“I’m playing tonight whether you want me here or not.”

Jean Phillippe inhales sharply, and then exhales like a terminal patient accepting his fate. “This game isn’t one you—”

“Move, or I’ll move you myself.”

His chin drops toward his chest. “It wasn’t personal, mon ami,” he says as he steps away from the opening.

I walk through the doorway and stop dead.

What the fuck is he doing here?

Bastien de Vere. The entitled trust-fund prick who got away with murder. Literally.

The hot burn of rage blazes from the pit of my gut until I shut it down. Stone cold. That’s the only way I can keep myself from killing him with my bare hands.

Death by a thousand cuts. That’s how I’ve made him suffer for fifteen years, and I’ll do it until the day I finally end him. That day is coming, I promise myself. The de Veres’ money and influence won’t last forever. I’m draining it away one penny at a time.

When de Vere catches sight of me at the door, his shoulders brace and his mouth flattens into a hard line. “Invitation-only game, Forge. And you weren’t invited.”

The blonde next to him stiffens as de Vere says my name. Even with her head down and no glimpse of her face, she’s stunning. Honey-gold curls lay over her bare, tanned shoulders, leading a man right to her generous tits.

Fuck. Me.

She can’t be one of de Vere’s regulars, or I would have already stolen her from him. Unless . . . no, he couldn’t have managed to hide a piece that fine. He’d be showing her off right and left. That means she has to be a new conquest. Maybe someone he’s trying to impress at the table . . .

Which gives me one more reason to stay and take every penny of his trust fund he’s willing to wager tonight.

“I don’t need an invitation.” I look to Jean Phillippe. “Do I?”

“No. No, sir. Of course not. You’re always welcome at La Reina’s tables.”

“That’s what I thought.”

De Vere glares at me, and I look away from him to scan the rest of the players standing in the room, giving them each a nod. What I see tells me my gut instinct was 100 percent right.

Something big is going down here.

Sheikh Ahmed Al Jabal, the oil billionaire whose superyacht I’ve docked next to in Monte Carlo before, nods back at me. He’s a decent enough player, but one with more money than skill, which makes him my favorite kind.

“Mr. Forge, I hope you brought the money of mine you took in Monaco.”

“All that and more, sir.”

“Very good.”

I shift my attention to the next man—Alejandro Cruz, the American tech billionaire who fancies himself a poker player of the highest order, but mostly just bluffs because he knows more about coding than he does about cards.

Cruz sits straighter in his chair. “It’s been a while, Forge. Thought you’d decided never to come back to land.”