Jack: Games and Illusions
I take a moment to arrange myself in the back. I tuck my jaw in as far as I can, roll my shoulders forward, and bend my spine and knees to take down my height. I wore a looser shirt today to try to hide my chest. I comb my hair forward, letting it hang across my face.
Benjy laughs. “Sorry, boss. You look funny, though.”
“That, my young friend, is the point.”
“Aren’t you kind of overdoing it?”
Christie’s just stepped in and she answers for me. “It’s hard to overdo it when you’re dealing with dummies, kid. Go too subtle and they’ll miss the whole thing—Jack’s not doing Shakespeare here—although I'm sure you'd be grand, baby. He's leading Caleb into a trap; the bigger and more enticing the cheese looks, the better."
“Listen to the woman, Benjy.”
“I plan to.”
I go out to the window and Caleb stumbles over, already trashed. How the hell does a woman like that settle for a guy like this?
Caleb and his family have run out of money. He and Riley have been staying at one of my hotels, and he's been running up tabs all week: the room itself, extravagant food and alcohol, exotic car rentals, and smaller gambling debts. He already owes us thousands of dollars.
Caleb's dad, Hector, owns firm on Wall Street. It hasn't been a legitimate business since the early 2000s. About ten years ago, Hector made some bad decisions and lost a lot of money. Instead of facing up to his clients like a man and slowly fixing things, he started running a good ol’ Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. He's been paying old clients with new clients' money, but he can't bring in enough new clients to keep up with the demand, so things are starting to fall apart.
His firm, however, still has all its certifications and a veneer of respectability. That's why Daemon and I want it—we're always looking for respectable, or respectable-looking, businesses to funnel illegal funds through. You need to launder a lot of money when you do the amount of bad shit we do, and to us, Hector's firm looks like a giant laundromat.
But Hector is a proud, greedy idiot, and he’s not willing to give the firm up. That means it’s time to apply a little pressure—for example, by trapping his stupid son in gambling debts. Neither of them has the money to pay—not anymore—so we’ll hold onto Caleb until the deal is signed, and then everyone walks away.
“I just have a lot of stuff tied up in investments right now that I don’t want to take out,” Caleb lies. “But hey, I feel like gambling tonight.”
I make my eyes wide and nod at him in agreement. Some gambling houses—not casinos but the secret ones like the poker room—offer brief, very high-interest loans. You can take out hundreds of thousands for twenty-four hours. The trick is, you have to then pay it back immediately by winning. If you don't, you face exorbitant interest, or worse penalties, depending on how violent the owners of the debt are.
Caleb isn't taking out hundreds of thousands, though. He's borrowing five million dollars on a 24-hour loan. I plan on getting him to borrow even more as the game goes on. He's someone who's always been rich, and he doesn't seem to understand how the world works when you don't have a mountain of money at your back. Now he and daddy have lost that mountain of money. The last of Hector's fortune ran dry last week. The Montcrests are empty, and Caleb can't conceive of this. He can't fathom a world where money isn't provided to him, always at his fingertips. So in Caleb's idiot mind, he's going to take out a loan and use it to win back a fortune.
He signs the paperwork and makes his deal with the devil. I’m disgusted with him for dragging a girl like Riley into a situation like this. It doesn’t matter, I try to tell myself. Terrible things happen to beautiful women all the time. Terrible things happen to all kinds of people. It’s how the world works. If Riley Lark gets dragged into the grinder along with Caleb, it’s no great tragedy. It’s just another day.
I go to the back room and check in with all the guys. Darien’s just returned from a deal in L.A. and it’s good to see him again.
“It went well, boss.”
“I wasn’t worried.” I like Darien. He’s a professional and one of the smoothest men I’ve ever met. If you ever need to get out of a tight spot, you want Darien to be there with you.
Wyatt sits down on my left, then Benjy. Victor Plince nudges his enormous frame in on my right, his beady rat eyes darting around, looking for anything he can report against me to Daemon. Darien sits next to him, then Tom and Matt.
Caleb and Riley come in and we start the game. My ego isn’t so big that I’m above cheating at poker. I have a half dozen ways to win this game if Caleb beats me outright. But I don’t need them. He’s a mediocre player. All I need is for one of us to beat him and take that five million so he can’t repay his loan. It doesn’t matter who does it.
Caleb, of course, doesn’t realize that every other man at the table works for me. He thinks it’s everyone for himself and that he’s going to take us all.
The game’s good, actually—although a bit boring since we’re all going slow to keep stringing Caleb along and not spook him. But it could’ve been the most thrilling game in the world, and I would still be distracted.
I can't take my eyes off the girl.
She keeps glancing over at me, but she doesn’t seem to realize that I’m looking at her. She’s gorgeous, but there’s more than that; she fills me with a delight I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before, and I can’t even say why.
I can tell she doesn’t know what’s going on, but her eyes are bright and attentive. She’s trying to recognize patterns in the game and patterns in the room. Then her face will take on this cute, dreamy look as she drifts off into some fantasy. Lurid images keep forcing themselves into my head. I want to tear off everything on her body, throw her on the table, and claim her right here. I almost screw up a few times and win the game early.
It all goes smoothly, though, until Victor tries to stay on longer than he should and lays the gun on the table to buy in.
Only an idiot puts a loaded gun in front of a soon-to-be desperate man. I keep a more careful eye on Caleb and the gun and knock Victor off in the next round.
He’s unhappy about it. I’m pretty sick of having Victor around. He’s Daemon’s man, not mine. Daemon keeps him here to keep an eye on me. It’s not that Daemon doesn’t trust me. He just doesn’t trust anyone. He keeps his own men around all of his top guys. Victor thinks he’s clever and devious, which is great. I let him think that.
He’s not the worst man I could have on my back—he overestimates his abilities and is stupidly power hungry. He wants my position and feeds Daemon a constant stream of carefully picked truths and blatant lies to try to get it. I’m not worried about that, though. Daemon’s not stupid. He knows when someone’s trying to manipulate him. He also knows that I’m the only one who can run New York at this level.
I’m sick of Riley seeing me in disguise. I can see she’s trying to work out what’s going on but can’t. Let me show you who you’re dealing with.
I finish the game. I finish Caleb.
I can’t even take pleasure in the victory. It was too easy. I’m glad it’s done, though. I stand up and straighten out my body. I put my hair in place.
Riley blushes in shock in a very appealing way. There’s fear and awe in her gaze and I love it. Caleb already knows what he’s done, but I want to make it clear to the girl. I tell him his exact debt: eleven million dollars.
"Fuck!" Caleb yells—as if he expects one curse to undo everything and make him the rich, pampered, center of the world that he was. Daddy can’t fix this one, Caleb.
Riley keeps her gaze locked on me like I’m some kind of savage animal about to attack—a bear or panther waiting for her out in the wilderness. She swallows.
“Caleb?” she says.
“Fuck!” he says again, stupidly.
She’s flushed and sweaty and her heart must be hammering in her chest, but I realize with delight that she’s trying to think her way out of this.
“Caleb, tell them about your dad.”
Caleb has his face buried in his hands and isn’t paying attention to her.
“It’s okay—we can pay. Caleb’s dad is Hector Montcrest. He owns a firm on Wall Street. We don’t have much money, but if you give us a few days his dad should be able to pull together enough to pay—he’ll have to go into debt but he can do it.”
Clever. As far as Riley knows, Hector Montcrest should be able to pay Caleb’s debt many times over, but she’s trying to hide how wealthy he is so we don’t try to extort them for even more. I’m impressed.
“Daemon’ll say kill her and send his fingers to the family,” Victor says, jumping ahead.
The idiots I have to deal with. I’m worried if I go for the gun Caleb will spook and try to grab it. Now Victor is freaking him out. I hold up a hand to cut him off. Caleb goes wide-eyed and clutches his precious hands to his chest. Riley looks pale and terrified.
The worst part is that Victor’s right.
Riley has almost no value to us—she’s just a witness to something we don’t want witnessed. I look at her beautiful face and think about the quick mind behind it. Why the hell did that idiot Caleb bring her into this? What a damn waste. Beautiful, innocent women die every day. What difference does one more make? I search myself for pity but I don’t find any. There’s only regret at destroying something beautiful that could be mine. I turn my attention to Caleb.
“Do you know why Victor wants your fingers, Caleb? Because you’ve disrespected the Amontillados. You’ve been staying in one of our hotels all week and running up debts. And then you came here and took out a loan that you knew you couldn’t pay back if you lost. So much of business is about respect. You’re a businessman; you should know this. We can’t let people think you can disrespect us and get away with just paying back your debt. There has to be more. Do you understand?”
Caleb looks at Riley for the first time and tries to use what she said. “My…my dad can pay…” he blubbers.
“No, he can’t, Caleb. You’re lying to me again—more disrespect.”
“He can, he has resources!” Riley tries to assure me.
I enjoy breaking her fiancédown in front of her. I’m angry at him for being a fool and bringing her here, and angry at her for being enough of an idiot to put her trust in a man like Caleb. Let me show you how this world works. Let me show you what your Prince Charming really is.
“Do you know what a Ponzi scheme is, Riley?”
She goes pale. She knows enough. She works out what I'm saying immediately. I want to make sure she understands, though. I want to relish this.
“About ten years ago, Hector Montcrest made some bad investments. He lost a lot of his clients’ money. Did he come clean and try to work it back? No. He took on newer clients and used their money to pay the older clients instead of actually investing it. When those new clients wanted to see their returns? He took on even newer clients and used their money to pay. Pretty clever, right? But now that pyramid is crumbling. He can’t bring in enough new clients to pay the older clients—there are too many of them.”
I watch her process that. Why’s it so interesting just watching this girl think?
“It’s a bunch of money mumbo jumbo. The point is that Hector and his underlings lied to a lot of people and stole their investments, and now their firm is crumbling and they’re out of money. The house of cards is coming down. So no, Daddy can’t pay off Caleb’s debts.”
“We didn’t know,” Riley says.
I believe her. She didn’t know.
“Oh, but Caleb did. He knew the money was drying up, at least. That’s why he’s here. He wanted to win a new egg to start from before his lifestyle fell through.”
Riley’s eyes are filling with tears—betrayal, shock, and fear mix together and break her down. Good.
What a waste. What a beautiful, fascinating girl. Just take her for yourself, I think for a moment. But I push the thought aside. That's how people make mistakes. That's how men lose empires. Never let personal matters interfere with business. Riley would be a distraction and a weakness. Letting her in would open up a chance for betrayal.
I can have any girl I want. I could find one who looks close enough to her. Or I could hire one to make herself look exactly like her. I need to fuck someone if I’m getting distracted by some girl this easily. I’ve been spending too much time at work. Women have never been a problem for me, even with all the scars I carry now, physical and otherwise. They always seem grateful, even, for the night.
But the thought of another woman holds no interest. I bring up any woman I can think of—all of a sudden I feel nothing for them. I want one thing, one girl alone: Riley. And deep down, I realize there's something about Riley even beyond her perfect appearance. That makes it even more dangerous. I need to get rid of her.
I consider simply sending her away to be held in some other part of the Amontillado empire. No. It's too dangerous. I don't know what they would do to her. They might commit some crime even more terrible than I'm willing to allow. Or they might sell her—pass her onto some black market in Europe. She would be far away and not able to testify to anything she saw, but I would be passing her into hell. Girls didn't survive long there. What kind of mercy was that—letting her be sold into a terrible life followed by an early death? It would be just as decent to kill her now.
But there’s the other problem, too: I want her, badly. I’m not sure if I’ve ever wanted a girl this intensely this soon. The images and urges are hitting me like a storm, and the more helpless she becomes, the closer she slides to my grasp, the more intense it gets. I want to degrade her, humiliate her, and ravish her until she’s absolutely mine. You’re a sick, vile thing, I think. Then, Yeah, well the world’s full of beasts. I’m just not lying to myself.
And then Caleb finally snaps under the pressure and does the worst: he goes for the gun on the table.