Page 25 of Game of Love
Heeding the warning to not make eye contact, I didn’t look at Armand who cast a seductive glance my way.Stupid fucktard. I didn’t spare even a second to look at him. He was truly despicable and every time I looked at him I felt like a fool for being with him in the first place. I didn’t know what I was thinking.
“Ready,” Pa roared and four men walked up to a table that was placed in the center with four chairs behind it.
There were four stacks of playing cards on the table. One stack for each guy.
I narrowed my eyes when I saw that. It was weird and I didn’t know what they were going to do.
Was it poker?
I wasn’t sure what they were going to do.
Four of Pa’s knights had been killed two weeks ago. Alex, Nicholai, Georgiou, and Lance. They were his foot soldiers who as far as I knew did most of the work on the streets and checked things out whenever there was a threat. All four were killed at the warehouse, gunned down. I wasn’t given much specifics other than that. It was sad when something like that happened. I had to say though that while some of them had worked for Pa for close to twenty years, I didn’t really know them. I knew them by sight but that was all. I called them the muscle.
Pa had eight knights in total. Four on the street , four always with him.
Armand, Frankie, Vinny, and Freddo were always around at the Marchesi because that was where we were the most. Those four were closer in the sense that they looked after the family and stood guard at the hotel and casino. They also travelled to the other sites and businesses.
They was a clear distinction but they were all still knights.
Armand may have been Pa’s most trusted, and a consigliore in the traditional sense, but to me he was the fucking joker.
What I was trying to figure out now was how a card game would initiate someone into the fold.
The men sat around the table and as Armand stood, another guy came from the corner carrying a tray with four cups that he set down in front of the men.
“Welcome to this very rare recruitment session,” Pa rumbled. He straightened up and looked at each of the men.
Each of them looked like something from a nightmare. No wonder Pa told me not to make eye contact. I doubted though, that any of these men would have dared to look at me directly.
Even if they didn’t know me, they saw I was important to Pa because I was sitting next to him.
I was watching whatever game this was unfold with curiosity, just staring ahead though. Not looking at anyone’s face in particular.
“Drink,” Pa instructed and the men took a cup each and drank.
I glanced at Pa when he shuffled and a wicked smile spread across his lips.
“It’s good to see you take instructions well. Now, now let the games begin,” Pa chanted. “There will be a series of games. If you survive you’re in. You have four minutes to solve the puzzles my trusted knight will provide.” Pa’s voice grew louder and Armand moved to the table and picked up the first deck of cards. “Your drink contained a potent concoction of viper’s venom. You will be dead within four minutes.”
I wasn’t sure who was more shocked - Me or the men.
Given that it was they who’d drunk the poison, anyone guessing would place their bets on them being the most shocked and not me. I would however beg to differ because I couldn’t believe my ears.
My father just gave those men poison to drink.Viper’s venom?
I winced but Pa grabbed my hand and gave me a crude hard stare, warning me without words to keep my silence. The stare told me to shut the hell up and if I didn’t he couldn’t guarantee what the hell would happen to me.
I looked away from him and gazed wide-eyed back to the men.
Armand had laid out the cards in some kind of sequence of three stacks each per guy.
I was a distance away but could still see the layout because the platform where we sat was raised. The first thing I noticed was that the cards weren’t ordinary playing cards at all. They looked more like tarot cards.
“The first to solve the puzzle will receive an antidote for the poison,” Pa continued. “The aim is guessing, the skill I’m looking for is attention to detail. It’s up to you how you gather the information required to solve the puzzle. The cards are face-down. I want you to find me three red queens.”
I didn’t know how the hell anybody was supposed to do that. I’d thought they were going to play poker.
When Armand looked back to Pa with that smug smile, I hated that I knew this was part of the game. I knew too that these men wouldn’t be able to guess anything.
