Page 7 of Born into Blood

His dark eyes run over me, taking me in, but there’s nothing but mild curiosity in them. He’s not checking me out or hitting on me. It’s more like he’s trying to gauge how I’ll react to whatever he’s going to say next.

“We allow gambling up here, high-stakes gambling, and it’s by invitation only.”

He can tell I’m surprised, but when I don’t attempt to run away from what is most definitely an illegal operation going on up here, he gives me a slight nod of approval.

“Your job is to remain in the background and serve drinks when someone wants one. That’s it. These men are serious gamblers, and they don’t want distractions. Do you think you can handle being invisible?”

I can’t help but give a small smile. “I think I can handle that.”

He gives a small nod, accepting me at my word and walks beside me, guiding me towards the closed door.

“Any tips you earn are yours.”

Before he can open the door, I quickly ask, “Why did you pick me for this tonight?”

“I watch everyone in this club, and you’re a hard worker. You’re on time for every shift, you memorize drink orders easily, and you don’t ever fuck them up. That’s what we need up here. These men don’t want to stop their game to tell you what they want. They expect you to already know it, and as soon as they raise a hand, they want you to move your ass and get them what they want. Do well tonight, Lara, and we might keep you up here permanently.”

I nod and take a calming breath before he opens the door, ushering me into a room that’s way bigger than I was expecting. For some reason, I had an image of a dark room, men huddled around a small table, cigars hanging from the corners of their mouths with clouds of smoke above their heads. The room I step into is not at all that.

Once Dario shuts the door, the loud music from downstairs disappears, and all I can hear is soft classical music playing from hidden speakers and the clink of chips as the men place bets around a large, extravagant table. It’s shaped like a half-circle with the dealer in the center, but it’s big enough for the eight men gathered around it, each of them taking up space without it feeling crowded.

The lighting is low, but not too dark, just enough to create a calming ambiance for the men who are hyper-focused on the cards in their hands. Not a single one of them turns at the sound of Dario and me walking in. I quickly scan the table of men. They vary in age and appearance, probably mid-twenties to late sixties, and as different as they look, they all have one thing in common—money and power. These are men who have money to lose but are dead set on not being parted from it. I almost laugh at my earlier fear about having to strip. I’m guessing not even a naked woman shaking her ass and tits would get these guys to look away from the cards in their hands or the huge pile of chips at the center of the table.

Dario lightly nudges me and nods his head to the corner of the room. I glance over and see a woman standing behind a small bar. I’ve never seen her before, but she gives me a friendly smile when I walk over to join her. Motioning for me to step behind the bar, she keeps her hand out and shakes mine as soon as I’m close enough.

“I’m Gabby,” she whispers, leaning in closer so her voice won’t travel to the gambling table.

I keep my voice as low as hers. “I’m Lara.”

Judging by the nearly empty glasses I see, we don’t have much time, so she cuts to the chase and says, “You’re responsible for the four men on the right. The older guy with the godawful striped tie takes whiskey with exactly two ice cubes, an Old Fashioned for the man next to him with a mustache, and make sure you use a sugar cube and not syrup or you’ll never hear the end of it. The blond man next to him is having a Tom Collins, and the dark-haired guy who’s currently losing his ass off is having a dry martini with vodka, not gin.”

She looks over at me. “You got that?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, already repeating the orders over and over again in my head so I won’t forget, and as soon as Dry Martini raises his hand, I’m grabbing a clean glass and getting to work.

Even though I only have four customers, I feel more stressed than I ever did on the main floor, more so than even on crazy nights when all my tables were packed and the customers were loud and obnoxious and constantly messing up their own drink orders. None of that compares to the men at the table in front of me, all of them deadly serious and showing no signs of leaving, even though they’ve now been playing for well over three hours. The dealer never asks for a drink, and his focus never waivers from the players in front of him. Whiskey has a nervous habit of fingering one of his chips while he watches the other players, Old Fashioned likes to stroke his mustache, Tom Collins doesn’t fidget at all, just sits like a fucking statue, and Dry Martini is barely scraping by, and I’m truly surprised he’s even still in the game.

When Gabby leans over to whisper that each chip is worth fifty grand, I nearly choke on my own spit. There’s more money sitting at that table than I will ever see in my lifetime, and they’re tossing it around like it’s no big deal. Just one of those damn chips would be life-changing for my mom and me, but for them it’s just a minor annoyance when they lose one. It kind of makes me want to kick every single one of them in the balls.

The game lasts for six hours, and when one of the men that Gabby’s been serving, Mr. Straight Bourbon and Make it a Double, finally wins the enormous pot, I’m more than ready to call it a night. It’s not that the work has been as hectic as working on the main floor, but I feel the pressure more up here. Maybe it’s because of the wealth, or maybe it’s because I know Dario is watching my every move to make sure I don’t fuck anything up. These men are obviously clients they want to keep around. I’m guessing the club takes a percentage of the pot, so if someone is going to be asked to leave this room and never come back, it’s not going to be the men who just dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As they stand to leave, Gabby nudges me with her elbow, indicating that I should follow her. She stops next to Dario, so we’re lined up by the door as the men walk out. I follow Gabby’s lead, pasting a smile on my face as Old Fashioned makes his way over to us. I’m surprised when he slips us each a bill with a nod of his head before the other men file past and do the same.

I don’t want to be rude and count what they’re handing me in front of them, but as soon as they’re out the door, I look down at my hand and nearly faint. They’d each given me a hundred dollars. Eight hundred fucking dollars for six hours of work.

“Not bad, right?”

I look up at Gabby’s smiling face. “How much does the club take?”

She shakes her head and smiles even bigger. “Not a goddamn cent, and this,” she says, raising her own pile of hundreds, “is all under the table. Mr. Alessi still gives us a paycheck like usual, so all this is just extra.”

“How often do they have poker games up here?”

She grabs her purse from behind the bar and shrugs her shoulders. “Usually every Friday and Saturday night, but sometimes they’ll schedule a game during the week.”

I quickly do the math and realize I could be making over two thousand for three nights of work. How the hell is this position even open?

“What happened to the girl I filled in for?”

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