Page 17 of The Gambler

“What?” A hint of fear traveled up her spine when the implication of his words penetrated to her nugget. All that brainpower and she still sometimes read certain situations wrong.

“Unless you agree to the second part of our deal,” Damon said.

What deal?

The Damon dude sounded dead serious.

“She had nothing to do with this,” Luca argued. “We can just let her go. You won’t say a thing, will you, Tess?”

She immediately crossed her heart. “Won’t breathe a thing to a soul.”

Damon leaned against the wall. “Doesn’t exactly go with your radical honest thing, does it?”

“Um... I can see where you're going with this.”

I'm. So. Screwed.

“Shit...”

Judging by Luca’s face, he was getting there too. Huh. Guess he wasn’t as slow as she expected after all.

Damon looked bored. “We’ve already established that she’s a risk. There’s nothing stopping her from giving a statement on the dead body. The second she does, it might lead the investigation to us. And we can’t have our good name smudged like that.”

Tess barely kept in a snort. Good name? They were as good and innocent as Count Dracula near a pool of blood.

“It’s nothing personal, love,” Angel chimed in. “I like women of color.”

Damon sighed. “Not the right context, brother.”

Angel shrugged. “Black, white, or a pink-purple unicorn, I like ’em all.”

Finally, it had happened. She’d met someone even less politically incorrect than her pops.

“She could link us to this scene,” Damon continued. “Even if she didn't want to, one day, she could be forced to testify.”

Okay, so that was not good.

“Of course, there is a way to get out of this mess,” Angel said, studying his nails. The gleam in his eyes told her, whatever it was he was going to suggest, she wasn’t going to like it.

“Out of this mess sounds good,” she said nonetheless.

“She could testify against you, unless you find the real killer or... if you married her, of course.”

Luca shook his head. “That’s not even close to funny."

“It so isn’t,” she agreed.

“No joke. I never joke about holy matrimony,” Angel said. “The moment a man hands over his balls to one woman, and one woman only.”

“This is about that time in Vegas, isn’t it?” Luca sounded aggravated.

Angel scowled, which oddly made his angelic look even more appealing. “She was a loopy-eyed stripper who had fucking snakes as a pet. I woke up with one around my neck. You should’ve fucking stopped me from marrying her.”

“I tried.”

“You should’ve tried harder.”

“What’s the big deal? You got an annulment the next day.”

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