by Donya Lynne
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
What to do Now
Stay Connected
Books by Donya Lynne
About the Author
STAY CONNECTED WITH DONYA LYNNE
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Romig Works, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Infidelity remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Romig Works, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
Suspicion
An Infidelity Kindle World Novella
Donya Lynne
Award-winning author of the All the King’s Men and Strong Karma Series
Suspicion
An Infidelity Kindle World Novella
Some poker faces are prettier than others
Dedication
Thank you to Aleatha Romig for inviting me to write in her exciting world of Infidelity.
Aleatha, it’s such an honor and a humbling experience to write in your world alongside so many talented authors. You are such an inspiration. I think I’ve told you before that I have “What would Aleatha do?” written on the white board next to my desk. I look at that every day, trying to raise my standards a little bit higher with each project I complete. I hope that one day I can conduct my professional endeavors (and personal ones) with the same sense of professionalism and integrity as you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
What to do Now
Stay Connected
Books by Donya Lynne
About the Author
To the Reader
While this Infidelity World novella is a contained story with a distinct ending for the primary plot and characters, certain nonessential, secondary elements have been left open-ended. This was done intentionally so other authors can use those elements to build from when writing future Infidelity World books, giving readers even more stories to enjoy in Aleatha Romig’s exciting world.
Enjoy the story.
Donya Lynne
Chapter 1
Max
People think poker is a sexy game. They watch movies like Casino Royale and Runner Runner and see the money, the bling, the excess, and they base their reality on the fantasy. Every man is as dashing as James Bond, and every woman is a supermodel wearing a skintight red dress with a plunging neckline.
I’m not saying poker can’t be sexy. It can, especially when you’re winning big. But when you’re not, you’re like a homeless person standing on the corner, shaking your plastic cup of coins, holding a sign: Hungry. Homeless. Please help. God bless. Nobody wants to be near you. Women don’t want to fuck you. Men don’t want to buy you drinks or be your friend (because if women don’t want to fuck you, there’s no leftovers for them. See how this works?). When you’re losing, you’re on an island by yourself.
In the real world, poker is more about cards, crowded tournament rooms, and plastering on your poker face. Women don’t factor in unless they’re sitting at the table with you. As another player. Not as the red-dress girl who comes up behind you, bends over to distract the other men with her cleavage, and kisses you for good luck.
Which is why the flash of blond hair, long legs, and a little black dress from across the room catches me by surprise.
I look up, but as fast as she was there, she’s gone.
Good thing, too. I’m deep in the middle of a hand. The last hand, if I play it right, which means I don’t need any distractions. The fact I allowed a pair of sexy legs to break my concentration means I need to work harder on my game if I’m going to make it as a pro. But what can I say? I’m a leg man. Long, supple legs are my weakness.
Pulling my focus back to the baize table and the pair of cards sitting facedown in front of me, I fondle a stack of chips, mentally berating myself for my lack of discipline. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been sitting here for almost four hours and have to piss like an elephant (do you still think poker is sexy?). All it takes is one small slip, and I’ll lose the advantage I’ve spent the entire game cultivating.
Speaking of pissing, a lot of poker players would be pissing in their pants if they were holding the hand I am right now. Four kings. Not much beats four kings. Four aces, a straight flush, a royal flush. That’s it. And the community cards make it mathematically impossible for my opponent to be holding any of those. My bet is he’s sitting on an ace-high flush, but not even that can’t beat my cowboys.
“Call.” I toss a stack of chips toward the center of the table, keeping my expression as stony as Mount Rushmore.
Times like this are when discipline and skill are most important. Skill is how I’ll make my opponent think he has a chance. Skill will make him believe his hand is stronger than mine. That’s the only way I’ll keep him throwing money in the pot.
Since the deal of the first hand, I’ve studied my opponent with the thoroughness of a pathologist conducting an autopsy. I know his patterns. His habits, mannerisms, and quirks.
His tell. When he bluffs, the skin around his right eye tightens.
He’s not bluffing now.
But he is concerned. He eyes me and his stack in turns, delaying his bet.
I wait.
We stare each other down.
I shuffle a stack of chips. The plastic pieces click together in a rapid-fire ripple of sound. Cli-i-i-i-i-i-ck. Like a tiny machine gun. You can hear the same sound all over the room as other players do the same with their chips. You can’t call yourself a real poker player if you don’t know how to shuffle a stack of chips.
I continue shuffling mine, waiting for my opponent to grow some balls and raise me.
In poker, you don’t just play the hands of everyone else around the table. You play their fears, habits, and patterns, so you have to pay attention. You have to watch the cards that get played and analyze how your opponents bet with those cards. Eventually, patterns emerge.
Patterns reveal weakness.
Weakness can be exploited.
But as important as it is to play against your opponent, it’s just as important to remember you’re also playing against yourself. While you’re studying the others around the table, they’re studying you. A smart player remembers this and finds ways to keep his opponents guessing.
I continue shuffling my chips, calm, showing nothing, keeping one hand over my cards.
Another minute passes before he finally raises my call.
Just like I knew he would.
A less skilled player in my shoes would do something foolish right about now. He’d pump his fist or show off by shoving his chips into the center of the table like he’s got something to prove . . . and immediately scare his opponent into folding and drag this game on even longer.
Instead, I blink. That’s as much emotion as I’m willing to reveal.
Restraint is the name of the game. It’s what will make my opponent think I’m bluffing, which is a good thing. I want him to think I’m sitting on two pair, maybe three of a kind, at most. That’s how I’m going to get him to give me his money.
Smoke and mirrors. That�
�s all poker is. An act. It’s a game of suspicion. You can never trust the people you’re playing against, and they can’t trust you.
While I make my opponent sweat, my gaze travels over his attire. We couldn’t be more opposite in appearance. He’s wearing a black baseball cap backward and has on a faded Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt that looks like it’s been washed a hundred times too many. I’m wearing a black silk button-up, untucked over crisp dark denim, and polished Italian loafers. The collar of my shirt is open, revealing the small silver locket I rarely take off. My long fade is brushed back from my forehead, styled the way a lot of men are wearing their fades now. In other words, I’m put together.
The way I’m dressed is part of my game. It’s part of who I am as a player.
Classy.
Refined.
Legitimate.
I may cheat in every other aspect of my life, pulling scams and cons on unsuspecting marks, but poker is the one place I’m honest. It’s the one area of my life I won’t taint with deceit. I want to earn my place at the biggest tables, not cheat my way into them.
After giving my opponent enough time to sweat his bet, I straighten and put my hands at the rear of my stack.
“All-in.” I slowly—tentatively even—push my chips toward the center of the table. If he bites, the pot will be fifty thousand dollars.
Gasps go up from the crowd that’s gathered around the table. Going all-in always gets a powerful reaction from the railbirds.
The money is a drop in the bucket of my net worth, but the win has even greater value. A win is validation I don’t need to pull cons anymore.
Winning today proves that I’ve got what it takes to do this for a living . . . and do well. This isn’t the first time I’ve crafted a win at a Vegas tournament. It’s not even the second. In the last two years, I’ve won three Texas Hold’em tournaments and placed in the top five of eight more, and that’s playing just a few times a year.
Imagine how much money I could make if I played every week or even every day. For that matter, imagine the payday I could have by earning my way into the World Series of Poker, which is next year’s goal.
Maybe then I’ll be good enough to deserve the heart of a woman like the one I met by the pool in Del Mar last month. Charli. With an I. I talked to her less than five minutes, but I could tell she was a class act. A woman who wouldn’t fall for a con artist like me. A woman who would never get involved with a criminal.
If I’m going to win the heart of a woman like that, I need to change my ways. That’s one reason I’m here. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided not to wait any longer to get out of the racket.
The corners of my opponent’s mouth pinch. He wasn’t expecting me to go all-in, but he’s too proud to fold and fight back with a short stack. He still has faith—or perhaps it’s fading hope I see in his eyes—in the losing hand he’s holding.
It doesn’t take long, and he calls my bet. All our chips are in the middle of the table.
When I flip over my kings, he chuffs and shakes his head, showing the ace-high flush I assumed he had with an air of defeat.
“When you went all-in, I knew you had four. I just knew it.” He sighs and pushes away from the table. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”
I stand at the same time he does and reach for his hand. “Good game,” I say.
“You, too.” He eyes the cards again as if he still can’t believe he got outplayed then meanders away from the table.
I catch Shaun’s eye at the rail. He’s been milling through the crowd and scouting the ladies for the last hour, no doubt working his angles to make off with anything from a couple of free drinks to a small fortune. I join him.
“Well played,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“How much did you end up winning?”
I glance briefly at the chips the dealer is organizing on the table. “Fifty.”
His eyes go wide. “Nice. Considering it wasn’t the game you came here to play.”
I unbutton my cuffs and start rolling up my sleeves. I’ve been dying to do that for the last two hours.
“Sometimes the smaller games can still have big payouts.”
I feel like I’m talking to someone I barely know. Then again, things have been tense between Shaun and me for a couple of weeks, ever since I told him I wanted out of the con game.
He didn’t take the news well. He’s also in denial and thinks I’ll “come around,” as he puts it.
“Drinks to celebrate?” He gestures in the direction of the bar. “On you, of course?”
I grin. “Of course. Just let me cash out.”
I want to celebrate. I really do. There’s a balloon of excitement inside my chest that’s been expanding for the past four hours. With each hand I won, and with each chip I stacked in front of me, the balloon grew bigger. I just want to pop that bastard and go crazy. Maybe hire a pair of strippers to give me a private performance in my suite while I pour Champagne over their breasts and drink it off their nipples.
This is it. This is what I’ve waited for since I was a kid. A chance to live a legitimate life. I have every reason to let loose and get truly toasted right now.
But I can’t do that with Shaun. Not anymore. Not after how things went down between us two weeks ago.
As I take the chance to hit up the restroom while my winnings are being tallied, my mind drifts back to the conversation Shaun and I had a couple of weeks ago. The conversation that changed everything between us.
“What the fuck, Max?” Shaun had said as we sat at the poolside bar. “You want out? Where the fuck is this coming from?”
It had been almost two weeks since the incident with Charli with an I. He’d been scoping the ladies around the pool, scheming over which one to mark. It didn’t matter which woman he chose. They were all wealthy or they wouldn’t have been there. Del Mar is a place for people who shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, not people who fill their wardrobe from the racks at Walmart.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, Shaun.” I kept my gaze in my drink. “Sooner or later, our luck is going to run out, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison or on the run. My heart’s just not in it anymore. If I’m being honest, it hasn’t been in it for a couple of years.”
“What are you going to do for money if you quit?”
Without hesitation, I said, “Poker.”
He stared at me like I’d just told him I was going to run off and join a monastery and devote my life to Jesus. Then he let out a bark of laughter. “Poker? Come on, Max, you can’t make a living playing poker.”
Apparently, he hadn’t been paying attention to my poker earnings. “Shaun, I made over one hundred thousand dollars last year at the tables. I made over sixty thousand the year before that. On top of what I’ve already got in the bank, I could easily live off my poker earnings for the rest of my life.”
The amused gleam in Shaun’s eyes vanished. “What about me? I pulled you into this thing. We’ve been partners since we were kids. Now you want out? What am I supposed to do for money?”
“You’ll do fine.” I glanced around the bar at all the rich, beautiful women. “You’ve got a goldmine here, one you can have all to yourself if I bow out. Just think, you won’t have to split the earnings with me, anymore.”
“You know I’m not as good at talking my way in and out with these women as you are.”
“You’re good enough. Plus, you’ve got hacking to fall back on.”
But Shaun wasn’t hearing me. “Is this about that girl? The one from a couple of weeks ago with the big tits and the floppy hat.” He shifted on his barstool and narrowed his eyes on me. “The one by the pool. The one that guy claimed was his wife when we both know he wasn’t?”
I glanced away, my brow tight. “Charli.”
“His name was Charlie?”
“No. Her. Her name was Charli. With an I.”
For some reason, I felt the need to qualify the spel
ling of her name, which more than gave away that she was exactly the reason for my sudden change of heart, even though it wasn’t so sudden in my mind. Like I said, I’d been thinking about getting out of the game for a while. The incident with Charli had just been my breaking point.
But there was more to it than that.
I never told Shaun I’d been paid to mark Charli. Two nights before, some guy in an expensive black suit caught me in the bar while Shaun had been working a rich socialite on the other side of the room. The guy asked me if I wanted to make a quick ten thousand. I didn’t ask his name, and he didn’t offer it. He didn’t ask for my name, either, but I got the impression he knew who I was. That he knew everything he needed to know about me, including how to find me in the future.
I didn’t care if he was a member of the mafia, a crime syndicate, a drug cartel, or just a guy with a vendetta. All I cared about was that he wanted to give me ten thousand dollars to talk up an attractive woman.
It’s been a month since that day, and I’m no longer as cavalier as I was about taking all that money for such a seemingly simple task.
What if what I did got Charli with an I hurt? Or worse?
Just once, I’d like to be the hero who rescues the girl from a guy like me instead of the letch she needs to be rescued from. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry that my actions got an innocent woman caught up in something that did her harm.
Too bad my conscience hadn’t been as present that night. Then again, the guy in the suit seemed to know more about me than I knew about him, and he seemed prepared to hold my past over my head if I didn’t do what he wanted.
When I told Mr. Black Tailored Suit I was in, he slipped me the cash and two pictures. One of Charli and one of the dark-haired man who swooped in and claimed he was her husband. The instructions had been clear: Go after Charli and make sure the man saw me.
Easiest ten thousand I’ve ever made.
And the most troubling. Who would spend that kind of money to manipulate a meeting? And why?