It didn’t fucking matter. First of all, I knew a woman who hadn’t accepted how she actually felt about me, and that was Delilah Reyes to a T. And second, even if she somehow did find it in herself to stay away…
Well, strangely, it would kind of suck. But in reality, I’d move on. I’d find some other broad to take home with me. And all would be well.
Really.
I was the King of Diamonds, after all. I may not have had the queen I sought, but there were still plenty of tens and nines out there that would more than suffice.
That, at least, was what I told myself.
Days passed. Wednesday became Thursday, a night I would normally head out but ultimately decided against. Thursday became a strangely productive Friday, but even then, I didn’t feel a great urge to head out and find a lady for the night. Why?
The obvious answer was Delilah.
But I didn’t think that was the answer. At least, it seemed too stupid to be.
First, we had some reports of petty crime on our casino grounds that seemed a little too coordinated to be coincidental. Dante kept insisting on bringing the Black Reapers MC into the circle; I wanted to smack him and remind him how well the lastrodeo went. But Dante never saw a problem he felt he couldn’t charge through, and this sure seemed like one of them.
Second, and more concerning to me personally, was the seemingly annoying issue of some financial discrepancies. Nothing major, but something that suggested someone lower down the chain might be embezzling. In every weekly report that I looked at, there seemed to be some numbers off by a few thousand dollars. Of course, to a business, a few thousand bucks might as well have been like our grandmother forgetting a nickel, and most other businesses would never bother with the matter.
We weren’t like most fucking businesses. I was not like most fucking CFOs. I was a fucking Vale, and I had standards that I expected everyone else to meet.
And frankly, given everything with the Morrils, I took anything askew as a red flag worth investigating. If it were some dumbass employee using business funds for gambling or drinking, then I’d fire his ass and blackball him from the industry. Not even the Morrils would be dumb enough to hire him. But if the Morrils had already hired him for this purpose?
Let’s just say they’d be more fucked than Delilah would be if we found ourselves with our clothes off.
Why does everything keep circling back to her? For fuck’s sake, Adrian, get a grip on yourself.
By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was looking at another spreadsheet with another bit of discrepancy that made no sense to me. We had strict orders to our employees to categorize all spending, and yet here was another spreadsheet with “Miscellaneous” expenses. My direct report, our VP of Accounting, would not be the one responsible—I thought, anyway. I’d have to dig deeper.
And then my phone rang.
I pulled it up and saw a 702 number I did not recognize. It could very well have been Delilah, it could very well have been a threat from the Morrils, it could very well have been spam.
What could I say? After not going out last night, I could have used a little thrill.
“Yes?” I said as soon as I picked up. If it was spam, I wasn’t going to let them know it was the King of Diamonds on the line.
“Adrian Vale?”
Ah, beautiful.
That pretty voice couldn’t stay far away from me for too long. There was always a small chance, I suppose, that Delilah Reyes would never speak to me again, but it was about as small as Dante going soft or Cassius regaining his single-man dominance.
“Hello, Delilah,” I said. “Do you miss me?”
I heard her swallow on the other end of the line. She would pretend otherwise, but when I listened closely, I heardeverything.
“I missed some details from our interview earlier this week,” she said slowly, before adding, “that I would like to clarify here on the phone.”
“You would?” I said. I chuckled. “Why do you need to do it on the phone?”
“I don’t have that much time, Adrian. And I doubt you do either.”
I glanced down at a tab with my calendar. I always had an event, always had a meeting, always had a gathering with my brothers I could go to.
None of those would ever take priority over the opportunity to fuck a journalist senseless on my office desk.
I just had to be a bit more artful in getting to that point.
