Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

SEVEN

Despite how much fun poker was, I’m drawn to the blackjack tables again. I don’t know what it is about the game—maybe because there’s still an element of chance, or because I’m not playing against another person. I’m just playing some nebulous “fate,” and I want to believe I can come out on top.

I’m almost there, right? I can stop running—I can stop gambling—if I’m safe and free?

The casino is much less crowded on a Monday, especially at lunch time. That frees up the blackjack tables so I really am playing alone.

My cards currently add up to fifteen. That’s pretty good odds of staying under twenty-one, I think, but I can’t remember which cards have already shown up, and despite Havoc’s repeated attempts to teach me complex gambling odds math, it hasn’t stuck.

Madeline winks at me. “Are you surrendering this time, Seven?”

Too bad I can’t cheat at blackjack the way Caleb had helped me cheat at poker.

“Nope,” I say, shaking my head. “The house doesn’t get to win this time. Hit me.”

She deals me another card, and I nearly shout in triumph as I see the six fate has delivered to me.

“Twenty-one!” I say, beaming at her.

She smiles back at me.

It seems genuine, and I’d like to believe it is, but we haven’t spoken about the night I panicked and fled her company. I’m sure Vortex has told her something to placate her, and she’s always friendly enough to where I still choose her tables to play at, but I don’t know.

The thoughts almost dim my mood, but I cling stubbornly to the elation of having won a game that bests me more often than not. I may not have been able to count the cards, but I’d still come out on top.

“Congratulations, Seven,” Madeline says, pushing the chips toward me.

I gather them up. In theory, I know I should quit while I’m ahead, but… The universe has really seemed to be on my side the past few days. Maybe I should push my luck just a little more. I might end up going bust, but I don’t have to bet all I’ve earned.

I can be responsible .

I’m about to tell her to deal me in again when something starts to nag at me. I can’t place what it is, exactly, but as the seconds tick by, I’m increasingly sure that someone is watching me.

It’s a strange sensation, something that goes beyond the ordinary and into the realm of something honed by instinct alone, but I trust my gut on this. Someone’s paying entirely too much attention to me, and I don’t have a good feeling about it.

I snatch up the chips from the table, shoving them into my pockets so forcefully that several scatter onto the floor.

“Seven?” Madeline asks, but I ignore her as I walk away from the blackjack table. I fumble for the phone in my pocket so I can call Havoc or Vortex, but before I can get it out, somebody grabs my wrist and drags me behind a pillar.

It’s Grant, his face still bruised from the beating Havoc had given him.

“Where do you think you’re going, Seven?” he asks, his voice dripping with fake cheer.

“I’m going…” I fumble for words that might make him leave me alone, but any attempts I make die in my throat as I see who’s standing beside him.

I’d recognize Raymond anywhere.

“Home,” Raymond says, his thin lips twisting into a saccharine smile. “You’re going home. That’s what you were going to say, right, little one?” One of his massive hands comes down on my shoulder and squeezes hard, but I know better than to make a sound or even let the panic show in my expression.

“Yeah,” I answer unsteadily. “Yeah. Home.” Tears well up in my eyes, but crying isn’t allowed either. I’d forgotten, with how much Caleb enjoys my tears and how Vortex and Havoc gently brush them away.

Grant laughs cruelly. “Much better behaved with Raymond here. I knew Caleb wasn’t handling you right.” He motions to one of the employee-only doors. “Here, there’s another exit this way.”

Raymond squeezes my shoulder again and pushes me to follow Grant. We go through the door, down a hallway, and past other closed doors. There are no other employees here. When I look around, I don’t see cameras either.

They won’t know where I went.

When we reach the exit, Raymond stops to pat my pockets. One hand pulls out my phone, while the other cups my cock and squeezes. “Who gave you one of these? You aren’t allowed electronics, little one.”

I fight the urge to whimper, desperation alone keeping my tears from falling even as my voice shakes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Raymond smiles at me again, even as his hand squeezes tighter. I bite my lip to avoid crying out, but it’s a near thing.

“That’s not a proper apology, little one,” he admonishes me. “But that’s all right. I’m not the one you need to be apologizing to. After all we’ve done for you, after how worried we’ve all been about you…” He shakes his head and releases my cock, only to wrap his arm around my waist.

It feels wrong.

When Vortex does it, it feels warm and comforting. When Havoc does it, I feel protected and safe. And when Caleb is the one to wrap an arm around me, well…

Does it even matter what I feel? It’s not like it’s ever going to happen again.

I start to shrink inside myself, desperate for a place to hide from my own thoughts as the bleak reality of the situation starts to set in.

The three of them were just a momentary reprieve in something much larger, and now? If I’m lucky, my body will just be dumped in the desert.

But I’ve never been lucky.

I lift my head enough to look at Grant. “Why?” I ask.

“I’ve had enough of everybody pushing me around,” Grant answers with a sneer. “And you didn’t really think I’d take that beating lying down, did you?”

“Caleb will find out,” I say hoarsely. “He’ll see that you approached me on the floor, then I’ll disappear, and he’ll want answers.”

It’s my last, desperate card.

That’s not how you negotiate , I can hear Caleb’s voice chiding, but damn it, I’m not him!

Grant bursts out laughing. “How do you think I even found out about Raymond over here? Caleb’s been in contact with your owners this whole time.”

My world slows down, the constant whirling of my thoughts coming to a halt as those words rip into this strange reality I’d started to build up for myself.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not…”

Raymond lets out a sound that might seem sympathetic if I didn’t know how fake it was. “Sorry, little one. We always did try to tell you that you can’t trust anyone but family, but you didn’t listen, did you?”

He tugs at my waist.

“We have a flight to catch, at any rate,” Raymond says, as though I’m not too stunned, too devastated, to even cry. He grips me even tighter and pushes me out the door into an alleyway.

I stumble along, looking at the ground and counting my steps. One, two, three.

How many until we’re at the airport?

It was twenty-one steps from one end of my room to the other. Seven steps to the door from my bed.

Seven, fourteen, twenty-one, and nothing lucky happens.

Nothing lucky ever happened, no matter how many times I counted the steps, no matter how often I’d tried the lock.

Except that day where the man I’d serviced had fallen asleep, and I’d found the wallet in his slacks.

We reach the main street, the same one I’d watched from the fifth floor lounge. It’s too early for bright lights, but the traffic goes by quickly. Raymond stops at the side of the road to hail a cab, just like I’d done well over a month ago.

Two months? I don’t remember how long I’ve been here.

A taxi stops for us. Raymond pushes me inside the car, and I scoot in because I don’t know what else to do.

“Is the kid okay?” the cab driver asks as Raymond gets in.

“Yeah, he’s fine. Just mad I wouldn’t let him spend all his money on whores,” Raymond answers.

The bitter irony isn’t lost on me.

The door on my side is unlocked, I realize. There’s traffic zipping by, but Raymond is talking to the driver and I might get hit but the door is unlocked.

I have nothing but a handful of casino chips. No phone, no money, no wallet, nothing. I don’t even have any dignity. Everything I’d had is gone , and I have nowhere to go, and?—

And fucking what?

I can disappear to this bleak, dark place inside of me where all of my dreams have gone to die, or I can make another last-ditch effort to free myself of all of this.

I don’t have time to be a little bitch about it.

I fling the door open, ignoring the taxi driver’s sound of alarm and Raymond’s curse as he makes a grab for me, and launch myself out onto the street.

A car almost hits me immediately, but I’d take that mercy over being marched back home any day.

My thoughts are pathetic and spiraling, screaming at me that I can’t trust anyone or anything. Caleb had been in league with them. He pretty much owns Vortex and Havoc, and?—

And fucking nothing.

There are enough tourists on the strip even at this point in the day that I can hide myself in plain sight if I’m careful, though being careful would be easier if I wasn’t on the edge of panic and desperation. People are giving me strange looks, even giving me space, and that’s going to get me caught. But if I run, I’ll only make myself more obvious.

I hear my name being shouted in the distance, and for a moment, it feels like I’m running in slow motion because hearing it now after so long of hiding from it is enough to threaten to break me.

But it doesn’t. It doesn’t, and it won’t, because I’m going to get through this in one piece.

Somehow.

I don’t know how I’m not crying.

I guess it doesn’t actually surprise me that Caleb was in on this from the start. Had he ever cared? Or was he just biding his time until someone could come down and fetch me? They’d probably just told him to use me as thanks for finding me. No wonder he’d been so willing to whore me out to Vortex and Havoc, too.

He’d known what I was all along.

All of them had.

I wonder if any of it had been real.

I finally slow my pace as the crowd thickens, and Raymond’s voice gets lost in the distance. My thoughts are drowned out by the chatter of everyone I’m walking beside. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing I can do except keep moving.

Someone with a needy cock has to be headed out of Calamity sooner or later—and as soon as I can find them, I’ll be gone too.

It’ll be like the Roi de Pique never existed.

It’ll be like my heart never got shattered.