She rolled her eyes but grinned.

The game went on, but my attention drifted.

We were inside Alexander’s game room—if you could even call it that. It looked more like a luxury playground for bored billionaires. The place was huge, with velvet walls, dark marble floors, and those ridiculous gold light fixtures that looked like they belonged in a villain’s lair.

One side had a pool table with custom balls—each one engraved with his initials, because of course they were. Near the back, there was a bar that probably cost more than my apartment building, stocked with expensive liquor no one even touched. The TV was massive—like, insultingly massive and...