Queen of Diamonds: A Dark Erotic Romance (Old Money Roulette Book 1)

by Natalie Bennett

  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.

  The passenger side window slowly came down revealing one of my constant thoughts in the flesh.

  “Get in,” he said. “Elena, get in the car,” he repeated a little harsher when I didn’t move.

  Implored by some unknown force to do what he asked, without taking one minute to stop and consider, I approached the car.

  He reached over and popped the door open for me, and I got in. Wordlessly, he shifted and did a U-turn, heading back the way I’d just come from.

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t ask any questions.

  It was always when someone thought they were all alone that they completely let their guard down. I’d watched her long enough to get the synopsis of what she was feeling.

  The smell of her body-wash filled the cabin–cherry blossom if I had to guess.

  I’d give her a few minutes of silence while I had my own. I had packages of cocaine on their way to an undisclosed location,

  and I had stacks of cash inside my desk that needed to start being structured out and cleaned up.

  It could wait––a perk of being my own boss. If things got too tight, Elias would step in for me, having my full permission to make decisions.

  I knew what I was doing. I was taking the woman I’d become instantly infatuated with to a rural diner outside the city at damn near one in the morning. I didn’t know why I was doing it.

  My twisted angel just climbed into a car with a man who was morally inept. Remarkably, except where she was concerned.

  I think she knew that about me––sensed it somehow––just like I knew there were layers beneath her surface begging for me to shred, cut, or peel away.

  That’s what made her twisted, she was such a pure, naïve little thing, yet she didn’t seem to mind that I was an underground king.

  I couldn’t get on the love at first sight bandwagon that just wasn’t my forte. But did I imagine the million different ways I would fuck her? Yes. To love pussy did not mean to love the woman on the other side of it.

  I believed in the click I felt when my eyes first met hers, and her eyes said she felt it too. I believed we had a future of trying to destroy one another on the horizon. This game was not going to be suited for the faint of heart. They never were–but I knew she would be different. I was almost excited. I reminded myself to have patience because timing was everything.

  “What year is this?” Her soft voice pulled me from my thoughts. She was trailing her fingers along the ridges of the white bucket seat.

  “Sixty-four, completely restored.”

  “I love it,” she mused. “So where are you taking me?”

  “Here,” I replied minutes later, coasting into the parking lot of Max’s retro-themed diner.

  “Cute,” she noted, peering through the windshield. “But why?”

  “Because you didn’t want to be home and neither did I. Now stop asking questions and get out.” I caught her sexy little smirk as I slammed my door.

  She followed after me into the diner, sliding into the blood red booth so we were facing one another.

  “Get whatever you want.” I slid her a menu without needing one for myself.

  Paula, the owner’s wife shuffled over ready to take our orders. “Hey hun, didn’t expect to see you today.”

  She never expected to see me, and she still said this every time she did.

  “I want my usual, and she wants…”

  “The pound puppies and sausage.”

  “And to drink?” Paula questioned with a slight smile.

  “OJ–orange juice.”

  “You ordered off the kids menu,” I said once Paula walked off.

  “I always do. Their food seems to taste better. I didn’t bring my purse though.”

  “You don’t need it. When you’re with me, money is the last thing to worry about.”

  “I didn’t want it for money. I wanted it for the––never mind. What do you mean when I’m with you? Is this going to be a thing? Us at a honky-tonk diner? You in that flashy get-up looking thoroughly exhausted and me in booty shorts with my face slightly swollen?”

  “You just asked four questions. I told you not to ask any.”

  She shrugged, thanking Paula when she brought our drinks over.

  We fell into an almost companionable silence after that which continued when the food came.

  I watched her eat, the way she refused to let the syrup touch the sausage links and cut her pancakes into perfect squares before stacking them in a pile.

  Her long hair was down, hanging over her shoulders. I could see the tops of her thighs from my side of the table. She put her full concentration on her food––I liked that––among many other things. I liked how naturally beautiful she was even with her slightly puffy face. I liked that she didn’t stare at me with dollar signs or celebrity-filled awe in her brown eyes.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked her.

  “I had a moment. You helped,” she vaguely replied.

  I accepted that answer for now. She and I were inevitable. I had time.

  “So what now?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  She grew quiet. I watched her struggle to find words, and then she looked at me and I saw it. Her eyes were full of poorly veiled curiosity and hidden behind a shield of wavering bravado was a fear of what I could do to her––what I inevitably would do to her. That fear was my stimulant.

  With a slight clearing of her throat, her mask was back in place but it only added to what I already knew. My twisted angel had secrets. I would extract every single one of them.

  “How much do you know about me?”

  “I know many things about you, Elena. The question is: what don’t I know about you? And how long do you think it’s going to take me to find out?”

  “Why do you want to know me at all?”

  I would one day tell her I’d been infatuated with her since the very first time I saw her, five years ago.

  But again––patience. I always knew which cards to play and exactly when to play them.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to know someone like you?”

  “That’s just it, you shouldn’t,” she retorted with the wariness I was expecting. She didn’t know her own self-worth. Her mind was rejecting the possibility of someone like me being interested in her. It knocked her off kilter––she wanted to be the one pursuing. Unfortunately for her, I was always the hunter and never the prey.

  “I have a problem.”

  “It’s not a problem. It’s a disorder and its one of the first things I knew about you. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Looking slightly taken aback for half a second, she continued to name everything wrong with her.

  She didn’t understand that her faults were what began my obsession.

  Everything she thought was wrong with her I thought was pure fucked up imperfection.

  Perhaps I should have told her I knew enough about her that I could probably give her responses before she did.
But this was too entertaining. I was a morally bankrupt asshole, and she was making deposits that unknowingly fed my greedy sickness.

  “I have a long list of daddy issues.”

  “That sounds like a good thing for me.”

  She laughed, and the sound was akin to a music box.

  “Fine, it’s your sanity at stake.” She shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance. I tempered a smile brought on by her discomfort.

  “Now that’s out of the way,” I began and she slightly relaxed.

  “Can we start in the bathroom?”

  That gave me slight pause.

  “The bathroom?” I knew what she was asking, I just wanted to confirm. She looked at me dead center and nodded.

  I should have been a gentleman and turned down the offer, done the right thing and all that other bullshit, but where was the enjoyment in that discourse? I said I was patient, not a priest. I was far less than a gentleman, and even less of a saint.

  This gorgeous woman I was so obsessed with wanted me to fuck her. Who was I to say no?

  Sliding from the booth without a word, I reached down and grabbed her hand, leading her towards the back of the diner.

  Chapter Six

  It was a quick, no-nonsense fuck.

  He was a stranger–––a gorgeous, dangerous stranger–––that made it so much dirtier. We didn’t share any passionate kisses, In fact, we barely spoke any words.

  I turned the flimsy lock on the door while he worked me out of my hoodie. He tore at my tank top, exposing my breasts. There was a two-second pause where he searched my face to see if I’d changed my mind.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered, moving closer.

  With a subtle nod, he shoved my shorts down my legs just far enough to give him access to where he wanted to be and where I needed him.

  I reached for him. “No,” he said, grabbing my wrists and placing them back by my sides. He took a step back and perused my half naked body from head to toe. Standing in that shitty bathroom with my tits half out and my bare pussy on full display, I felt more exposed than I would have fully nude.

  He spun me around and bent me over the basin. I heard his buckle being undone and knew he was lowering his slacks just far enough to free his cock.

  I never saw his dick. I didn’t care––when he stepped up behind me, I felt how hard and thick it was, and that’s all that mattered. The familiar smell of his cologne chased away any small reservations I had.

  “Wait, condom.”

  “I know you’re on birth-control and clean,” he said, lining the tip of his cock up with my entrance.

  “I’m fucking you raw so you remember exactly who this pussy belongs to.”

  He spread my legs as far apart as they would go, gripped my hip with one hand, and painfully shoved into me.

  There was no adjustment period.

  I bit down on my lip, tasting blood as my entire body shuddered from the brute force of his movements. It felt like being torn apart, I welcomed the pain, I could have gotten high off it but my body quickly responded to what he was doing to me. My arousal was soon drenching the shaft of his dick and coating the inside of my thighs. I clamped down on him tighter. He grabbed a fistful of my hair in approval. The cramped space was filled with the sound of my uninhibited moans–skin hitting skin, and the steady squeak of the sink shifting against the wall.

  He slipped a hand around my throat and forced me to watch him fuck me in the mirror. My face was flushed pink, lips parted in a perfect O. My inner slut stared back at me cheering me on.

  He gave me the hardest orgasm of my life without touching my clit once. I wasn’t sure if I yelled his name in my head or aloud, When I came, I gripped the sink so hard I lost temporary feeling in my fingers as heat pervaded through my entire body and I forgot the ability to stand.

  He easily supported me, whilst continuing his savage fuck strokes, pushing deeper and deeper into me until he finally paused. His dick twitched as he came inside me. He pulled out and immediately tucked himself away.

  I pushed my tits back in my torn tank-top as best as I could before slipping back into my hoodie. He stopped me from wiping the excess come dripping down my thigh away and pulled my shorts back up over the sticky mess.

  Finally, he placed a gentle kiss on my lips and unlocked the door.

  Still, we said nothing.

  He intertwined our fingers and led me back to the main part of the diner. I gave a shameless little wave to the patrons who all stopped and stared at us as he paid for our meal, and earned a beautiful dimpled smile from Mateo. There was a small round of applause from a booth in a back corner when we made our departure.

  It wasn’t until we were in the Mustang again and he placed a possessive hand on my bare knee that I realized how screwed I was.

  I still had my uses for him, but they were nothing like I’d originally intended. I’d let him inside me, and that ruined everything. Our story now began in that shitty bathroom in a tiny diner with him bending me over the sink.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, but life had a penchant for throwing people curveballs.

  I never intended to fall in love with a drug lord, and our kind of love was doomed from the first start.

  Part two

  White lines, pretty baby, tattoos.

  Don't know what they mean.

  They're special, just for you.

  White palms, baking powder on the stove.

  Cooking up a dream, turning diamonds into snow.

  –Lana Del Rey–

  Chapter Seven

  There was always something that needed to be done.

  Elias, Sergio, and a falcon named Teddy patiently waited to see what I wanted them to do. I finished my text to Elena and looked up to my brother’s amused grin.

  “What the fuck are you smiling at?”

  “You’ve always been a patient man, Mateo, but not to this extent––and never with a woman.”

  I thumbed my chin, setting my phone down on the table beside a stack of cash and customized handgun. Sometimes I thought my baby brother operated on the same wavelength as me. He was the only person in the world aside from our mãe who understood my thought process and little quirks.

  “I like her, so what? What’s your point?” I shrugged. Elena was different. She was her own person and didn’t give a shit what anyone around here thought of her.

  I got a report of her telling one of my falcons to fuck off when he refused her entry to a club called Shwab’s.

  This was followed by a barrage of texts accusing me of being behind it. Of course, it was me. She could go to any number of clubs but a select few, after proving that to her the day before she was now sending me a dozen texts about how I needed to stop sending her things. She needed to stop telling me what to fuck to do–but we could discuss that in person.

  “No point irmão. This is good. Just...” he trailed off, aiming a pointed look at Teddy.

  I nodded and slipped into a mode of business. “I have twelve bundles separated into seven. We have eighty-four small deposits that need to be evenly disbursed into the accounts. Spread them out to people who are consistent in the amounts they put in and withdraw,” I directed at Teddy, who was already separating the cash into inconspicuous containers.

  I wasn’t worried about him being robbed, no one was that fucking stupid. It was a precaution. Though the local law enforcement was headed by my aunt and full of our own people, there was always the cop who wanted to be a hero that slipped through the cracks, desperate to build a case that couldn’t be built. He’d eventually fuck up, disclose his identity, and be killed. Many had come before him, and many would follow.

  Sometimes, I thought of letting them get to the finish line just to see what would happen.

  How would they try and finally take not only my family, but every other corrupt family down in my motherfucking city? Seeing the bloodbath alone was almost worth it.

  “Take a hitman with you,” I called after Teddy on his way out of my
dining room.

  “Now why the fuck did I get a call this morning that the Serban supply was two kilos short? Who the fuck let two––two––goddamn kilos vanish?”

  “That would have been Joshua B-something.” Sergio was quick to reply, already working to remedy the situation.

  “What kind of dumbfuck steals so much?” Elias laughed.

  I ran a hand over my face. Why was recruitment such a pain in the ass?

  “Is Diablo ready for us?”

  “Yes,” they replied in unison.

  “Good. One of you grab the camera and let’s go.”

  I left the room and headed for the front door. Elias caught up with me just as I turned the handle, following me out.

  “Say what you were going to say,” I said to him without pausing.

  “What happens when everything comes to light? We both know she didn’t come back here to live the life of the rich and corrupt like the rest of us.”

  “I think she came back at her grandmother’s request, and that’s where I’ve started for answers. Lucielle is a sneaky bitch and Elena is naïve. She doesn’t have the life experience to know better. But with that being said, she isn’t happy living with the grandmother or the uncle for a reason. I know it has to do with me. What they want exactly, who knows? I’ll figure it out. I have a few theories.”

  “Are you going to tell me what they are?”

  “No,” I grinned, climbing into one of the four UTV’s I had to drive across my property.

  “I figured this would all be a grand pre-finale leading up to the game.”

  “But what about you and her?”

  “We will go through hell and see if she comes out the other side. If she doesn’t, she was never meant for this world to begin with.”

  He nodded, but I knew he didn’t like my answer. That was the difference between us. Elias was much more empathetic. He was a cruel bastard just as I was, no doubt, but his moral account was a little more plusher than mine.

  But he understood why this had to be done. He knew what else was at risk if it wasn’t. I still had a promise to uphold. I never gave my word and took it away. I couldn’t give much else.