Twenty-Six receipts of betrayal Novel novel Chapter 81

Chapter 3

man lying in a private hospital room.

spen, and I could hear hushed voices drifting in from the hallway.

Rothschild, she got pretty banged up this time. If she finds out about Ruby…..”

Dr. Kim, Vincent’s personal doc.

ent’s ice-cold voice cut him off mid-sentence.

sep your mouth shut. Just patch her up and stay out of it.”

arlett’s been in this game for years. She’s seen every dirty trick in the book and knows how to play them better

by’s different. She’s clean, innocent, so she wouldn’t stand a chance against Scarlett.”

paused, his voice dropping lower.

When she wakes up, if she starts shit, grab her brother. He’s all the family she’s got left. She won’t risk him.”

utched the bedsheets, biting down on my lip until I tasted blood.

ne night I helped him take down Crown Royal, he’d promised me.

Darlett, nobody in this city will ever lay a finger on you again. I promise.”

Some words, same protection-just for a different woman now.

The woman he used to treasure had become the dangerous threat he needed to guard against.

eps got closer, so I shut my eyes and faked just waking up.

you’re up.

We found the assholes who did this-that Thai crew whose hands we crushed for card marking last

cent dropped a folder on my bed.

Sign this settlement and they’ll back off the East District.”

The East District-the last piece of clean real estate we controlled. Waterfront, no casinos, no dirty money.

Twenty Six Receipts of Betrayal: My Silence Was the Countdown to His Eternal Regret

76.9%

Chapter 3

I remembered his promise to Ruby, “I’ll find us somewhere quiet and build you a nice resort.

So my blood was just the down payment on his sugar baby’s dream house.

My voice came out scratchy. “Vincent, when exactly did you cut this deal?”

Was it while watching me get dragged away? Or had he already decided to use my life as collateral?

His frowned-clearly pissed I had the balls to question him,

I managed a bitter smile and dropped it.

By now, the answer doesn’t even matter anymore.

Maybe to keep me calm, he camped out in my room for the next couple days, handling business from the chair beside my bed.

But his phone was glued to his hand. During lunch, he’d snap photos of his food and text them to someone, showing a gentle smile that I had never seen before.

Watching his profile, my mind drifted back eight years.

First time I met Vincent wasn’t at Crown Royal-it was in some shitty alley in Queens.

He’d gotten caught cheating and was about to get his arm hacked off by seven guys with machetes.

I’d just won big that night, so I jumped in and saved his ass, dragged him back to my apartment.

Later, when my dad back in New York got himself killed over gambling debts, the loan sharks came for me to square his account.

Had a needle full of heroin pressed to my neck when Vincent kicked down the door with his crew.

By then he’d taken over a small-time casino and and made me the invisible “Queen of Cards” behind the Golden Bird table.

I helped him to take down one casino after casino, bleed every competitor dry.

I knew my hands were stained with blood and filth that would never wash clean.

But even if the whole damn world thought I was dirty, he was supposed to be different.

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