The Bet

KLAUS

"Run that by me one more time. Because I must have misheard you over the phone."

Fresh off the street, I let the glass door click shut behind me, sealing us inside the soundproof quiet of the dungeon.

Roxy is standing in the center of the room. She is seven hundred miles away from Manhattan, where she was supposed to be waiting for my phone call.

I didn't even know she flew into Chicago tonight.

She rarely steps foot inside Velvet Tears in New York, let alone my branch out here.

Which means she slipped in through the private service elevator while I was waiting for Olivia out front and she stood hidden behind the velvet alcove curtain the whole time I had Olivia pinned to the glass.

Watching.

She doesn't turn around.

She stands motionless in front of the glowing two-way mirror, a crystal champagne flute dangling lazily from her manicured fingers.

"I said," Roxy murmurs, taking a slow sip of vintage Krug, "the little writer isn't going to leave him."

I cross the dark room and stop beside her at the glass, staring down at the pathetic display below.

Down in the pink velvet booth, the blonde stripper I put on Ben's tab is topless now, straddling his lap.

Ben’s hands are digging hard enough into her bare ass to leave bruises, his head thrown back against the cushions as she grinds down on him.

"She just watched her future fiancé bury his face in a stripper's tits," I say flatly. "Unless she’s brain-dead, she’ll pack her shit and block his number before midnight. Either way, my part is done. Favor completed. I'm going home."

Because that’s what rational human beings do.

They see the rot, they take the hit, and they walk away.

"She won't leave him." Roxy says.

She finally turns her back on the glass.

She’s wearing a floor-length, backless black silk gown that looks like liquid tar.

Her dark hair is slicked back tightly from her sharp cheekbones, her blood-red lips curved into a slow, venomous smile.

Roxy is the human embodiment of a bear trap and she knows exactly how to snap the jaws shut.

"Ben has spent two years conditioning her," she says, strolling slowly toward me. "He plays the patient, conservative gentleman. He makes her feel safe. A five-second peep show through a mirror isn't going to break two years of brainwashing. She can barely see his face clearly from up here. And guess what? She'll confront him tomorrow, he’ll cry and spin a masterful lie about being drugged or set up by her publisher, and she’ll swallow every word."

"Then she’s a fool who deserves him."

Roxy stops inches from my chest. She tilts her chin up, her dark, calculating eyes locking dead onto mine.

"I want you to sleep with her."

I stare down at her for three silent seconds.

Say what now?

"I want you to sleep with her, Klaus."

Is she out of her fucking mind?

Then again, this is Roxy. Sanity was never part of her vocabulary.

I let out a laugh, a harsh, humorless sound that scrapes straight up the back of my throat.

"You're out of your mind."

"I am dead serious."

"I don't do charity work, Roxy. And I sure as hell don't fuck Ben’s side pieces just to soothe your bruised ego."

I sidestep her, walking over to the low glass table where the crystal decanter is waiting.

"I told you to cut Ben loose two years ago," I say, picking up my glass. "Instead, you let him fly out to Chicago every week to play house while you sit in New York monitoring his life. You enjoy this sick, masochistic game too much."

"He swore to me he's only keeping her around for her books," Roxy snaps. "He says her contract with Apex expires in three months, and he's been playing the devoted boyfriend so she’ll sign her backlist and her new manuscript over to his publishing house. He told me she’s just an investment."

She crosses her arms tightly over her ribs, her red stiletto nails digging crescents into her own bare skin.

"Except it's a lie," she hisses. "There's something else keeping him hooked on her."

"Maybe he just likes fucking her," I drawl, pouring two fingers of bourbon into the crystal. "Plenty of men get off on the librarian-on-the-street, freak-in-the-sheets routine. And from what I just felt underneath that hideous wool coat, she’s hiding a body built for sin. It’s not exactly a mystery why he keeps driving back for more."

"She’s untouched, Klaus."

I freeze.

The crystal decanter hovers an inch above the rim of my glass.

Slowly, I turn my head and look at Roxy, waiting for the punchline.

Her face is deadpan.

"Bullshit," I say flatly.

"It's the truth. I had Ben’s phone cloned six months ago. I’ve read every pathetic text between them."

She clicks across the hardwood floor, stepping right back into my personal space.

"Olivia is a virgin, Klaus."

"Isn’t she twenty-nine?" I scoff, setting the decanter down with a heavy thud. "What is she doing, preserving herself for her thirties?"

In this day and age?

She’s either a religious fanatic, a pathological liar, or completely unhinged.

"She’s saving herself for her wedding night," Roxy says, bitter disgust dripping from every syllable. "And Ben gets off on it. He loves the power trip of having this pure, untainted little prize locked away in an apartment waiting for him while he screws his way around."

"There are no saints left in this world, Roxy. Especially not women who write five-hundred-page novels about blood and bondage."

"Which is exactly why you’re going to prove it."

Before I can step back, her hand slides up the center of my chest, her sharp fingernails dragging lightly over the black cotton of my shirt until she hooks her fingers into my open collar.

She tugs the fabric and steps flush against me, pressing the soft curve of her body into mine.

Tilting her head up, she forces me to breathe in her heady, narcotic perfume and the familiar heat radiating off her bare skin.

And right on cue, there’s the hook.

My body reacts on pure, animal instinct.

Blood rushes south, heavy and hot.

The arousal hits me fast and hard.

A dark, toxic, Pavlovian reflex that I fucking despise with every cell in my body.

It isn't tenderness. It isn't even real desire.

We’ve been locked in this sick, mutually destructive war since we were twenty years old.

Roxy is poison in a silk dress, and she knows the exact chemical formula to make my blood boil.

"Take his prize away from him, Klaus," she whispers.

Her breath ghosts hot against my jaw as her thumb traces my pulse, the exact same spot on my jaw that’s still throbbing from Olivia’s palm.

"Corrupt her. The second she isn't his little virgin anymore, the illusion shatters, and Ben will throw her out like trash."

I look down into her dark, manipulative eyes.

I should walk straight out that door. I should get on my jet, fly back to my own city, and let Roxy and Ben eat each other alive like the parasites they are.

"No," I say coldly.

I reach up, clamp my fingers around her slender wrist, and peel her hand off my shirt collar.

"Hire another hitman for your pathetic little love triangle. I'm done."

Roxy’s eyes narrow into slits. Rejection has always been gasoline on her temper.

She takes a single step back, lifting her chin.

"The Romanov Dagger."

My heart literally stops beating for a full second.

I drop her wrist. My jaw locks so tight my back molars ache.

"What did you just say?"

"The Romanov Dagger," she repeats, a wicked, triumphant smile spreading slowly across her painted mouth. "The one sitting inside my father's biometric vault. The one you’ve been offering obscene, eight-figure sums to acquire for the last four years."

It isn't just a dagger.

It is a sixteenth-century, blood-soaked masterpiece of Russian history. The crown jewel of my family’s stolen legacy.

I have been obsessed with getting it back into my private collection since the day her bastard father outbid my late grandfather at a black-market auction in Geneva.

"Your father will never sell it to me," I say, my voice dropping a octave.

"No, he won't," she purrs. "But he gave me the vault cipher for my birthday last month. The second I fly back to New York tomorrow, I can walk into his Fifth Avenue study and walk out with it in my handbag."

She’s offering me the Romanov Dagger.

In exchange for the little writer.

I stare at her, a dark, roaring tide of adrenaline rushing into my ears.

"You are insane."

"I’m motivated," she corrects.

Her eyes flash with vicious glee.

"Take Olivia to bed, Klaus. Steal the one thing Ben thinks only belongs to him. Do it, and I’ll have a private courier fly the dagger straight back here to your desk before the sheets even cool."

She is dead fucking serious.

A cold, ruthless thrill slices straight into my bloodstream.

In one stride, I close the distance between us and back her hard against the two-way mirror, right over the spot where Olivia’s trembling back was pressed ten minutes ago.

My hand shoots out and wraps firmly around Roxy’s bare throat, not tight enough to cut her air, just an iron reminder of who holds the leash in this room.

Roxy gasps, her red lips parting, her chest heaving against my shirt.

I crowd into her space, shoving my thigh hard between her legs, caging her against the glass.

She lets out a breathy whimper, a practiced, theatrical sound designed to stroke a man’s ego.

Funny.

Ten minutes ago, a five-foot-four writer in an ugly winter coat bit her own lip until it bled just so I wouldn't hear her make a sound.

God, Roxy and I are both rotted to the core.

Below us on the sofa, the oblivious golden boy continues to ruin his own life, but I don't even spare him a glance.

I lean down until my nose brushes Roxy’s.

"Listen to me very carefully, Roxy," I whisper, the threat vibrating straight out of my chest against the glass. "If I play your game, and you try to welch on this wager... I won't just take the dagger. I’ll tear your father's estate apart brick by fucking brick, and then I’ll bury you under the rubble."

Roxy doesn't flinch. She gets off on the danger.

Her pulse hammers erratically against my palm, her pupils blown wide as she arches her neck into my grip.

She leans up, her red lips grazing the corner of my jaw in a toxic, venomous promise.

"I always pay my debts, Klaus. Go claim my prize."

I let go of her throat like I’m dropping a snake.

Pushing off the glass, I step back, wipe her perfume out of my lungs, and turn my back on her without another word.

I yank the VIP door open, letting the bass of the club slam back into my skull.

The game didn't just change.

The hunt just started.