Page 46 of The Alpha's Gamble
I’d spent so many years showing—and allowing myself to feel—only the most surface of emotions: anger, entitlement, arrogance. Under the circumstances, I chose to temporarily trade those in for indifference, apathy, and resignation, but it was just as fake and just as likely to keep people from looking any deeper.
My family hadn’t looked any deeper. Neither had Declan. Clearly, no one wanted to.
And it worked. When I didn’t try to fight back, didn’t bother arguing or demanding answers, Declan didn’t go out of his way to humiliate or torment me aside from the rough, careless way he used me. He texted me at some point during the day to let me know when he wanted me available to be fucked, I awaited him obediently, and he fucked me. Sometimes he put me on my knees instead, or in addition to. I opened my mouth or spread my legs, and I moaned and cried out when he made me come, but I didn’t talk more than I absolutely had to.
I took the hundred a day he left me on the kitchen counter, and sometimes I played it at the tables and sometimes I didn’t. I very studiously didn’t pay any attention to who might be paying attention to me, even though I was certain I could feel eyes on the back of my neck.
Sleep came with a side dish of unpleasant dreams, but I spent a lot of time sleeping anyway, simply because at least I didn’t have to try not to think.
Because every time I let my brain turn itself on and start functioning, I ached with the desire to go find Declan, grab him by the collar, slam him into a wall, and shout in his face. To tell him what that dream he’d noticed had really been about. To spill all my family’s secrets in the hope that maybe he’d…pity me enough to do more than hate me.
Which he wouldn’t. I’d already figured that out, and thinking more about it was only torturing myself. I knew he’d use what I gave him to expose my family, ruin Brook’s attempts to keep the company profitable, and laugh at me as I begged him not to.
Yeah, no. So I slept a lot and numbed myself with cheap vodka and blackjack during the day.
That history-of-Vegas web page that might’ve held some of the story of the last ten years of Declan’s life stayed open in the background of my phone’s browser, but I didn’t even bother reading the rest of it.
I couldn’t care. If I did, I couldn’t function.
Three weeks went by like that, with nothing interrupting the monotony of getting fucked, hanging out in the casino, and sleeping.
Not that getting fucked was monotonous. I craved it every second I wasn’t getting it at this point, although I tried to convince myself it was only because everything else in my life had been so boring lately.
And eventually, inevitably, boredom won out over my determination to keep my distance and give Declan nothing at all that he didn’t take.
It hit me like a slap to the face one afternoon as I sat at a blackjack table, slowly winning, my daily hundred now a hundred and forty. Forty dollars. Forty dollars minus tips for drinks, five vodka tonics, a cigarette I’d bummed from a fellow player, and the dinging and whistling of the slot machines in the next room echoing in my ears—a real downside of supernatural senses, because I couldn’t escape the noise no matter where I went in the casino.
That was all I had to show for a whole day. Tinnitus, and a mild buzz that my werewolf metabolism would clear out within the hour.
I mean, I’d never accomplished much during the course of a day. I’d certainly never earned any money before, not even forty bucks, before I started playing to win with my tiny daily allowance.
But seriously. Fuck this. Indifference and apathy and a determination to show Declan he couldn’t get a reaction could only take you so far before you snapped. I colored up, tipped the dealer generously, and left the table, wandering without a purpose. Like I did everything these days.
Gods, I was so. Fucking. Bored.
And I missed Declan, like an itch under my skin.
Bored. I was bored, and that was all.
A group of retirees settled in at a blackjack table nearby, laughing and chattering. They weren’t bored. The dealers and the cocktail waitresses and the security staff and the pit bosses, they all had something to do. They were busy.Theyweren’t bored.
But I had nothing in the world to do but wait to get fucked.
Impatiently, if I was being honest.
Then again, patience had never been my strong suit. Instant gratification fit me much better.
On impulse, I flagged down a passing waitress who didn’t have any drinks on her tray and didn’t look particularly harried, and she stopped, offering me a genuine smile. That was new in the last two weeks. I’d been spending so much time down here tipping well and being otherwise unobtrusive that the staff had started to warm up to me. And with the way any community of people, including a casino, tended to gossip like wildfire, everyone knew by now that I was Declan’s…I couldn’t come up with a word for it that didn’t make me feel like shit. That I was Declan’s, full stop. They knew even if they hadn’t interacted with me personally yet.
Though they hadn’t really treated me any differently, no fear or extra care in the way they handled me. A reflection on the way I’d been behaving, or on the company culture Declan had instituted here? I wasn’t sure.
“Do you know where Dec—Mr. MacKenna has his office?” I asked, with a smile of my own that I knew from experience generally got people to do what I wanted. “He wanted me to drop by, but I guess he expected me to know where to go.”
Total lie, but if Declan got mad that I showed up without being invited, I’d take the hit. I hadn’t yet seen him be anything but fair and kind to the staff. She wouldn’t get in trouble if I made it clear to him I’d lied to her.
I’d expected her to demur, since handing out the location of the casino owner had to be a no-no, but instead, her smile only widened.
“Go through that door on the other side of the cashier, turn left to get to the service elevator…” I nodded my way through the directions, memorizing them as she went. “And have a great afternoon, Mr. Castelli,” she said warmly, and headed over to the retirees.
