When Ren moved away, he studied my face closely. He was smart enough to wonder at my play but not so unmanly that his eyes were still clear of desire. I licked my red lips and watched the way his eyes tracked the movement.
Alexander was between us in the next moment, looming over Ren with such a cold fury, I could feel it emanating off his back like dry ice.
He wrapped a hand around Ren’s throat and leaned into his face to whisper, “Kiss her again, I’ll remove your bullocks. I’ve done it before, and trust me, I rather have a knack for it.”
Ren rolled his eyes as he shoved at Xan’s hand. “It was your woman who kissed me, Davenport, not the other way around. And I hate to shatter your delicate sensibilities, but when I win this game, I’ll do much more than kiss her mouth in my hour alone with her.”
Dante growled lowly from across the table but didn’t move from his spot. I knew if he did, he wouldn’t be able to control his loose rein over the anger inside him.
I couldn’t see Alexander’s face as he stared down at Ren, but I was sure it was a frozen mask of contempt and not one blink gave away the fact that I’d slid a card into the back pocket of his suit pants. I was obscured from Ralston’s eyes by Xan’s big body and only Dante, seated to my left could have caught a glimmer of my movement.
Of course, he didn’t say anything, but when his eyes slid to mine, they were filled with our old rapport, a childlike excited that filled the black with merriment.
Finally, Alexander broke his standoff with Ren and moved back around the table to resume his seat. He did so stiffly, a muscle in the acute angle of his jaw jumping. It was easy to read that he was angry and frustrated, that maybe his hand couldn’t stand up to the assuredness Ren expressed over his ability to win.
I swallowed the smile that threatened to blossom across my mouth and tilted my head farther to the ground so my hair would obscure my face.
It was amazing how men could underestimate a pretty face, as if all a woman’s effort went into her good looks with nothing left for intelligence.
Ren would learn just as the Order would, that I was no pawn.
I was a queen.
Two minutes later, when Ren went all in on the hand, I couldn’t resist looking up at Alexander from across the table. Our eyes locked, resolved as a contract signed in blood. We were a team, a closed loop of energy.
No one would ever again tear us apart, and together, working like this, we were invincible.
Giddiness arched through my gut like a shooting star.
Alexander accepted Ren’s bet and pushed his chips into the center and flipped over his cards.
Two queens that matched with the cards on the river, meant he had a full house.
Ren smiled like a shark, all teeth and mean intent as he readjusted his cards, slyly trying to pull the hidden queen from his shirt sleeve.
Only, it wasn’t there.
Of course.
Because I had given it to Xan.
Ren’s frown flashed across his face before he could curtail it, and his eyes cut down to me.
I smiled at him beatifically.
He tensed just slightly as my possible duplicity sank in, and then he his jaw flexed as he tossed his cards onto the red felt.
A queen and a ten of hearts.
Without the queen laid out for Alexander, the queen he had meant to play, Ren only had a flush, which was trumped by Xan’s full house.
If he’d had the queen, he would have played the most powerful hand in the game; a royal flush.
Alexander’s smile sliced a red wound between his cheeks as mocking and evil as the Joker’s. “Well, Tarsitani, I believed some information is owed to me. Where and when is the Order holding its next auctions? Additionally, what do you know about the relationship between di Carlo and my father?”
Ren swallowed heavily, obviously attempting to speak through his anger at being thwarted in his plan. He opened his mouth to respond, and a crashing bang resounded through the underground room.
A moment later, the back door, one we hadn’t entered through, slammed open, and four masked men spilled through the gambling den dressed in head-to-toe black. They had automatic weapons in their hands, weapons that started to spit bullets before we could even make sense of the calamity.
I dived to the floor on instinct and started to army crawl around the table to get to Alexander and Dante. A cacophony of grunts, startled shouts, and gunfire ripped the air to shreds, and the poker table exploded into splinters over my head, raining sharply down over my skin.
I shouted as two hands pulled me roughly off the ground under my armpits and began to haul me toward the door.