Not at all to my surprise, the questions were easy ones, softball questions, those in her field called them. The kind meant to let me hit home runs of answers, the kind that made me look good. But the interview hardly mattered; it was simply a perfunctory step to making Delilah want to leave for more.
When the fifteen minutes ended, I was sure not a single valuable question or quote had been given. I wasn’t even sure if Delilah had turned a recorder on. But that wasn’t my problem. I showed her the elevator, bid her farewell, and smiled all the way to when the elevator doors shut.
And as soon as she left, I went straight for my bed, found some lube, closed my eyes, and jerked off to the thought of Delilah.
Had I not come shortly after that, had I not had sexual release, I would have done something truly stupid. What, I had no idea, which was kind of half the point.
But the so-called post-nut clarity only clarified one thing for me.
I still had my eyes trained on Delilah Reyes. I still would eventually fuck her.
I just had to be a little more patient than I had anticipated.
The night came and went, and I chose to spend it in once more. The dalliance with Delilah, if you could call it that, didn’t leave me much interested in pursuing far less interesting women. She tickled my curiosity and drove me mad, both in the best ways possible; some random girl on vacation at a nightclub wouldn’t do that for me. It was so very unlike the King of Diamonds, but as I went to bed, the thought didn’t bother me.
What did bother me, however, was a thought that crossed my mind just before I fell asleep.
Was I really sure that I wasn’t following in the same path as Cassius?
Fuck me, the King of Hearts going soft was one thing. The King of Diamonds? That could not happen. But it might be happening, in part because it had been some time since I’d seen any of my brothers. Strange as it sounded, for the four of us running the casino empire together and living in four penthouses adjacent to each other, there’d be times where we’d go weeks without seeing each other. There was no reason other than we were simply too fucking busy.
But my brothers could ground me. They could remind me that I was a Vale, I was the King of Diamonds, and no woman, no matter how clever or witty, could bring me back down to Earth.
God forbid, though, they fucking realize how mad Delilah was driving me.
And so when I called them up to my penthouse that Saturday evening, I was explicit—this was to discuss what was going on with the Morril family’s escalating threats. The petty crime, the potential embezzlement, that was what we were gathered for. I would make no mention of any journalist or even any presscoverage; if anyone asked how our media relations were going, I’d simply say the only threat was the shitty hit piece on Sarah that went nowhere.
Dante and Lucas arrived first. Dante had his sleeves rolled up, showing off the tattoos on his forearms. A part of me found them tacky in a way. The thing about being the King of Diamonds was I could customize my fit based on where I went; how I dressed forAllure’s opening or charity events might be different than how I dressed to visit the governor of Nevada.
Dante was just fucking Dante wherever he went. Sometimes better, sometimes for worse, but never changing.
Lucas was probably the most “normal” of us, but that was just a polite way of saying he kept to himself more than the rest of us. He was still a brother, and he could still be ruthless as need be, but I knew less about him than any of our brothers. Sometimes, when drunk, he’d say we wouldn’t want to know the real him, but I hadn’t heard him say that in a long fucking time.
“Where the fuck is Cassius?” I said, trying not to put too much venom on his name.
“Finishing dinner with Sarah,” Dante said. “You know how he is. He’s gotta make love first.”
“Of course,” I grunted.
“Please,” Dante said.
Please?I glared at him; his remark had not been said without sarcasm.
“We’ve seen how you look at that sexy little journalist walking through our offices.”
“Watch your fucking mouth.”
“And we notice how you speak about her,” Dante said with a laugh. “Relax, Adrian. Lucas and I have no interest in her. Her friends? Fucking gorgeous. But her? We’re smart enough to stay away from traps when we see them.”
I fumed but said nothing that would give my brothers ammunition. How the fuck would they have seen me, anyway? I hadn’t seen my brothers in weeks.
Except, of course, we had cameras. Dante was not exactly shy about saying how he used our security system to spy on us. He never did it in a manner to harm us; more just to fuck with us. And if Dante knew, Lucas knew; the tattooed Vale was the only one that somewhat understood Lucas.
And people talked. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
But just because I wasn’t surprised didn’t mean I wasn’t annoyed as fuck. Here I was, thinking that I was being slick with a medium-term game, and apparently I was on parade for the entire company to see.
“We know you’re smart enough not to say anything stupid to her,” Lucas said, “but to act like you’re not going down the road Cassius did is?—”
