Page 12 of The Queen's Game (Ruthless Games 1)

TEN

REBECCA

Giancarlo had set mefree. All the tension that had built up in my body after five years of emptiness came screaming out of me. Some nights I’d gone hoarse from yelling out his name. I’d gone back to that club several times over the last two weeks.

And we hadn’t even had actual intercourse. Yet.

The games he played melted me in erotic agony and he taught me how to pleasure him in ways I never dreamed possible. Every night he brought me closer to feeling him inside me. He had one rule. I had to beg for it.

Queens don’t beg...

Instead, he empowered me so much I’d been trying to make him beg.

And now I felt like I was living two lives.

During the day, I’d made it my personal mission to find everything I could about Sunrise. And at night I’d forgotten my own name.

I convinced Nate to wait before coming to New York. And scheduled my father for holistic treatments that pushed off our annual meeting.

One afternoon, Gil and I had dug through the file archives in our storage vault while Vale guarded the door.

Box after box we’d checked until one marked Sunrise stopped my heart.

This shit was real. “There it is!”

“Get off that ladder already. You’re making me nervous.” Gil had pulled on the hem of my skirt.

I stepped down with his help, and he rushed to grab the box. “Vale, do not let anyone in here,” I said on a walkie-talkie.

“Copy.”

Inside the box, I’d found the original printed Sunrise presentation. Thumbing through it, the horrifying details behind the drug named MATOHN made me sick. Of all the cringeworthy details of Sunrise, what MATOHN stood for enraged me:

Men Are Tired Of Hearing No.

I needed those hours of mindless sex with Giancarlo to lose myself in a world where no such thing existed because Gian had me mind, body, and soul of my own free will.

There are so many fantasies we could share, he’d said like there was no rush. Like we had all the time in the world.

I didn’t contradict him, even though I did have a ticking clock. But that amazing gift he’d given me felt like a drug. The kind of men who’d buy MATOHN could take a lesson from Giancarlo. Get dressed up. Shave. Treat a woman like a queen and maybe she’ll fuck you because she wanted to. Lay on a bed face down and offer a wet quivering pussy and aching asshole for you to do all kinds of dirty things to.

God, oral sex and foreplay had never felt like what I had with Gian. With Sebastien, it was hot, but sweet, soaked in love and worship. The kind of sex young girls wanted. I was older now and without even knowing it, my tastes had changed because all I wanted was Giancarlo making me mindless. He was using me. But I was using him right back.

I barely slept these last two weeks. My body felt alive, yet my soul got crushed with every word I read about Sunrise, absorbing the most damning evidence I’d ever seen. In writing, no less! MATOHN was the ultimate date rape drug that not only paralyzed women and erased their memory, it left virtually no trace in the body, according to the several-hundred-page documentation created by a pharmaceutical company in the Philippines. What I thought had been an exotic vacation for my parents last year before Dad’s diagnosis, had actually been a clinical trials presentation. The idiots had printed out the entire findings. Made multiple copies. Bound them. Some kid at a Filipino print shop had this in their hands.

Seven copies were in that box in the vault. We smuggled them out one night after my father went home, but Gil manipulated the cameras anyway. Reading the minutes to the meeting in my townhouse later that night, I saw there were seven people there: my father, Richard Daria, Anthony Messina Sr., Patrick Byrne, the president of the pharma, and two doctors. I had to believe deep in my soul, my father was lucid enough to collect all the copies. They were in the vault for a reason.

“There’s a disc,” Gil had pointed out and slipped it into his laptop. “It’s all here.”

“Please let this be the only digital copy.”

There had to be tons of other documentation. But the bound presentations had the only damning information that counted.

“My father’s name is everywhere, Gil.” I cringed at each reference.

Dad came up with the idea of the drug, according to Julian. I really doubted that. My father wasn’t an ‘idea’ man. He made shit happen. No doubt some loser whispered the idea in his head. Or some junkie. Or some other sleaze. The rage I felt for my father had to be tamped down. He didn’t want me to know about this. How could he do this? Had he not read the details? While all the effects from the drug were written in black and white, did he and the others only discuss profits at that meeting?

Had they ignored the clinical trial results while jumping to the last section of the presentation to discuss all the money they’d make?

“Here we go.” At the very end of the presentation, I found the payment and delivery schedules. Behind that, was the business agreement for the shell company. But someone had listed Domenico Holdings, Messina Associates, Daria Inc., and The Byrne Group as security backers. “They all signed it.”

Right there, they were all implicated.

“Bank statements. They ended a few months back. Probably had been changed to electronic.” Only, where the fuck were those going? “Someone is managing all of this on the back end. Someone with outrageous computer skills.”

“Giancarlo,” Gil had whispered.

My secret lover. Shit.

“Maybe. But does he know what Sunrise really is?” After hours of humping and doing all kinds of things to each other in his suite, I felt closer to him, even if he never kissed me.

We’d shared short quips of conversation after the crazy orgasms. He’d walked me to my Town Car all while hinting he wanted more with me.

At the very least, I felt I could trust him. He would listen to me and agree this shit had to be shut down if I opened up to him.

I needed my past with Bastien to make him trust me to change the contracts out of our names, so no one went to jail before I killed the deal.

And Anthony, jeez, I wasn’t sure what I had that he wanted. Other than my father’s kingdom, and he wasn’t getting near it. With Bastien and Giancarlo on my side, it would be three against one. Anthony would have to join us.

In challenging our fathers.

Time was running out according to Julian, as the large shipment date sat off on the immediate horizon. I formulated a plan to secure my fate as queen. I needed Nate officially out of the picture. And for Dad to realize he had no option but to hand our family business over to me. Make me the CEO if he wanted to save his kingdom, his legacy.

I set up a safe house in the Maldives, and my father already had several fake IDs and passports for him and my mother. A private plane would take him and Mom there in a few days.

My father wouldn’t last two weeks in a prison cell between his cancer and his enemies. At least he’d spend his last six months with my mother. His escape was for her, not for him. The untraceable private plane would also allow them to fly with a suitcase filled with cash. Enough for them to still live like royalty.

They just didn’t know they were going yet...

*

THE DAY MY BROTHERarrived in our childhood home to challenge my father finally came around. We grew up in a ten-bedroom, twenty thousand square foot palatial estate on the Gold Coast of Long Island. Other meetings with Nate, the ones where my father paraded him around, took place in Dad’s penthouse office suite at our headquarters on Wall Street.

I’d heard my father threaten to put a guard on my mother and feed her lies about Nate to keep them apart as leverage to force Nate to cooperate. I wasn’t sure that would work, but until the Instagram blow-up, Nate seemed to have taken it seriously.

Stepping into Dad’s home office with dark paneling and his elegant carved mahogany desk, I was reminded of the giant he once was.

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