I lead Conrad to Emma Lia’s bedroom and knock on the door. I’m both pleased and amused when she flings the door open and tears into me. “About fucking time, you asshole.”
Her eyes widen when she sees her father. “Dad!” She hurls into his arms. “I knew that you’d come for me.”
“I’m here, baby.” He wraps his arms around her and strokes his hand down her long locks.
“You have ten minutes.”
Emma Lia releases her hold and looks at me. “Ten minutes? What is he talking about? We’re getting out of here right now.”
“We need to talk, baby.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“Ten minutes,” I repeat before turning to leave Conrad with his daughter.
8
Emma Lia Grant
I pullmy dad through the doorway and slam the door. “Ten minutes? What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what you think it means.” Dad looks at me, the expression on his face one that I’ve never seen on him before.
Defeat.
“No. No. No. I can’t stay with that man.”
“I tried to buy you back, but he doesn’t want money. I even offered to work for him, teach his people our tricks. He doesn’t want any of it.” My dad takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “He only wants you.”
“And people in hell want ice water.”
“He has us over a barrel. If you leave, he turns over surveillance that could send you and Adam to jail for a long time.”
Dad’s tremors are far worse today. The worst that I’ve ever seen. Probably because of the stress he’s experienced over the last couple of days. And that makes me hate Tristan Broussard even more.
“I can’t lose both of my children.” My dad reaches out to grasp the bedpost for support. He looks as though he could collapse at any moment. “Baby… I don’t know how to fix this.”
“Sit down, Dad.”
For once, he doesn’t argue. And that tells me more than his mouth ever could.
He’s weakening.
“Why the hell would you and your brother think it was okay to step foot in a Broussard casino after I told you and told you and told you not to?” Dad isn’t exaggerating. He warned us repeatedly.
“You forbade it but never told us why. It was a challenge. A temptation. I was lured in by the unknown. And the winning… it was so easy, Dad. It was like they were ignoring Adam and letting me win.”
“I think that he instructed his people to let you win so that you’d owe a substantial debt to him. I think this has been his plan since you started coming into his casino.”
That’s a ridiculous idea. “Adam and I won that money. No one let us walk out of there with a hundred thousand dollars.”
“You and Adam are very good. And maybe you got away with one or two wins, but neither of you have mastered your craft well enough to walk out of there with that kind of money without them knowing.”
That would require a lot of conspiracy on his part. And a lot of luck. He’d have had no way of ensuring that I would return.
Unless we won big and won often. Which we did.
“Why would he do that?”
