. I walked out on him in that bar, and I walked out on him at his own house, as he showed off his muscles and tried to stop me from noticing his raging erection. Why was I now agreeing to work for him?
I must be truly a Russian character, I thought. Fyodor would be proud of me.
10. EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
ACE
Since Veronica and Bibi were so obviously jealous of Van (Veronica had even stopped showing up since her little number at the pool) and Tara was way too busy at the moment, I pondered the possibility that Arantxa Black acted as a guide for her. There were a multitude of small things to understand about Little Vegas, and it all had to be learnt in secret. I decided against it.
For good or bad, I had already told her too much, so I’d just as well keep her working for me. I won’t have her near me, I explained thoughtfully, more to myself than to Harlan Pike, who listened to me with a disconcerted expression.
“The Russian girl? The one you barely know?” he asked. “Really?”
That he even dared question my decision was worrying, not because it was a sign of disloyalty, but because he might be right. If anything, he was showing a healthy dose of caution. He was on his way to helm Little Vegas when I decided to retire, and he knew it. I would have preferred Jack Starr, but Jack was, in his own words, “too old for this shit”.
“If she’s dangerous, she will surely kill me at some point, and you’ll be promoted immediately,” I said with a completely straight face. Harlan laughed and punched me in the shoulder jokingly.
“But seriously, man, what were you thinking? Oh well. The girls are already on fire, so I guess the damage is done. Good luck.”
“A beer?” I asked.
“Oh, sure.”
I went to the bar and took two cold ones. I opened the bottles and handed him one.
“Tell me about the Chinese.”
* * *
VAN
To my surprise, Ace had some real work for me to do. He didn’t mention it in the first few weeks, as I was just learning about Little Vegas and was introduced to the small circle of people he trusted with running the organization. The stocky man who kept his cool at the pub as Ace knocked out the cheater was Jack Starr, his right hand, the man he trusted above anyone else in the world. The younger man who had protested when he mentioned Little Vegas was Harlan Pike, and he seemed to be in charge of a big part of the business in the West Coast and Atlanta. There was a still much younger man who went by Pip Glover and who I could rarely see; it looked like Ace was putting more and more tasks in his hands, testing his abilities and maybe his loyalty in preparation for bigger things.
I wondered if all those, including Ace’s, were codenames. It was a big coincidence that they were named Hart, Starr, Pike and Glover, in parallel with the hearts, stars, pikes and clovers in the playing cards. I might discover it eventually. It was a reasonable precaution that they were by fake names, of course; but for some reason I felt a pinch of intrigue about Ace, as if discovering his real name was the key to discovering him, getting to his true heart behind the layers of strong, unfazed bad guy.
There were the girls too. All of them were gorgeous and I disliked them all instantly. The brunette who had asked me who I was in a cutting tone was Bibi and she seemed to be just a waitress; there was a redhead too, Arantxa, who kept players in check and helped verify their claims in the computer when they made their bets (and helped with the drinks too); and there was also a blonde who seemed to be above the other two, acting as Ace’s secretary of sorts. She was the big-breasted girl who I found with her arm around Ace’s neck the first time I saw him. She didn’t show up in the first weeks, and when she did, she gave me a nasty look, as if she wanted me dead. Her name was Veronica Redd and she was the youngest one.
I heard about other people who worked for Ace, most of them located in different cities around the States. There was also a computer whiz nobody mentioned by name, who (according to what Ace had told me at the gym the other day) must be one of the most important people in the organization. There were bouncers at every location who had a limited knowledge of what Little Vegas even was, and thought they were just working for the pub’s or storehouse’s owner or something like that.
There were no meetings to speak of. We talked to each other on the phone whenever we needed to discuss something, and then met at one of the locations, usually by night or late afternoon. Sometimes Pip would pick me up and take me to Ace’s house. I never saw any of the girls there, though the rumor was that they were more than welcome to stay. I have no right to be jealous, I reminded myself constantly, but the thought of them lying on his bed, maybe more than one at a time, made my skin crawl and burn.
Ace didn’t give me the actual job at first. When I started working for him, we met once or twice so that he could hand me some documents or a pen drive with audio files in Russian. I was supposed to confirm that those documents looked like authentic Russian certificates of property and asset transfers, and listen to what people were saying in the recordings, usually specifying what they would bet. He didn’t need to see me to give me those materials, so it was all an excuse to keep me around, as he’d said. I was sure they’d had no problem translating papers and recordings before I entered that damn pub.
At these times he spoke to me coldly, but I could feel a slight current of nervousness in his voice, and more than a bit of desire. His fingers grazed my hand when he gave me the papers, and he stood very close when holding the door for me. So close that I could smell his minty breath, and a tingling sensation in my body. For fuck’s sake, Van, just jump on him and fuck him already. The thought made me bite my lip as I felt something melting inside me.
He called me for the first real job about a month into the business. He wanted me to go with him and meet a rich Russian businessman who was in New York temporarily. Apparently, he had made the trip just to sit at one of Ace’s tables and play; but he hadn’t been vetted yet. The amounts he wanted to bet were astronomical, about the size of a small country’s budget. Ace wanted me to hear him talk and pick up clues that he was being deceitful or things he didn’t want to say.
Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 4