Page 9 of Under His Protection

What else is new? I cocked my head to the side. “You lost…?”

“You.”

A long moment passed between us. It hung heavily, potent with confusion on my part. He lost me? What did that mean? The best I could guess was that he was experiencing, finally, a moment of reckoning where he learned that I’d had it with him. That I was a teeny fraction of a millimeter from ending all my ties with him, my only family. Was he trying to acknowledge that our sibling bond was severed because of our last argument? That I was finally sick of his bullshit and done with him?

“What does that mean?” I wrung the dishrag in my hands, needing to twist something to let out some steam from the tension brewing within me.

“I lost you.” He cleared his throat again. “In… a bet.”

My eyes opened so wide that it hurt. Shock punched through me, sending my heart rate racing. I breathed quicker with shallow inhales that didn’t help. “You what?”

“I thought I could gamble on…” He gestured at me. “You.”

I opened and closed my mouth, stunned speechless.

“I’m sorry, Nina.”

“No.” Shock bled out, replaced with fury. “No. You didn’t.” I rushed past him, hurrying to run. To sprint. To flee. I didn’t want to even look at his face.

“Nina, wait.” He followed me out of the dining room, through the kitchen, and out to the area where the stairs led up the back of the building. “Nina!”

I whirled around to face him as he grabbed my wrist. “No!”

His fingers locked tight as he pulled me closer. Alcohol rose from his breath, and I scowled up at him. Drinking on my dime. Betting on my life. The irony killed me. I shook my head, straining to comprehend how this monster was my brother. My family.

“You can’t do that.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I screeched it, so bewildered with what he said that I lagged in a physical reaction to his pulling me up the stairs. “You’re sorry? You think you can just say you’re sorry and that’s it?”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” he retorted as I fought to break out of his grip. In the narrow stairwell, I lacked ample room to turn and run. People walked both up and down, causing too much traffic for me to slip away. Even if I had full faculty of mind at the moment, it would’ve been a challenge to break away from him and actually escape. As it was, I was so rooted in shock that everything flew by as a blur.

“This isn’t… This is… No. This kind of shit doesn’t happen in real life.” In movies, sure. Reality was different. He was ridiculous to think this would pan out as he imagined it would.

“I bet you, Nina. And I lost.” He grimaced as though the admission of losing hurt more than the audacity of gambling on me.

“You always lose, Ricky. All the fucking time. But this—” I held the door frame to stop him from pulling me into the second-floor landing. “No. People don’t gamble on humans. This isn’t going to fly.”

He yanked on my arm so hard that my shoulder twisted painfully. My brother was a lanky man, but he possessed some degree of strength over me. He forced me inside, and still locking his fingers around my wrist, he leaned closer to snarl at me.

“It will. This kind of shit does happen up here. It’s not a fucking casino, Nina. It’s private gambling. And the people in here do barter with people.”

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck no. Panic set in, and I shoved at his fingers biting into my arm, straining to pry them off me. “No. No, Ricky. This isn’t happening.”

“It already did happen! I lost the bet. And now you have to go with…” He glanced over his shoulder. “With them.”

I went still, locking up so tight that all the muscles in my body ached at once. “With them?” I narrowed my eyes, not even wanting to know. “With who?”

He broke eye contact again, and that only pushed me closer to throwing up. It had to be someone bad, someone really bad if he was this uneasy.

“With… the president.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“The president. Of the club.”

I stared at him, waiting for his words to click. “Of this gambling club?”

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