I hang my head and blink a few times to keep tears from forming, smiling when he presses his lips to my temple. “Thank you,” I whisper.
“Not thank you. Merci.”
“Merci.”
He smiles and suddenly we’re at the front of the line where three huge bouncers in suits are waiting for us to introduce ourselves. Daimon reaches into his wallet and pulls out our IDs without saying a word. The bouncer with the thick gold chain around his neck checks the names on our IDs against the names on his iPad. He scrolls through the list as he pinches his eyebrows together.
“You’re not on the list,” he says in an Italian accent.
Daimon responds calmly. “Yes, we are. Check the list once more.”
The guy looks at one of the other bouncers, a black guy who’s at least four inches taller than Daimon and about fifty pounds heavier. The black guy purses his lips and my pulse pounds in my ears. This is not how this was supposed to go down.
“Check the list once more,” Daimon insists, his voice a bit more forceful this time, and I’m beginning to wonder if we’re going to have to enact Plan B. I don’t want to put Plan B into play.
The guy with the iPad rolls his eyes as he scrolls through the list again. He squints his eyes then looks at our IDs again.
“You’re here.” He hands Daimon our IDs and the black guy nods toward the inside of the club.
I smile at all three of the bouncers, though I’m not sure why. Once we’re inside the Billionaire Club, I immediately understand the allure of this lifestyle. The air is smoky from the fog machines, but it smells like money. There are famous people everywhere: Oscar winning actors and actresses, multi-platinum selling recording artists, supermodels, royalty, and tons of Formula One drivers. Almost everyone in this room is beautiful and intoxicated. Just being in the same room, I feel a strange pull to be one of them.
Daimon squeezes my hand again, focusing me. “Let’s play some blackjack.”
We enter the casino room next door to the club and quickly locate the cashier station. After showing the proper ID and his no-limit credit card, the casino accepts our one-million dollar minimum bet. A security guard arrives shortly thereafter to escort us down the corridor to the high-limit lounge in the Galerie Cristal. I glance at the phone tucked inside my gold clutch and see it’s 10:23 p.m. We have one hour and seven minutes to complete the mission.
As soon as the security guard leaves us at the entrance to the high-limit lounge, I get a nervous fluttering in the pit of my stomach. My eyes scan the spacious, dimly-lit room, searching for any sign of the prince and princess. But the gaudy columns and the polished brass everywhere makes it difficult to focus. My anxiety is rising dangerously as Daimon leads me toward a table in the far right corner of the room.
We reach the blackjack table and Daimon slips his arm around my waist and leans in to whisper in my ear. “You are stronger than this.”
The way he says it, as if it’s a challenge, calls up a primal competitive instinct inside me. I am stronger than this. I brought Daimon to his knees a month ago in a hotel lounge not much different than this one. The princess is no match for Daimon; therefore, she is no match for me.
I take a deep breath and nod. “Right. Let’s play.”
We play a few rounds of blackjack. Daimon counts cards, though he doesn’t use it to win any bets. He’s merely keeping track of the count so that once the prince or princess come to this table, he’ll be prepared.
Sixteen rounds in, we’re down eighty thousand dollars and we couldn’t be happier, because a security guard has just come to our table to announce that Prince Andre-Louis and Princess Amica will be joining us. Daimon squeezes the crook of my elbow to pull me closer to him. Then, I hear her voice and everything gets hazy.
I close my eyes and take a few long, slow breaths.
“Do you mind if we join you?” says a smooth male voice with a thick French accent.
I open my eyes and turn to my left. Just beyond the princess on my left is Prince Andre-Louis. He has a thick head of perfectly coifed brown hair and a lean frame. But his wide brown eyes make my stomach clench. Those are my eyes on his face.
“Of course we don’t mind,” Daimon replies. “We are down eighty thousand. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“I think we can do better than that,” Princess Amica says with a slick smile.
Her soft auburn hair is pulled into a neat ponytail that cascades over her right shoulder in a tumble of voluptuous curls. Her red dress is made of a sumptuous silk that accentuates her curves. I’d envy those hips if they didn’t look just like mine.
I suddenly have a paranoid thought: If I smile at the same time as her, someone will recognize we have the same lips. It’s not too far fetched. My bedroom was pitch black when Daimon recognized I’m the princess’s daughter. The lighting in here is more than sufficient for someone to make the connection.
She continues to smile as she glances around at the cards in play. The prince has an eight, so he hits and gets a nine, then he stays. She has a jack facing up, so she doesn’t hit. I have a five and Daimon has a ten. I want to wait for Daimon to place his bet before I place mine. He knows the running count. But I have to play first since he’s standing on my right. It doesn’t matter if I lose this bet. The one million dollars we invested in tonight’s plan is nothing compared to the payout.
I hit and get a seven, then I stay. Daimon stays with his ten, then I watch Daimon as his hand seems to move in slow motion. He reaches for the chips and picks up one chip, two chips, three chips… He keeps going until he has all the chips in his hand. Then he places them on the table and the prince chuckles in response to this bet.
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Daimon says. “Enough to buy a hit man if I should lose this hand,” he says, winking at the dealer.
I glance to my left and, as expected, the princess is staring at Daimon with an expression of pure terror. The dealer glances nervously at Daimon’s stack of chips then at the surveillance cameras on the ceiling. A bet this high is a dead giveaway that Daimon thinks the count is running high.
The dealer flips his card and he has twenty. Prince Andre-Louis flips his and he busts. The princess’s horror turns to anger as she glares at Daimon.
He smiles at her. “Flip your card, princess.”
She reaches forward slowly and I hold my breath as she turns the card. An ace. Blackjack.
The prince slaps the table and says something in French to express his delight, but the princess does not look the least bit happy with this hand. I flip my card quickly and get a ten. I bust. Daimon flips his card and smiles when he sees the two. He just lost $500,000. A small price to pay for the trust of the dealer and the house.
Now it’s my turn.
I can smell Princess Amica’s spicy perfume as I lean in and whisper in her ear. “Nice win, Mother.”
Daimon pockets our chips then nods toward a corridor on our right. I watch in silence, wondering if the princess is going to do something stupid, like trying to alert her bodyguards, but she doesn’t. She hooks her arm in her husband’s and whispers something in his ear. Then they both follow our lead.
“Good game,” Daimon says to the dealer as we set off. “Now I must retreat for a cigar and a good cry.”
The dealer smiles and the royals’ bodyguards follow right behind the four of us. Prince Andre-Louis looks a bit stunned, but also a bit excited. Is it possible he’s happy to see me? No, I can’t start thinking stupid things like that or this mission will only become more difficult. We don’t need any more obstacles.
Once we’re in the corridor, Daimon produces a cigar from the inside of his jacket and holds it out to the prince. “Genuine double corona Cohiba. Limited edition,” he says as we continue walking in unison.
I keep my eye on Amica as she strides confidently on my left, but she only stares straight ahead as we walk. But Andre-Louis seems quite intrigued. He steals glances at me, his mouth hanging slightly open in a dumbfounded expression, but his eyes are smiling. I can see that he wants to say something. He wants to know if it’s really me, but he knows that would be a bad idea.