Page 109 of Candy & Her Saints

“Did Tom give this to you?” I ask.

Ghost sits up, clutching his fist with the tie around it close to his chest over my blanket, while he types. “It’s mine.”

“I know. No one’s going to take it away.”

“Alpha told the mayor that it’s to bind me as a punishment. It’s why I’m allowed to keep it. Alpha’s smart. Much smarter than the mayor. He can scheme as well as I can. People underestimate us. Alpha talked the mayor into allowing me these things because I need them to communicate. I hide the cards in my pocket, during inspections. He hates my brother, but I still grew up seeing him at my house.”

What scheming?

The Saints have secrets.

“What was your old pack called?” I cock my head.

Ghost looks like he should only have been in the year below me at school. There’s no way that I wouldn’t have noticed an Omega who’s as stunningly unique looking as him. I know that Lincoln would have been crushing on him.

Was he privately tutored?

Yet I have an uneasy feeling that something else is going on.

Ghost reaches for the cards. He slips them out of the pack, before shuffling them. He handles them like they’re an extension of his hands.

“Shit, you’re talented,” I breathe.

Ghost watches my reaction with a proud gleam in his eye.

When he gives a sly smile, I know that he’s working hard to impress me.

Then he cuts the pack and flicks out a card. It flies through the air, landing directly in my lap.

“Wow.” I clap my hands at his trick. “That was cool. Also, now I know why Link said never to play poker with you, little gambler. If you ever suggest strip poker, I’ll know that I’m being hustled.”

Ghost’s gorgeous laugh makes heat rush through me.

I stare down at the black ace of spades that’s facing me.

Ghost taps it with his pale finger.

“Wait, you were part of the Ace pack…?” My face drains of color. “They’re fucking notorious.”

And coming from an ex member of the Snake pack that says something.

The Ace pack are led by a brutal female Alpha, who must be Ghost’s mom, with their fingers in a lot of pies, some of which are political and some of which are criminal.

Then there are the Ace Casinos.

The casinos are the largest, glitziest, and most dangerous in the state.

Suddenly, everything clicks into place.

I gasp.

I haven’t heard of a young Omega belonging to the Ace pack. I should have done, right? Unless Ghost wasn’t fully accepted as part of his own pack.

Yet I have the vague memory of the triplets talking about the Ghost of Ace Casinos who haunts them.

I didn’t understand what it meant. I still don’t really. But I remember Gia being pissed that she couldn’t cheat in the casinos because of the ghost.

Did the Ace pack use their genius son to watch out for cheats and card counters?

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