He dropped his forehead to mine, fucking me harder, letting out a small groan, stilling as his cock twitched and he came inside me.
Slowly, he pulled away and positioned himself on his back. I dropped my hand and traced a pattern over his tattoo once I caught my breath.
“What does this mean?”
“It’s from a myth. Old Money Roulette. It was a game of sorts. Think of a deck of cards. How many are inside?”
“Twenty?” I guessed, wondering where he was going with this.
“Twenty-four, but close enough. In that deck, there are three cards that single-handedly trump the others.”
“Oookay,” I drew out, still lost.
“Just like a deck of cards, there’s a ranking system––a hierarchy. Naturally, Old Money is the house you want to be in, and then there’s your queen of diamond, king of hearts, and ace of spades.”
I began to understand somewhat. Something tickled the back of my mind, a memory of my father I couldn’t see clearly that was triggered by the name of his game.
“So what’s the objective?” I asked, now fully intrigued.
“Simple. Make the opposing house fold.”
I side-eyed him and shifted. It wasn’t some huge secret that New Money would be the weakest of the houses–which was precisely what my family was.
“And how do they go about this?”
“Seduction, mind-games, murder, manipulation,” he shrugged, taking the back of my hand and kissing it. “The queen of diamonds represents you. Beautiful and powerful on her own,” he continued. “Unsure of what she can do.”
“But still not the strongest in the deck, hierarchy, whatever,” I finished.
“See, you’ll be a natural in no time,” he said..
“A natural?” I questioned with more than a little amusement.
Instead of responding he cupped the back of my head and gave me a bruising kiss. When we separated, I was graced with a dimpled smirk before he covered me with his comforter and placed my head on his chest.
Chapter Ten
Ilooked at the family hog-tied––face down on their stomachs, and continued stroking my chin, not really seeing them. They were background noise. Like a housefly buzzing around my head. An annoyance if anything else.
My brother Elias lazily leaned against the wall watching a few of our men readying the oil drums in the center of the room.
It had been a long day. Exhaustion trickled around the fringes of my mind, but in this line of work, sleep was seldom. Still, I would rather have been in bed with the beautiful woman I’d left sleeping beside me instead of handling this bullshit.
Often, while one slept their enemies were awake doing everything in their power to work against them. That left no time for breaks or vacations. Being at the top didn’t mean I got to be lazy. My father had taught me that from the time I was twelve.
He’d only recently passed the torch down––so recent no one was fully aware of it yet. And I was going to make damn sure I shouldered the full weight of my inheritance by ensuring my family always remained untouchable.
I’d been preparing for this for years. I was getting to the point where my operations simultaneously ran like a well-maintained machine.
The men and few women I allowed to have a slice of the proverbial pie were fiercely loyal to not only the Remmington name–but to me.
It was with their unrevoked dedication that things were able to move forward at warp speed twenty-four seven. Nothing ever remained the same in Vice City.
There was always money to be spent, profit to be flipped, someone who needed to find their way into a gutter or bath of acid, and new connections to merge.
“I take it things went well with my future sis-in-law?” Elias joked, knowing exactly where my mind was.
“Things are going as they should.”
