I’d been cleaning the tables all night with the big bad guys of our island. Real trash—drug lords, blackmailers, maybe even human traffickers. I didn’t know the gritty and sordid details of their respective empires, but I knew they were horrible. Which enabled me an even greater pleasure in this brazen robbery.

I should have felt inclined to stay away from such nefariously powerful men. Or at the least, I should feel the need to avoid pissing them off. Of course, I felt none of that. Actually, I was drawn to it like a thirsty gazelle to a tiger’s watering hole.

This was more excitement than I’d had in a year. My thighs clenched and rubbed against each other as I relished an electric excitement building in me. The big round table was filled with a nasty assortment of gritty men with gray hair and pockmarked cheeks. Scars and tattoos peeked out from beneath shirt collars, while necks were draped with thick golden chains that lay over loosened silk shirts marked with sweat at the armpits. Their plump fingers gripped cards while sweat beaded on furrowed scrunched foreheads.

Their supply of freshly counted cash was fast approaching empty. It hadn’t even taken long. One hour for these dangerous men to go from chiding to snarling. I’d shown up with my bag of cash and they’d cast pretentious smiles at me, not even questioning how I knew about their private game.

“Come to gamble Daddy’s money, doll?”

“Looks like Princess wants some thrills,” another had grumbled in response. A deep chuckle had coughed up from his gut.

They weren’t joking around now. Sharp dressed men with suspicious bulges under their armpits lined the edges of the room–bored bodyguards eyeing their angry bosses. Everyone was feeling on edge.

Thirty hands in and I’d won every hand. Every. Single. One. The only thing slowing me down was how much these guys wanted to gamble each hand. No one had these odds. No one but me of course. It wasn’t logic, practice, reading tells, or gambling smart.

It was luck, pure and simple.

“Don’t,” one of the angry assholes growled at me. I raised an eyebrow and tossed him a smirk. Then I had to bite my lip again to keep from laughing because this was just too perfect of a scene—the big, bad, strong men of the city sweating in anger because of me. I could see their hate crinkled in their foreheads, along with their inability to accept this was really happening. Oh, the audacity I must have to steal their money right in front of them. Hah!

My eyes widened in excitement and my breath hitched as I smacked the table with my cards. My fingers fanned the cards out in a beautiful display of a royal flush, making sure all could see. This was going to push them over the edge and I was giddy with anticipation.

My fingers shook slightly from the intensity of the moment. My eyes raised from the table to the men. Their disbelief made me poorly hide a chuckle behind my hand.