Page 60 of Vicious Little Games

Cass

“Don’t tell my father I threw up,” I say as I wipe my mouth on a napkin one of the guards handed to me. Cole and I are standing on the sidewalk near the casino, waiting for the men to clean up the floorboard.

“What if you were poisoned?” Cole asks as he shakes off his ruined dress shoes.

“Then I’ll die.”

“Cassie…” He stares me down, army green eyes locked on mine as if trying to determine if I’m serious or not.

“If any of these guards risk their lives by ratting me out and Daddy asks you, just tell him that I drank too much,” I say, loud enough for the men to hear me.

“Fine,” he huffs as he takes a step closer to me. “But I’m going to keep an eye on you tonight.”

“I’m not fucking you,” I tell him, certain that I would throw up on him if we tried.

“You just barfed our entire dinner all over my shoes, Cassie. So don’t worry. I can promise you that vomit isn’t an aphrodisiac for me.”

“So, then we’ll what? Have a slumber party? Stay up all night watching movies and talking about boys?” I ask him.

“You can sleep. I’m just going to make sure you keep breathing and don’t suffocate on your vomit.”

“Sounds like it will be a blast,” I huff.

“Well? How did it go?” my father asks when Cole and I finally get back to the casino. He’s waiting in the first-floor foyer with Vanessa, both of them in pajamas, which is weird as fuck to see. “You’re back earlier than we expected.”

“Two old bastards don’t seem to like you very much,” Cole tells him. “And everyone wants to know why I can’t speak the ‘mother tongue.’ Mom, are you fluent in Russian?”

“I may have been once, but I’m probably a little rusty now,” Vanessa answers. “Those first few years, I had to work extremely hard to avoid letting my accent slip, until English came so naturally to me, I lost it. My nanny is the one who insisted on teaching me English, or I would’ve never known much of it. She was the only one in our entire household who spoke it.”

“Right, because it’s a way to talk shit in front of people without them knowing it,” Daddy explains. “My family did the same, speaking mainly in Italian until the second generation when my father was born in the US and went to private school in the states. My grandfather refused to learn English. My father only spoke Italian when he was pissed.” Waving a hand in the air, he asks, “What else did you learn tonight?”

“The older assholes were Lev and Ony,” Cole informs him. “They should be considered enemies until proven innocent.”

“Don’t forget about Inessa,” I add.

Cole’s eyes cut to me as he huffs, “She’s completely harmless.”

“Inessa Kozlov?” my father asks.

“She did mention taking over for a Kozlov,” I remark.

“Is she his daughter or something?” Cole asks, a little too interested in the conniving blonde bitch. She may look all sweet and innocent, but she had a thigh holster under her slutty black dress. I could tell by the way she stood so the holster wouldn’t rub her other thigh.

“No, she wasn’t his daughter. Inessa was Anton Kozlov’s second wife.”

“Wife?” Cole repeats. “But she’s so young.”

“Russians like their arranged marriages more so than the rest of us. She could’ve been married off to Kozlov as soon as she turned eighteen.”

“Or sixteen,” Vanessa adds. “It was frowned upon, but happened if the groom was high up in the chain of command and insistent.”

“Your father wouldn’t let me have you at sixteen,” Daddy says to Vanessa with his brows raised.

“Yuck,” I mumble as another flip of my stomach has me clutching my abdomen. Cole’s eyes follow the movement and I shake my head at him in warning.

“I’m not saying I would’ve married you then, I’m just saying it wasn’t on the table,” my dad explains to his wife. “Anyway, back to Inessa. She’s obviously an adult now, helping to run things at the sports bar. She could potentially be a good match for you, Cole.”

“What?” I exclaim, then have to swallow down a mouthful of vomit.

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