Page 63 of Vicious Little Games

“Worse?” Cole asks.

“If the vomiting is uncontrollable, the abdominal pain intensifies, or she starts running a fever, those sorts of things.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“I’ll just give my report to Dante and see myself out,” Dr. Gates tells him.

Cole appears in the doorway a second later still in his untucked dress shirt and slacks. “So, you’re probably not going to die?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“I’ll come back in half an hour, once Mom and Dante go to bed,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Someone has to make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit tonight, remember? Would you prefer to have my mom bunk with you?”

I shake my head.

“Then I’ll be back in half an hour. Try not to suffocate on your barf before then.”

“I’ll try,” I mutter.

I’m curled up, nearly asleep since my nausea has passed when I hear my bedroom door open and close.

There’s some rustling as Cole undresses, then a dip from the other side of the mattress when he slides underneath the covers. He doesn’t get close enough to spoon me, but his palm reaches over to feel my forehead.

“I don’t have a fever,” I murmur. “And I haven’t choked on my vomit. Now either go to sleep or leave.”

He huffs out a sigh when he pulls his hand away, then settles into the mattress.

“Goodnight, Cassie.”

“Goodnight, Cole,” I reply, not bothering to chastise him for the name. I think it’s growing on me, which is a very bad idea.

20

Cole

“Today's challenge isn't going to be fun,” Dante tells us when he calls us to his office, along with Eli. It’s been a few days since Cass survived her poisoning, or whatever made her sick, and this is the first competition since the shooting range.

For half a second, I thought Cass might have been knocked up, by me or one of the guards. But the doctor said she wasn’t, and Cass was fine the rest of the night. The next morning, when I had eventually fallen asleep, Cass woke me up with a repetitive slap to my face to wake me up, sending me back to my room without any interest in morning sex.

“What are we going to be doing?” Cass asks her father impatiently with her hands braced on her hips. Even in black leggings and a blue tank she’s sexy as hell. She’s still skipping training with Saul, so I have no idea what she’s been up to the past few days. As far as I know she hasn’t been on any more dates.

As for myself, I’ve been hanging out at the sports bar with my guards, playing poker late into the night with the old men and flirting with Inessa. I haven’t asked Cass to tag along, figuring I would have more luck infiltrating without her. Not to mention that I don’t want to take a chance that someone might poison her again. Cass can think what she wants about why she got sick, but I would put my money on the Russians.

“A man who betrayed me, who betrayed Vanessa, putting both of our lives in danger, has finally been dragged back to Vegas,” Dante explains to us. “You're both going to interrogate him. Make him tell you all about himself, what he did, and who else he may have run his mouth to before my men caught up to him in LA. And once you get all the information you can get out of him while making him suffer for his sins against our family, you'll decide if he lives or dies and how to end him if you go that route.”

The way Dante talks about killing people so easily will take some getting used to. The fact that the man who is about to be in a world of hurt caused my mother pain means it’s a little easier to stomach. Still, I can’t help but ask, “What if one of us wants him to die, and the other thinks he should live?”

“His fate is ultimately up to Eli. He will be in charge of this competition. No guards will be joining you. Eli will oversee every aspect and choose the winner based on questions, technique, and your final decision. You should both know that he will thoroughly enjoy every second of torture.” Eyeing the sadist, Dante adds, “Eli has been warned that his dick better stay in his pants unless he wants me to saw it off and shove it down his throat.”

“Yes, sir,” the blond man, dressed like a GQ model in his gray suit, agrees with a mock salute.

“You’ll have until tomorrow at this time to complete this...assignment.”

On the elevator on the way down to the basement with Eli, he tells me and Cass, “I’ll save you both some time. The man hanging in the basement is Gavin Perkins. He’s a twenty-eight-year-old stripper from a ranch in Wyoming. He became Dante’s enemy when he set up Vanessa’s boyfriend Mitchell to sleep with some of Kozlov’s whores, thinking they were freebies, running up a debt he couldn’t pay. The debt was the reason the thugs beat up Vanessa when Mitchell of course couldn’t pay it back on time. He also humped Vanessa on the floor in front of everyone in the strip club when her ribs were still bruised from the beating. That’s when Dante intervened.”

---