Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) (17 page)

Jack’s hands went into his hair, and he gazed forward in awe.  “I can die today.  I can, literally, die today, happy.”

“I have no idea who you are right now.  I feel like I’m witnessing an exorcism.”

Jack stopped and faced her.  “Maybe our luck really is turning around.  What are the odds that we chose his boat,
Rudy Kalveeno’s
boat, out of all the boats on the marina?”

She shot him a look.

“Don’t tell me…” Jack’s face fell.  “You knew.  You
knew
it was his boat all along?”

She shrugged, fighting a smile.  “Back when we were neighbors; before his back went bad, Rudy used to take me out on the water every weekend.  Taught me how to sail.  It was kind of our thing.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that from the beginning?  Why did you pretend it was just some random boat?”

“I don’t know.  I guess I just like fucking with you.”

“But we got
arrested.”

“I knew Rudy wouldn’t press charges.  And a couple of hours in jail did you nothing but good.  You came out a little less buttoned up than you were going in.”  She elbowed him, wagging her eyebrows.  “And you got to meet
Rudy Kalveeno!”
She beamed, nudging him harder.  “Eh? 
Eh
?”

Eventually, after several nudges, the beaming smile Jack had been fighting split his face, once again, showing all of his teeth.  “Yeah, it was worth it.  It was so worth it.”

Nina chortled.

“And I ain’t that buttoned up, doll,” he said, giving her a suggestive look.  “Don’t let the handsome face fool you.”

“I see half a day in jail has done nothing to tarnish that herculean ego,” she said.  “So I guess that’s good news.”

He cast a smile at her once they finally made it to the bar, leaning against it next to each other.  After they denied the middle-aged bartender’s drink offer, Nina squinted at the various TV screens above the bar, shaking her head.

Jack didn’t move his eyes from her.

“I can’t believe this strike is still going,” she cried.  “If it continues for another day, our entire country is going to collapse—” When she looked at him and saw the intense stare he was giving her, she tripped over her words.  “What are you looking at?!” She beamed, eyes wide.

“You’re beautiful; you know that?” Jack asked, unmoved by her shock.  “You walk into a room, and everything
stops
.  The most incredible part is you don’t even realize it.  You don’t even see that every man in this building has completely stopped what he’s doing, just to take a second look at you.”

“It’s the hair,” she said.

“No, doll.  It’s you.”

“It’s the
hair.
  Never underestimate people’s fascination with big, afro textured hair.  It’s taking every ounce of self-control they have not to reach out and touch it.”

“Do people really do that?” Jack cringed.

“All the time.  Sometimes I wonder if I should set up a booth on the corner of a busy intersection, and just sell my hair.  One dollar per stroke. I would make a killing.  I’d be a millionaire by thirty.”

Jack’s face lit up.  “It can’t be that bad.”

“It is that bad.  Make sure to get the memo to all of your white friends and family members, okay?  Stop touching people you don’t know.  It’s weird as hell.”

“Please understand that as long as you look like this…” Jack motioned to her, up and down.  “Every man you interact with will be entrenched in a
constant
mental battle not to touch you.  It’s a brutal battle, doll, and it has nothing to do with your hair.”

“So you don’t want to touch my hair?” she asked.

Jack’s eyes instantly went to her curls, and even though it seemed like he wanted to refute, he couldn’t make himself do it.

Nina leaned on the bar, facing him and searching his eyes.  “So go ahead then,” she whispered, taking in his parted lips.

Jack faced her too, leaning one elbow on the bar.  He studied her face for a while; matching every shy smile she gave him with one of his own.  Eventually, with a deep breath, he reached up and took the bottom of one of her curls between his fingers.  He curled the tip of it around his pinky and pulled.  Though her curls appeared to stop at her collarbones, as he pulled, he was enraptured to see it stretching past her ribcage, her breasts, all the way down to her belly button.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.  Just when he was sure the curl would stop stretching, it seemed to go another inch, and then another.  “How long is your goddamn hair?”

“It’s pretty long.”

“Do you ever—”

“Straighten it?  No.”

He released the curl and watched in awe as it
boinged
right back up.  It lingered on her breastbone for a moment before it continued winding up, inch by inch, until it rejoined the rest of her curls at her collarbones.

He watched it happen, and then his eyes rose to hers.  “You’re just beautiful.”

“So, you’ve pulled my curls.  I’m sure you’ve been dying to do it since the moment we met.  Are you satisfied now?”

Jack looked at her hair, and then back to her eyes before answering, “No.”

Nina swallowed and had to force her eyes away when the expression in his became too intense to bear.  She looked through the casino with determined eyes.  This time, she didn’t miss the curious eyes or come-hither smiles of all the men around her, but there was only one smile in that room that meant something to her.

And, at the moment, she was too fearful to look at him.

When she felt his fingers in her hair again, taking a different curl this time and stretching it out as far as it would go, she bit her bottom lip, fighting a smile.

“I’ve got to figure out a way to make my money back so we can go home.”  She shot him a look just as he released her curl from his finger, amused at the amazement in his eyes when, sure enough, it shot right back up.  “I spent most of it bailing your ass out.  Thank God, Rudy refused to let me pay him back for bailing
me
out, or I wouldn’t have a dollar to my name.  If I don’t have the cash to pay my lawyer once I get home, then there’s no point in me going home at all.”

“I’ll give you the money.”

Her eyes widened.  “I would never take that kind of money from you.  That would be like accepting a Rolex from Al Capone.”

“Or accepting a loan from a friend,” Jack said, shrugging.

“So you and I are friends now?”

“I hope so,” he laughed.

“I can’t take your loan, Jack.”

“Okay.  What if I just gave it to you instead?”

“No.”

“What if I agreed to represent you myself?”

“Are you a divorce attorney?”

“The bulk of my experience is in criminal defense, but I could still help you.”

“You can’t help me.”  She sighed.  “This divorce is going to decide my entire future, and I need a seasoned divorce attorney.  The guy I have waiting for me in New York is the best in the city.  He has a flawless track record representing women in divorce cases, and I
need
to win this case, Jack.  He is a winner.  Unfortunately, he knows it, and charges accordingly.”

“What’s his retainer?”

“Ten grand.  That’s why I’ve been carrying that money.  I was going to pay him in cash the moment we landed in New York.”

“Is divorcing your husband really worth that kind of money?”

“I need to win this.”

“Why do you
need
to win?” Jack asked.  “Are you truly done with your husband?  Or is this just a way to drag all of this out because of anger and resentment?”

“He is my husband on paper, but not in my heart.  I couldn’t give a shit about him.  I’m not angry, or resentful.  This is about money.  A few months ago, he was two seconds from signing the divorce papers and ending this marriage for good.  Then his lawyer found out about some money I’ve been holding in a secret account.  Now Anthony is after half.”

“Why don’t you just give him half, then?”

“Because it’s
my
money,” Nina said, shooting him a look.  “It’s a lot of money, and I need every last dime, which is why I’m willing to pay ten grand for a lawyer who can help me protect it.  It’s a small price to pay compared to the amount I’d lose if Anthony took half.”

“Money is fluid, Nina.  It comes and goes like water.  The moment you make everything about money, you’ve already lost.”

“Spoken like a true rich boy.  It’s easy to diminish the value of money when you’re drowning in it.”

Jack broke their gaze, looking up at the TV screens where the strike was being covered on almost every channel.  “What about Rudy?  Didn’t I hear him offer you some money at lunch?”

“I can’t take another dime of his money.  He’s done… so much for me.  Plus, I know he’s having financial troubles of his own.  He’s too proud to admit it.”

“You’re too proud for your own good.  You won’t take my money.  You won’t take Rudy’s money.  You’ve got…” He hesitated.  “How long until the trial?”

“Couple weeks—”

“You got a
couple of weeks
to make ten thousand dollars.”

“Nine thousand,” she corrected.  “I only had to pay ten percent to bail you out, so I have a thousand bucks left.  All I have to do is figure out how to double my money five times over….” When she spotted something on the other side of the casino, her words slowed to a stop, and her eyes flashed with delight.

Jack followed her gaze, caught sight of what she was looking at, and then shot her a horrified look.

“No,” he said, the smile on his face vanishing.  “Nina?”  He waited for her eyes to meet his. 
“No.”

Moments later, with Jack on her heels, Nina approached the cashier cage that stretched across the entire north side of the casino.  She met eyes with the stone-faced Chinese woman behind the bulletproof glass for only a moment before sliding her thousand dollar wad under the glass.

“Red,” Nina demanded; voice stoic.

Jack came up next to Nina a second too late, clawing for the money just as the cashier swept it out of reach.

On the other side of the glass, the cashier licked the back of her thumb and had the money counted in less than thirty seconds before sliding a red casino chip through the glass.

Bright Crayola red with a stark white $1000 inscribed in the middle, it was a chip most dealers saw only once in a blue moon—and from people a lot more financially stable than the woman who was taking it in a trembling fist.

Nina thanked the cashier and turned back to the casino, red chip clutched tight in her hand.

Jack followed, trying to take her arm, but she shrugged away.  She didn’t appear angry, or sad, or even manic, but eerily calm.

“We can do something about this in a real way once we make it home,” Jack said, following her past the poker room, the penny slots and even the blackjack tables.  When he saw her slowing her pace alongside the roulette table in the farthest corner, his heart sped up. 

Nina stopped at the table and met eyes with the crater-faced, redheaded dealer.  Returning his smile, she slammed her red chip down on the table.

The dealer’s mouth dropped.  He clapped it shut a second later.

“Black 15,” Nina said.

“35 to 1,” the dealer informed, swapping out her red chip for a baby blue roulette chip of the same value, centering it on the black 15 column.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Nina,” Jack begged.  “This isn’t even a game of strategy.  This is entirely random.  If you’re going to spend your last dime, at least do a quad bet.  Are you really prepared to lose your last dime on one number?”

Nina didn’t even look at him, nodding her head in silent response to the concern that was also painted across the young dealer’s face.

“No more bets,” the dealer said.  “No more bets.”

“I’m not letting you do this.” Jack leaned over the table to swipe up Nina’s chip.

“Please don’t touch the table.” The dealers voice grew deeper, booming with a new authority, an authority that froze Jack’s hand right over the chip.  He contemplated taking it anyway, and making a run for it.  Nina would thank him later.

“Please don’t touch the table, sir.”  The dealer held Jack’s eyes.  He must have sensed the thoughts going through Jack’s head because his eyebrows lifted.

Jack searched the kid’s eyes, and then his gaze flew to the exit to his right, on the farthest end of the casino.  A burly black security guard was ready at those doors.  Jack’s eyes went to the doors on the opposite side. 
Two
guards were collected there. His gaze flew skyward, where hundreds of black globes littered the ceiling.  Whoever was watching from that eye in the sky had
not
missed the red chip Nina had just dropped on the table, and Jack had an inkling they hadn’t wasted a single moment getting a guard at every exit.  Just for her.

Her.  His eyes went back to Nina, and he removed his hand from where it was lingering over the chip, setting it on the small of her back.

“15, for your birthday,” she whispered, looking at him for the first time.  “And black… like your hair.”  She laughed, but it quickly died down when he didn’t join her.  “Or maybe your heart?”

Jack cracked a tiny smile, holding her tight around the waist as the dealer stood tall.

“No more bets.”  The dealer plucked the white ball that would seal Nina’s fate between his fingers.  He cradled his hand on the roulette wheel, and his dull blue eyes found Jack and Nina as he sent the numbered wheel into a clockwise spin, hurtling the white ball counterclockwise.

The ball blazed into a spin, so fast that it almost disappeared against the black edge of the wheel.  It screamed against the wood, making a nearly unbearable sound that seemed to infiltrate both Nina and Jack at the same time.  They found each other’s hands at the edge of the table, gazes moving along with the ball, their hearts racing as it began to slow down.

“Black 15,” Nina whispered.  “The last four days have been setting us up for this moment, Jack.  Setting us up for the good.”

Jack’s fingers intertwined with hers.

Her eyes fluttered closed.  “Black 15.”

Jack’s eyes followed the ball as it slowed, more and more, second by agonizing second.  Just when he was sure it was going to stop rolling and dip into a number that
wasn’t
black 15, it bamboozled him and kept right on spinning.

He tightened his fingers around Nina’s.

“Black 15.” He didn’t even know the words had come out of his mouth until Nina’s gaze shot to him.

He turned and held her eyes, the ball still making that awful sound as it slowed, and slowed, and slowed some more.  Was it ever going to stop?

Jack realized he didn’t care as his eyes searched Nina’s.  He didn’t care about anything but erasing the worry from her eyes.  Even if it meant calling his friends and family right that second and having them wire him some money.  He would do it for her.

He leaned down and took her bottom lip between his, moaning involuntarily.  She sighed and pushed in, returning his gentle kiss.  Their fingers clenched, so tight they could feel each other’s heartbeats through their palms, and the ball finally came to a halt, bouncing to an audible stop at its fated destination.

At the sound, Jack and Nina broke apart, eyes flying back to the table.

“Winner,” the dealer said.  “Black 15, winner.”

Their eyes widened, mouths dropped, and as the dealer set to work matching Nina’s red chip thirty-five times over, both she and Jack broke into screams, their celebration so loud that it stole the attention of every eye in the casino.  Even dealers from other games jolted at the unexpected shrieks, pausing their own games to gaze over curiously as Nina leaped into Jack’s arms.

Jack caught her with ease, his screams turning to laughter when she locked her arms around his neck, hiding her own hollering, tear-filled face in his neck.

“Holy shit!” Jack’s wide eyes went back to the dealer, who was now smiling at them with a shake of his head.  “You just won
thirty-five thousand—
”

“
Thousand dollars
!” Nina pulled back and clapped her hands on his shoulders, shaking him.  “Thirty-five thousand dollars, Jack!  Who’s the karmic curse now, huh? 
Huh?”

“Holy shit, Nina, you’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”

Their lips met, bringing them both into a laughing embrace as the dealer slid her winnings across the table.  They didn’t even acknowledge it; too busy deepening their kiss with gentle tilts of their heads.

Nina locked her arms around him, and when their lips separated, smacking gently, she let her eyes flutter shut, pressing her forehead to his.

“I guess you’re my good luck charm.” She pushed her fingers into his hair.

“I don’t want to go home,” Jack whispered.

She shook her head.

“We have weeks until your trial, right?”  His voice trembled. And air traffic control is on strike, anyway.”

She opened her eyes and searched his.

“Let’s go out.”  He exhaled.  “Tonight.  On a date.”

She smiled, shaking his shoulders again.  “Was that so hard?  If only you’d asked me out the very first second you wanted to, we’d have saved ourselves a lot of pent-up frustration.”

He ran the tip of his nose along hers.  “And when exactly do you think I first wanted to ask you out?”

“You wanted me from the second you saw me.  Just like I wanted you from the second I saw you.”

“So, yes?”

“Yeah.  Let’s go on a date.”

His face collapsed into a smile.

She gasped.  “That’s it.”

His smile fell, and his eyebrows pulled.

“That’s the same smile you’ve been giving Rudy all day.”

“Jesus,” he moaned.

“You just gave me that Rudy Kalveeno fangirl smile.  I never thought this moment would come.”  She craned her neck away, glaring at him.  “I gotta tell you, Jack, if you’re only asking me out because you think I have more heavyweight champions waiting in the wings, let me be the first to tell you…  I don’t.”

“Stop talking.” Jack leaned in, but someone cleared their throat just before their lips met.

Jack and Nina’s eyes both flew toward the sound, arms still locked around each other, and they found themselves faced with a heavyset Italian man. A cigar hung from his mouth, and his dark eyes seemed locked in a permanent squint.

Nina’s gaze traveled the round man, from his flawless crocodile shoes to his perfectly tailored pinstriped suit, all the way up to his shiny black hair.  The two men who flanked him had jet-black hair as well, just as undeniably Italian as the man before them.  Sunglasses shaded their eyes, and their lips were locked into hard, unsmiling lines.

The round man removed the cigar from his mouth with two fingers and released the smoke from his lungs.

Nina closed her eyes when a heavy dollop of smoke hit her square in the face.  Even as she sealed her lips shut, she still broke out coughing from the whiff that had snuck in through her nostrils.  Soon, she was full on heaving.  Her feet fell to the floor, with Jack still holding her around the waist, and she bent over, sure she was seconds from choking up a lung.

“Forgive me,” the heavyset man said, handing his cigar to one of the men behind him.  He tried to wave the smoke away.

“That’s okay.”  Nina held up a hand.  “I’m fine.”  The moment she told that lie, she fell into another rift of coughs, so powerful Jack had no other choice but to clap her on the back several times.  “I’m good.”  Nina stood tall again, eyes red and jaws tight as she fought to maintain control, pushing her hands to her hips.

The heavyset man held his hands out.  “What a night, huh?” he beamed, his strong Italian accent making itself known right away.  “A thirty-five thousand dollar hit.  What a night!”

This time, Nina’s wide red eyes weren’t a product of the cigar smoke, but of the reality that was swooping in.  She felt Jack’s arm go tighter around her waist.

She clapped her hand around Jack’s waist, too.  “Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat.  “Pretty lucky, but trust me, we earned that hit.  We’ve had the week from
hell.”

“You are very beautiful.”

“Yeah, a black eye tends to do that for a girl.” Nina chortled, unable to accept the compliment when she knew she looked like hell rising.  She looked at Jack and saw that his eye had also exploded to twice its size, just as big and black as hers.

The heavyset man had the grace to let her self-deprecating words blow by, and motioned to himself, flashing a smile so friendly it almost overrode his innate, menacing nature.  “Any lady as beautiful as you get’s a complimentary dinner in my hotel.  Any woman as beautiful as you get’s the penthouse suite in my hotel.”

“That really isn’t necessary…” Nina paused.  “Wait.  You own this hotel?”

The man laughed.  “Step outside, sweetheart, and look to your left.  Then look to your right.  Every hotel you see is Mr. Flynn’s hotel, and anyone who wins in my hotel is my family.  You…” He motioned to her, his smile brightening.  “Are family.”

“I’m really not, though…” She squinted at him.  “And you
really
don’t have to do any of that other stuff, either.  Really.”

“It’s done.” The heavyset man, who they now knew as Mr. Flynn, stepped forward and pushed an arm between her and Jack, whisking her away.

Nina looked over her shoulder and saw that Jack was just as shocked as she was that this mobster had just swept in and cock-blocked the shit out of him.

She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips when, as a bewildered Jack tried to follow, Mr. Flynn’s goons elbowed him to the back.  After he’d swept up their winning chips from the table, Jack followed behind, craning his neck over the goon’s broad shoulders to see her.

***

The grand chandelier in the casino lobby sparkled down, making the golden marble floors glow as the heavyset man led Nina to the concierge desk, with Jack and his goons following close behind.

The perfectly pressed concierge smiled broadly.  “Good evening, Mr. Flynn.”

“Good evening, Charlene.  This is Nina Grammio,” Mr. Flynn said meeting Nina’s eyes.  “She’s family, and she’s going to be staying in the penthouse suite with all the trimmings. Give her whatever she needs.”

After the concierge nodded her understanding, Mr. Flynn turned to Nina and said goodbye with two kisses on her cheek.  After a few more words of congratulations, he breezed away, giving Jack a much cooler farewell.

Jack watched him go, his goons straightening their pinstriped suits behind him as they strutted away.