Page 30 of Royal Shark
He lifts one shoulder in a careless shrug. “I don’t want Ivan to have my money anyway. He’s swinging his dick around, showing off with his mansion and his diamond cuff links.”
I lose it. “He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans! And you have a mansion too!”
He scowls. “I’ve seen him wear the diamond cuff links. And my town house is not a mansion. I need my money more than he does.”
I take a deep breath. “I can’t cover you. This is it. If you don’t pay, you can’t play in the game anymore.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Your boyfriend could take my place in the game.”
I reach for calm. “That doesn’t erase your debt. Listen, how about half? Can you cover half?”
He lifts his palms. “I’m afraid not. Please shut the door on your way out.”
“You’re out,” I say in a low, controlled voice. “I have a waiting list. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
“Business,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good; sometimes it’s bad.”
I swear he’s stiffing me as payback for turning him down. I turn on my heel and stride toward the door. My hand’s on the knob when he says, “Call me when your boyfriend leaves your bed cold again. Now that I’m not a player, you can be with me.”
I knew it! He’s mad I turned him down, and seeing Adrian here made it worse.
I shake my head and turn. “I will never be with you.”
“I still care for you, Sunny Sara.”
Blech.
I open the door and find Adrian and Jack standing just on the other side of it. Adrian’s eyes are knowing. He said this would happen, that I’d get stiffed one day and come up short. I always knew it was a risk to front their bets myself, but I always came out even the next day. Only this time I had an entourage with me and everything went south. I could’ve convinced Sergei if I didn’t have curious witnesses. It put him on edge.
I brush past Adrian and Jack and stride out the door. This sucks. Every time I get ahead, something pulls me right back to square one.
Adrian catches up to me on the sidewalk. “I’ll help cover him.”
“No! You’ve done enough.” I look down the street. “I’m walking home.”
“Come on. You knew this was a possibility. At some point a player was going to stiff you. So it happened.”
“It happened because you were there! And your guard. I could’ve gotten it out of him.”
He shakes his head. “You think flirting is going to get your players to cough up the money? That only goes so far. Especially after turning him down.”
I make a frustrated half scream, turn, and stride down the street.
Adrian keeps up with me. “Sara, you’re carrying more than half a mil in your purse, and you think you can just walk all the way back to your apartment by yourself with that?”
“Shh. Nobody knows what I have until you blab about it.”
“Silvia was worried about you, and now I am too.”
I halt. “Don’t you see? I havenothingto lose and everything to gain. My life before this sucked, okay? I worked two jobs, exhausted all the time, for crap pay. Maybe that’s something a prince doesn’t know about, living it up at the palace, but for people stuck here in the real world, that’s how it is. You work and work and work and you barely have enough to pay your bills. I was an office manager and a waitress. Two jobs! And I could barely survive. I brought Chloe food from my one comped meal a day at the diner because we could barely afford groceries. Can you picture that?”
His eyes are sympathetic. “It sounds tough.”
“Ya think? Or…you get creative, take a risk, and finally get somewhere. That’s where I was, and now you’re trying to drag me back down to the muck again.”
“Are you done?”
I blow out a breath. “Yeah, that about covers it.”
