Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“A patient of yours from St. Charles?” she asks.
I shake my head. “He didn’t recognize me from the hospital. He recognized me from Aces.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“It’s okay, babe. He recognized me as the Ace of Clubs from Tuesday evening.”
“But—”
I press a finger against her pretty lips. “I took care of it. He was… He was trying to take me behind the curtains at Aces. But obviously I refused his advances.”
She strokes her chin. “Really?”
I shrug. “I guess both sexes find me attractive.”
“I certainly do.” She tousles my hair.
“But anyway, turns out he has a wife and family. So when I figured that out, I told him if he didn’t want them finding out about his little extramarital exploration, he’d keep silent about seeing me at the hotel.”
“Good thinking.”
“I thought so. It led me to you nearly naked in this magnificent suite.”
She giggles. “Who was it? I always enjoy hearing the tea about the Aces patrons. So many of them act so high and mighty. I love hearing about the sticky situations they land themselves in.”
“Of course you do.” I brush a lock of hair off her forehead. “It was Mr. Rose.”
She sits up with a start, knocking me to the side of the bed. “Mr. Rose? As in Florian Rose?”
I frown. “I don’t know his first name.”
She looks around the room uneasily. “And he owns this hotel?”
“Yeah, he does. But babe, it’s okay. I fixed it—”
She raises a finger, the color completely drained from her face. “Harrison. We have to get out of here right now.”
19
BIANCA
“She offered you a shroom?” I ask.
Jack cocks his head. “Shroom?”
“It’s slang. For magic mushrooms. Psychedelics.”
“Oh, yes.” Jack scratches the side of his head. “She said that if I were going to be brought on as a King, I had to—how did she put it?—go on a trip with her. Take the mushroom and continue discussing the position.”
I narrow my eyes. “How exactly would taking a mind-altering substance help her determine whether you were the right fit for the position?”
“That’s what I asked her. She told me it was a test of my merit as a physical specimen, as well as my loyalty to Aces. She did say I could turn it down, but then I would not be looking at a promotion anymore. It seemed like a weird requirement, but it’s not like Rouge does things by the book anyway. I figured there was no harm, that if I could stop providing my physical services to the bloated male patrons of the club and make twice as much money, it would be a good trade-off.”
“So you took the shroom?”
He nods. “I started seeing these vivid images almost immediately. Rouge told me it was normal, that I would have visions. She apparently had genetically modified them, enhanced their effects.”
“What did you see?”
His eyelids tremble. “Lots of things. I was on a beach, but the ocean was made of a sticky red syrup. And then I was in a library, but the books kept turning into bats and flying around my head. The visions weren’t pleasant at all. Like the stuff you see when you have a bad dream. And I kept shifting between those visions and what I think was real.”
“You think?”
“It was hard to tell. Even when I was clearly back in Rouge’s office—or, rather, in the bedroom attached to her office—the things I saw, they weren’t quite real.” He swallows. “At least, I think they weren’t…”
I lean in. “How do you mean?”
“Well… When I first came back to reality, I realized I was in this big bed, the kind with curtains around it. And my shorts had been taken off.”
I drop my jaw. “You were naked?”
“Yes. And then…” His face twists. “Someone was fucking me.”
“Rouge?”
“No. She made it very clear we would never do anything physical. But someone else was…inside me.”
“Who?”
He bites his lip. “Mr. Rose.”
“The patron? Florian Rose?”
He nods slowly.
Mr. Rose normally sticks to the Clubs section, but I’ve seen him come to Hearts, usually to talk to Jack. He’s taken a special liking to him and has taken him behind the velvet curtains often.
He’s always seemed like a creep, but apparently Jack has made top dollar servicing him. He’s grinned and borne it because of the carrots Mr. Rose has dangled in front of his nose.
“But Rouge didn’t clarify that someone would be fucking you during your trip. And you couldn’t have possibly consented once you were under the influence.” I take his face in his hands. “That’s rape, Jack.”
Again he nods, his eyes wide. “Yes, it was. But that’s nothing compared to what I saw next.”
I blink. “How could anything possibly be worse than that?”
He draws in a slow breath. “The second time I came to, a second person lay in the bed next to me. A woman.”
“Rouge?”
“No. The Two of Hearts. The girl who was supposed to cover me on my shift.”