Rebirth in Canaan, No Looking Back Chapter 03

Rebirth in Canaan, No Looking Back Chapter 03

When I woke up, I was lying in a private hospital room.

The door was ajar, and voices drifted in from the hallway.

“Alaric, Elodie’s injuries are serious. If she finds out about Miss Chloe…”

The speaker was Kevin, Alaric’s private doctor.

Before he could finish, Alaric cut him off.

“Watch your mouth. Your only job is to patch her up.”

“She’s been in this world for years. What hasn’t she seen?”

“She knows exactly how the game is played.”

“Chloe is different. She knows nothing. She’s no match for Elodie.”

He paused, his voice dropping even lower.

“If she makes trouble when she wakes up, bring her brother here.”

“Leo is the only family she has left. She won’t risk him.”

My fingers dug into the bedsheet as I bit down on my lower lip, the taste of blood flooding my mouth.

The night I helped him win the biggest casino in Olympus, he had told me:

“Elodie, from now on, no one in Las Vegas will dare to touch you.”

The same words. The same promise of protection.

Only now, I was no longer the one he wanted to protect.

He used to treat me as the center of his world. Now, I was just someone to be managed.

Footsteps approached the door. I squeezed my eyes shut, only pretending to stir as he drew near the bed.

“You’re awake? I found out who did it.”

“It was the Thai who cheated at the casino last month. The one whose hand you had broken.”

Alaric tossed a file onto the bed in front of me.

“Sign this settlement. They’re handing over their operations in the East District.”

The East District was the last relatively quiet part of Las Vegas. No casinos. None of his business.

I remembered what he’d told Chloe—that he would find her a quiet place, build her a vacation home.

So the price for the wounds covering my body was a gift for his new lover.

My voice was a raw whisper. “Alaric, when did you negotiate this deal?”

“After you saw me being dragged away, or before?”

He frowned, clearly annoyed by the question.

I smiled faintly and said nothing more.

The answer didn’t matter anymore.

Perhaps as a placating gesture, he stayed in the hospital room for the next two days, handling his work from there.

But his phone never left his hand. Even during meals, he would snap a photo and send it to someone over iMessage.

The expression on his face was one I’d never seen before.

I watched his profile and thought back eight years.

The first time I met him wasn’t in a casino. It was in a dark alley.

He’d been caught cheating, and seven or eight men had him surrounded with knives. He was about to lose a hand.

I’d just won big that day, so on a whim, I paid them off and brought him back to my apartment.

Later, my father shot himself over a mountain of gambling debt in Montreal.

His creditors came for me as repayment. A needle was already pressed against my arm.

It was Alaric who kicked the door in and saved me.

Back then, he’d just taken over a small-time casino. He sat me at the tables and had me win money for him.

For years after that, I won game after game for him. I helped him swallow one casino after another.

I knew my hands weren’t clean.

But even if the rest of the world saw me that way, he never should have.