Bad blood

Thalia

I cross the hallway to my bedroom under a cloud of black thoughts. Most days, I feel like I’m punching underwater, though what or whom I’m punching is usually up for debate.

Today, I have a face and a name.

Marco Bardi.

He’s a small-time mafiosi from Canal Street with an even smaller dick—better known as my latest battle, and the man on the cusp of my older sister’s ruin. He’s also blowing up my cell as I slam my bedroom door shut, his slimeball aura seeping into my life again.

“How much?” he demands as soon as the call co

“Forty-thousand.” I scoop out the wads of crumpled dollars from my purse and toss them onto the bed. The notes scatter, tainting the crisp, white sheets with a dirty green.

“Not enough,” he states bluntly.

My teeth slash bloody lines into my lower lip. When all of this is over, I’m giving his name, address, and social security number to Edier. After that, Marco Bardi will never see another sunset again.

“I need more time. Too many of the casinos in Pe

“Not possible. Try another state.”

Damn the assholes who revoked New York’s gambling laws five years ago.

“My father’s security is all over me! I can’t travel to Massachusetts—”

“There’s an obvious answer, bitch.” He chuckles, but it’s an unclean, hostile shock of a sound, like finding unwanted grit in my favorite clam chowder. “Are you going to say it, or should I?”

Shit.

“How are you going to get your fifty-thousand if I get my throat slit?” I say desperately.

“Don’t get cute with me, Thalia Santiago. All I need to do is to press that button and Pornhub gets super juicy.”

Panic fills my mouth. “Okay, wait!” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “Fine. Atlantic City, it is then. As long as I'm there and back in one evening, Bardi.”

There’s a long pause. Even Marco the super creep knows I’m playing fast and loose with my life by venturing into a rival cartel territory controlled by Valentin Carrera and his son.

Is he having second thoughts?

“Do you want your money, or not?” I say, now forcing this decision down his throat as much as I’m forcing it down mine. “I’m all out of options. Atlantic City is the gambling mecca of the East Coast.”

One chance to win all the money I need.

One night to save my sister’s reputation.

Everyone falls, and Bardi was the high cliff edge that Ella never saw coming.

It’s my fault. I made her join me in that bar last June where he bought her drinks all evening. I wouldn’t let up at her. I’d practically dragged her there in her nightgown.

He was my sister’s one moment of tasting reckless, a stupid drunken mistake, and now there’s footage of it—grainy images tainting something sweet and precious.

Ella doesn’t know about the tape, yet. Bardi came straight to me. If I can somehow raise the half a million he’s demanding, her big mistake never has to see the light of day. But, like he said, I’m fifty grand short and my deadline is one day away.

Sam and Edier would help me in a flash, but I’m too scared to ask them. One slip up… one loose word… That’s all it’ll take to smear the colors of a rainbow.

I know my sister. This kind of humiliation will disfigure her with cuts that will never, ever fade.

If I told dad, he’d shoot first and dissect the consequences later, and by then it would be too late—the footage would have bled its filth all over the internet, soiling the pages of her history forever. As for me, I don’t have that kind of money. Ella and I were never destined to be playthings maneuvered around a cartel power board, but our father snapped invisible collars around us just the same. We have a cool apartment, cars, drivers, but we’ll never have enough cash in the bank to lead us into trouble.

Or out of it…

When Bardi started blackmailing me, I had no choice but to lie, to distance myself from my family, to tumble headfirst into a world that I’m not even legal enough for in the eyes of the law.

Gambling.

Ella must have told Bardi I have the kind of memory that retains things at a single glance—book pages, images, the patterns and sequences of playing cards… Last summer in Monte Carlo, my father let me sit in on one of the private tables at Black Skies Casino. Within half an hour, I could predict what cards the dealer was going to turn.

Still, there’s a 101 for counting cards and not getting caught. I never get greedy, I start small, and I only play a six-deck game. I move from casino to casino and keep in the shadows of the big players, wearing shorter and shorter dresses as a camouflage and the bright white smile of youth and inexperience.

In four days, I’ve won four-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars.

“New Jersey it is, then,” Bardi agrees.

I sit down hard on the bed, crunching loose dollars, feeling like a cornered animal.

I must be insane to even consider this.

“Does Carrera’s influence extend to the casinos?”

“Not by choice, but I believe his son has designs.”

Shit.

“Do you know which ones?”

“No idea. Why don’t you pay the gambling commission a visit on your way in? If you drop to your knees and kiss their dicks, you might get your answer.”

Bastard. “Like I said, do you want your money, or not?”

“You’re fifty grand short, sugar. And you’ve one more day to get it for me.”

The next thing I hear are the moans and groans of a woman in the throes of the hardest fuck of her life.

It might be regular porn.

It might be Ella.

Irrespective, it’s a shotgun incentive.

“Meet me outside The Haven at eight p.m.,” I tell him, as soon as the sex gets muted. “If I’m doing this, you’re driving.”

“I’ll be there.”

“The second I hit fifty-thousand, I want that footage, Bardi.”

Instead of answering, the line goes dead, stranding me all alone in the wicked wasteland of no guarantees.

With a curse, I chuck my cell across the room and it hits the carpet with a muffled thud. Down the hallway, I can hear Ella chatting with one of her friends. Her laughter floats into my room, via the crack under the door.

I have to protect that sound.

I can’t let it fade away.

Tonight, it’s play or pay.