Chapter 66

Sinead watched carefully as Marc received his placement at the poker tables. Rachel, the hostess, was carefully guarded with the slip of paper the assignments were written on and Sinead wondered if Victor had actually randomized it like suggested, or if he’d made some specific placements to facilitate friendly, or maybe unfriendly, terms for different players.

She’d spent the time mingling by settling into the character that she’d sort of created for herself that first time she and Marc had gone undercover at the bar with Barisha. She didn’t have to play a stupid bimbo, thank God, but she did need to make sure she was checking her instincts to dig too hard into the little things the women and men around her were saying. Two of the women she’d spoken to were definitely escorts, but it wasn’t clear if they were working, or if they worked for the person they came with. Either could have been the case. A few of the ladies around, she learned, actually were Instagram models, or working models who participated in Fashion Weeks and the like. Some of them were girlfriends, others were just guests.

Sinead had also been hit on a few times during the conversations, usually when Marc was engaged with someone else. No one had made a major pass, but one of the men who seemed to be in the entourage of the Calabrian mob was Irish and she could tell he’d taken a worrying liking to her to the point that he’d actually interrupted the baseball player she’d been talking to so that he could make his opening pass.

He was all smiles and teeth but was an ass. Sinead smiled at his jokes but didn’t bother to fake a chuckle, and then Marc had called her over to introduce her to the Hells Angel he was talking to and the guy had needed to back off.

“Good luck,” Sinead murmured to Marc as they walked over to his assigned table.

“Merci, ma petite rebelle,” Marc murmured back, turning behind his chair and sliding his arm around her waist to plant a soft kiss on her forehead as he held her close. “Be careful, yes?”

“I’m always careful,” Sinead said with a little smirk, looking up into his eyes.

“Ah, but you fell into my trap, didn’t you?” Marc grinned.

“Maybe I feigned, just to get a shot at the trapper,” Sinead answered, the glimmer of a smirk in her eyes.

Marc blinked in real surprise. “Now, did you just reference Dune?” he asked.

“You recognized it,” she playfully replied, raising an eyebrow teasingly.

He let his hands fall down from her waist to her ass cheeks and give them a little squeeze. “Cette superbe paire de fesses pourrait bien payer le prix de ton insolence, petite rebelle.”

Sinead shook her head, her smirk reaching down to her lips now. “Whatever it is you say,” she said in exasperation at his use of French that she couldn’t understand. Then her smirk quirked a little more. “My Duke.”

Marc winked and turned back to his seat, though his hand drifted lower and brushed over her ass before pulling away. That feeling of him marking his territory like that should have made Sinead feel a little grossed out - any time her Ex, or ex-boyfriends before him, had done shit like that it had always been clumsy and annoying. The way Marc did it though was casual and secure. It wasn’t a message to others, really. Just ... enjoying the fact that he could.

Sinead decided to show him she appreciated it, and after he was sitting down she leaned around his chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek before backing off.