Beniamino Deluca

Beniamino DeLuca SAVAGE BLOODLINE SERIES JADE ROYAL This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright 2023 © by Jade Royal www.authorjaderoyal.com All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Contents Beniamino DeLuca Playlist Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Epilogue Four Warned Guarded Truths Savage Kings Empire Sworn to Secrecy Blissful Vixen Healing Berets Series Love Catered Series Acknowledgments About the Author New Releases Also by Jade Royal Beniamino DeLuca Playlist I always use music to fuel my stories. Because the list keeps growing, I’m going to give you the link to my Spotify playlist to listen to. Usually, I list the titles of the songs in a playlist but thought that giving you the direct link would be better. Don’t worry about whether you have Spotify or not. They’ll still let you listen to the tunes at no cost as long as you follow the link. You can always send me a email at [email protected] to let me know what you think. Enjoy the playlist as you read, I know I have a few times. Cheers, Jade Royal About Beniamino DeLuca Caught in the web of her husband’s dirty secrets, Simone could lose everything she’s worked for. The debt her husband has with the Italian mob threatens to bankrupt her completely. Her club is the one thing that can save her. She can either do business with the devil and sacrifice her soul or she can walk away from it all. Beniamino DeLuca is cleaning up the mess his father left behind. Simone’s husband is too good of a mark to let go. His debt gives Beni opportunities he didn’t have before. The club he owns with his wife is the perfect location for what Beni has in mind. What he didn’t consider was what kind of woman Simone is. He could think of a few ways she could help her husband pay. And he didn’t mean money. Prologue MARCUS High card–Ace. I picked up my second card cheering internally. I had to win this hand to walk out of here with the fifty grand I lost. I’d break even and wouldn’t have to worry about how I was going to pay bills for the next three months. Admittedly, I knew I had a gambling problem. It didn’t make it easier to shake. I tried to keep myself away from betting situations, but sometimes it snuck up on me. It was part of the reason why I’d gotten a divorce from Simone. The other reasons… A pair-Aces. I glanced up from my hand to see the other five men at this table sweating. We’d all lost at the other tables and hoped this one proved lucky. By their expressions, they weren’t fairing so well. The guy across from me whom I’d nicknamed Duck liked to purse his lips whenever he thought something big was going to happen. His thin lips remained in a tense line as he studied those damn cards as if something was going to change. Three of a kind–Aces. The first card was laid down by the dealer. Was I being played? Three aces? It sounded like a setup. I hadn’t touched the deck and it was proving to be lucky right now. At the same time that I tried to keep a smile from my face, I saw Duck’s lips as he conveyed that his luck had just changed. By how much though? Four of a kind–Aces. Stop playing. The second card was flipped over making for a four-of-a-kind. This hand was mine and it took every ounce of willpower not to fidget in my seat. Instead, I’d rather see how everybody else was fairing. Duck had that look on his face, so his luck was heating up. He needed a royal flush or a straight one to beat me. Were the odds in his favor or mine? Whiskey, I’d named the man it after he’d ordered one every time he’d lost a hand. He was probably too sloshed to be playing right now. He’d have the perfect cards in his hand and wouldn’t know it because he kept blinking to see the numbers. Sniffles was the guy who appeared to have a coke habit. He paid more attention to snorting his nose as if he’d missed some in one of his nostrils. He hadn’t and the congested honks from his nose into his throat was irritating. The man could play though. He was also a beast at bluffing. He’d won two hands that way. Most of my money was in his pockets. Paying attention to my cards, I had the highest four of a kind that I could get, but how had the others faired? A straight or a royal flush could knock it out of the park. Now, I just had to hope that the poker gods had only been nice to me and no one else. “I’ll raise you 10.” Duck slid his chips forward, and I watched him slide an additional ten thousand dollars into the pot. “Okay,” Sniffles added his ten into the pot upping it to fifty thousand. Chips, the guy who kept the potato chip bowl in front of his face, was up next. “Fold.” I wasn’t surprised since he’d been doing that the entire game. It was my turn. I added more chips to the pile, I wasn’t ready to fold yet. “Fold.” Logan, an old friend of mine said before he tossed his cards to the dealer and stood up. He downed the last of his drink, nodded at me, and walked off. His way of saying he was