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بيت / Romance / When I Became the House’s Chip / Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

مؤلف: Grace
Dante's eyes locked on the clean black chip in my hand.

His chest rose and fell. His breathing was heavy.

"Cash?" he said. A cold laugh.

He reached out and caught a fistful of my hair.

Pain shot across my scalp. My head was forced back. I was looking straight into his eyes.

The scar at the corner of his eye was still there. Four stitches. He'd taken the bottle for me when we were both seventeen.

My gaze landed there for less than a second and moved away.

"Half a million to keep your side piece? Sienna. When did your appetite get this filthy?"

It wasn't a question.

What he'd seen in that stairwell two years ago and the report he'd held in his hand afterward—together, they'd already closed the case.

He dragged me by the hair through the casino, up to the private floor on the top level.

Sabrina lifted the hem of her dress and followed, a cold smile on her mouth.

The top floor was one wide hall. At its center stood a transparent, blast-proof tank, filled with water kept at freezing.

At the bottom of the tank, waterproofed chips covered the glass floor. Denominations from ten thousand up to five hundred thousand.

Dante stopped at the tank and let go. I hit the carpet in front of it.

He crossed to a leather sofa and sat. Didn't have anyone light his cigar.

Sabrina sat beside him and tipped her face up at the tank as if it were a piece of art.

"Dante, I heard there's three million in that tank."

She turned to look at me. A light smile.

"Sienna, you said you'd do anything. Hold your breath and go get it. Whatever you come up with is yours. Live or die, that's on you."

She turned her face to Dante. Softer now.

"A fun game. Isn't it?"

Dante didn't answer her.

He looked at me, knuckles braced on his knee. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

The hospital's final notice.

Emily has developed severe sepsis. Without a three-million-dollar surgical guarantee deposit by eight tomorrow morning, we will be forced to remove her breathing tube and discontinue treatment.

I stared at the message.

Three million.

I looked up at the tank.

His jacket was still around me. Still damp.

There'd been a winter once when the rain caught us at a crosswalk with no awning in reach. He'd pulled off his coat and held it over my head, and the rain had run off his hair onto his shoulders, soaking him. I told him to come under with me. He said if he came under he couldn't keep me dry.

I looked up at the man on the sofa.

I wasn't getting that back. I'd already lost him.

I couldn't lose Emily too.

I pushed myself up off the floor, climbed the metal ladder beside the tank to the top, and jumped in.

The cold hit hard enough that my whole body shook.

I kicked down fast. The water pressure crushed my eardrums. I opened my eyes and forced myself to keep them open against the sting, and I grabbed the high-denomination chips off the floor of the tank.

Ten thousand.

Fifty thousand.

Five hundred thousand.

I stuffed them inside my bra.

My calves started to cramp. Every kick was agony.

Outside the tank, Dante stood behind the blast-proof glass, eyes fixed on me underwater.

He watched my face turn blue. He watched blood start to leak from my nose and mouth under the pressure, watched it drift into pink threads in the water.

The fingers holding his cigar started to shake.

He stood up. Took one step forward. His fist was closed.

Sabrina walked up and wrapped a hand around his arm.

"Dante." She pressed close, voice low. "It was my game. The rule is whatever she brings up, she keeps. If you go in there and save her now, who's ever going to respect you again?"

"Besides—the paternity test is in black and white. That kid was never yours. What exactly are you heartbroken over?"

Dante didn't look at her.

He lifted her hand off his arm. Didn't speak. His jaw locked.

He forced himself back down onto the sofa.

He clenched the timer in his palm. The knuckles went white.

One-thirty.

One-fifty.

Underwater, my vision was going. My lungs had nothing left.

But I couldn't die.

Emily was waiting for me.

Outside the tank, Dante was on his feet again.

He didn't say anything. Just stood there, eyes on the tank.

Sabrina gave his sleeve a small tug. He yanked his arm away.

The timer cracked inside his fist.

In the instant before his other hand came up to strike the blast-proof glass—

I kicked off the bottom.

A hard break of water.

I came up gasping, dragged myself over the edge, and hit the carpet. Lay there on my side heaving up bloody ice water.

I forced myself onto my knees.

On my knees in front of him, I touched my forehead to the carpet three times.

"Thank you, Mr. Castellano. For my life."

I didn't wait for an answer.

Dragging a wet trail behind me, I ran for the elevator.
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  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 10

    A month later.Los Angeles. A small walk-up apartment.I was packing to go home.The porcelain urn with Emily's ashes sat in the middle of the table.Knock knock knock.At the door.The Castellano Group's legal team, in full suits, filling the hallway outside.Their senior counsel took off his glasses and delivered it."Ms. Moretti. Mr. Castellano, last night at the federal penitentiary in Las Vegas—attempted to drive a sharpened toothbrush handle into his own carotid."The lawyer paused. His voice was unsteady."A guard found him in time. They kept him alive. But his mind's gone. He's in the psychiatric lockdown wing now. When he's lucid, he spends the day weeping and beating his head into the wall. Day and night he hallucinates you and Emily. He screams, he sobs. He can't even manage to die. It's worse than death."My hand, folding a shirt, paused for less than half a second."Oh."I kept packing."Death really was too cheap for him. This sounds about right."The lawyer produced a no

  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 9

    Steel groaned as it twisted.The hydraulic press let out a long hiss of brakes.One second before the Porsche would have gone flat, it stopped.The cabin had closed up around her.Her arms, her legs, her spine—pinned between folded steel.Crack. Crack.Bones snapping inside the small space.A scream tore out of her.Dante had held back just enough. He'd missed every vital.She lost control of her body. Warm fluid and blood soaked through the seat.Boom.The gate of the scrapyard blew in.Searchlights swept up to the control deck and found him.Dozens of rifle lasers came to rest on his chest and forehead.A SWAT captain raised a bullhorn."Castellano! Hands up! You're surrounded!""Stand down! Surrender, now!"Medics ran in toward the wreck.They brought in cutters and started prying Sabrina out of the metal, blood all over her.He didn't resist.He reached over and killed the power to the control deck.He stood up.In his hand, the bank card—broken in half—and a crayon drawing Emily h

  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 8

    West Las Vegas.An abandoned auto-scrapping yard.Sabrina had tried to run. A suitcase of gold bars, a private jet to South America.Dante's men took her off the tarmac and drove her straight here.In the open dirt at the center of the yard.A white Porsche.Two of his men forced her into the driver's seat. A welder's torch fused the doors shut.A crane lifted the Porsche and set it under the jaws of a hydraulic car crusher.Dante was at the control deck on the second level.The wound in his chest was loosely bandaged. It was still bleeding through.In his other hand: my three-million bank card. He'd pulled it off Sabrina when they grabbed her.Inside the Porsche, she was pounding on the bulletproof glass. Her face was torn up.The car's speakers came on.Dante's voice came through them."Sabrina. You like playing with other people's lives.""Today it's your turn."He pushed the first lever.A heavy rumble.The steel plate came down onto the roof of the Porsche.The roof screamed and c

  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 7

    Three days later.A cemetery on the west edge of Las Vegas.A storm had opened up over the desert. Wind was driving the rain sideways.I was in black.Marco stood beside me, holding a large black umbrella over us.It was a funeral with no mourners.Only a priest, reading the service into the wind and the rain.Out beyond the cemetery gate, on the asphalt—Dante, mud to the bone.He lifted his head, and the first thing he saw was Marco holding the umbrella over me.The same man. At the hospital. Here. Always next to her.He looked for a long time.Then he lowered his head and kept crawling.He had no umbrella. He let the rain strip his face.From the gate.Three steps, and his forehead to the ground.Every time, his head hit the concrete hard.Blood and rain ran down his face.He came up on his knees, one length at a time, until he reached Emily's new stone.From inside his jacket he took out a notarized document."Sienna…"His voice was cracked open."This is the transfer of every asse

  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 6

    The ICU floor, top of the hospital.The doctors had forced a sedative into me.I was lying in the bed with my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.Dante was on his knees outside the window of my room.His face was painted in blood.He pressed his face against the glass, muttering."I was wrong, Sienna. I know I was wrong…""I shouldn't have stopped the treatment… it's fine, we have the money, we'll use cloning, Emily will come back, she'll come back…"At the other end of the corridor, Marco had changed out of the casino uniform.He was in a long black coat, walking toward them.In his hand, a yellowed manila envelope with a red classified seal on the flap.He stopped in front of Dante."Mr. Castellano. Stop the performance."His voice was even."For two years I've been keeping an eye on the hospital for her. When they pulled Emily's tube, she was so oxygen-starved she couldn't fight. They cut her off from her medication and she suffocated on that bed."Dante came up off the floor an

  • When I Became the House’s Chip   Chapter 5

    He stood frozen. Then he lunged for the phone on the floor.He read the notice.The lock screen was a small girl in an oxygen mask.The eyes and brow were stamped straight from his own face.His breathing stopped."No… that's not… no…"He shook his head and turned and roared at the bodyguards waiting down the corridor."Get a car! To the hospital! Fly in the best medical team in the country, right now—move!"I didn't look at him.I didn't look at Sabrina, whose face had gone the color of paper.I dragged my broken fingers along the floor and started down the stairs.Marco was at the far side of the fire door.He shrugged out of his long black coat and wrapped it around me.He said nothing. He picked me up in his arms and carried me fast toward the garage.Dante was at the other end of the corridor.He saw it.A man. Carrying me. Walking fast.In the way his mind worked, there was only one explanation for that.---County General. Basement level two.The corridor outside the morgue.Dan

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