Читать книгу Wicked Wives - Anna-Lou Weatherley - Страница 20

The tension inside the private poker longue at The Player was thick enough to cloud judgement.

‘I’m out,’ the cowboy said, flatly. ‘I fold.’ He slammed his glass down onto the table, causing the ice inside to crack in objection. Howard Stanley shook his head and quickly followed suit, abandoning his cards with reluctance as he looked over at Tom Black and the two remaining players, Willy Grey and the Japanese businessman who, flanked by two burly minders, looked as if he had more money than sense and would probably need a generous slice of both before the night was over.

‘How about you, Willy?’ Tom remarked, deadpan, his poker face an expressionless blank as he made eye contact with the old man opposite.

Willy returned his stare, his left eye twitching.

He eventually nodded after a long moment’s pause. ‘And I’ll raise you another million,’ he casually added, pushing a pile of neatly stacked burgundy chips across the table towards the dealer.

‘That’s three million in the pot,’ the dealer announced without emotion, accustomed to hearing such high numbers; it was all in a day’s work for him.

Willy Grey carefully peeled back the corners of his cards, only briefly breaking eye contact with Tom. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than screwing Tom Black to the wall tonight.

Candy rubbed the inside of Tom’s thigh from underneath the table. At his insistence she had worn a long bubblegum pink sequinned Cavalli dress with a plunging neckline that stopped at the navel, displaying her enhanced young breasts like a pair of perfectly round globes. It had been a calculated choice of attire, aimed at distracting his fellow players, and one that seemed to be working its magic this evening to great effect.

She took a tentative sip of her Dirty Martini cocktail, her sixth and counting, and played with the diamonds around her neck seductively.

‘We win big tonight baby and you get to keep the lot,’ Tom had promised her as he’d fastened the delicate clasp of the Graff pink and yellow diamond waterfall necklace around her slim neck earlier that evening. ‘I want you to dazzle ’em tonight,’ he had instructed. ‘Smile and flirt, make like you’re available …’

‘Jeez, I ain’t no hooker …’ she’d pouted.

‘It’s just a game, baby,’ he’d reassured her, kissing the back of her creamy neck, giving her goose bumps. ‘It’s all about distraction … if those guys start thinking about their dicks, it means they ain’t thinking about the game, you get me?’

Candy had responded with a conspiratorial giggle. Frankly, she’d be prepared to do anything if it meant keeping hold of all this awesome bling.

Tom looked down at his cards as the tension in the room escalated.

‘I gotta go pee,’ Candy stated a little too loudly, her caustic LA twang breaking the tension.

‘I dunno why you bring broads to the table, Tom,’ Willy gave him a wry smile, once Candy was out of earshot. ‘You know what they say about women and poker …’

Tom raised an eyebrow.

‘Call,’ he said in response, stacking his burgundy chips in a tall pile and carefully placing two blue gaming cheques on the top ‘… and I’ll raise you another million …’ he paused, ‘no, you know, what?’ he signalled to the dealer, ‘make it two.’

The room fell silent but for the sound of the oscillating fan churning above them. Tom’s raise had just taken the game into new territory.

‘That should just about cover the girl’s agency fees for tonight, eh Tom?’ the sarcasm dripped from Willy Grey’s voice, his left eye twitching manically.

Tom remained silent. True to his name, Willy Grey was always trying to get a rise out of people.

‘Your old man was the same, Tom,’ Willy surmised, as his left eye went into some kind of spasm. It was an affliction he’d had since his teenage years and it still drove him fucking nuts. ‘He was a good hustler, all flash suits and Cartier cufflinks, much like yourself, but it was the pussy that ruined him in the end.’ The corners of Grey’s thin little mouth turned outwards, like he was imparting the gospel of the Lord himself.

Tom didn’t much care for the man’s overfamiliarity. He may have done the casinos with his old man once upon a time, but frankly who in Vegas hadn’t?

‘Yeah, pussy and bourbon eh, what a way to go?’ Tom replied tightly as he held his gaze, hoping it might throw the miserable, twitching prick off kilter.

Candy returned from the restroom, refreshed from a little line of coke from the wrap Tom had given her earlier and immediately felt the palpable pressure in the room, her initial stride reduced to a tentative tiptoe.

‘Something to keep your energy levels up,’ he’d said earlier as he’d handed her the small wrap of powder. ‘But don’t go overboard eh?’ Tom hated to see women strung out on coke, and Candy, with her Barbie doll looks and high-pitched voice, was sailing dangerously close to the edge.

‘Gentlemen,’ the dealer cleared his throat, ‘your hands please.’

Tom instinctively squeezed Candy’s thigh, convinced it would bring him extra luck. If the cards were on his side tonight all his worries would be over.

Candy held her breath in anticipation, her heart pumping rapidly from adrenalin mixed with grade-A cocaine.

As the Japanese businessman turned over his cards Tom took a silent intake of breath.

‘A flush,’ the dealer said, clinically, ‘two cards; king of spades and ten of spades.’

Willy Grey’s eye was flicking like a faulty light bulb. This was in the bag, he thought smugly as he flipped his cards.

‘High full house,’ the dealer announced evenly as Grey continued to study Tom’s expression. Gotcha!

Tom sat back into the comfort of the padded Louis antique gold chair and linked his fingers together, his knuckles cracking as he stretched them. He wanted Grey to see that he was worried. He wanted him to walk blindly into a false sense of security.

‘Your hand, sir,’ the dealer prompted Tom.

Sighing, Tom looked over at the Japanese businessman and then at Grey; the two men, so utterly physically opposite from each other, were now wearing the same pensive expression and could’ve been mistaken for brothers.

‘Do the honours Candy, will you?’ Tom nodded at the pair of playing cards lying face down on the table.

‘Me?’ she squeaked.

‘Yeah you,’ Tom winked at her and so, shrugging, she did as she was told and turned the cards over.

There were gasps and claps in the room. The Cowboy whistled.

‘The five of spades and seven of spades – that’s a straight flush my friend – highest cards.’

Willy Grey felt all the air leave his body as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. He was fucked; royally, regally fucked. In that split second he realised his life was over; finished, finito. His new wife, the greediest of the lot so far, would leave him after this and his business would be dead in the water. He’d lost everything.

‘OH. MY. FUCKING. GAAAAD!’ Candy Wilson leapt into the air like a rocket had gone off underneath her and threw her slim arms and legs around Tom’s body, attaching herself to him like a limpet.

‘You did it, baby!’ her voice was high and tight with euphoria. ‘You just won over ten … million … dollars,’ she said the words slowly, over and over again, like a child learning to speak. Laughing, Tom twirled her to the ground before draining the dregs of his Courvoisier. He nodded at the Japanese man, who graciously returned the gesture. Grey, however, looked like he’d been dead for a week and someone had just dug him up.

‘Willy,’ Tom proffered his hand; he could feel the old man’s hatred coming off him in waves. The prick had always been a bad loser.

Tipping the dealer twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of chips, Tom turned to Candy, her face lit up like a picture as she played with the Graff diamonds around her neck; her new necklace.

‘So then,’ Tom said, buzzing with adrenaline, a smile as wide as the Thames, ‘looks like the first round is on me.’