Hugo leaned forward, pushing more chips into the center, his confidence practically radiating off him. “You know, for someone who challenged Zavier himself, this is sort of underwhelming.”
“Maybe I’m just rusty,” she replied with a small, careless shrug.
“Or maybe you were never that good to begin with.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” she said simply.
From the outside, it looked bad.Really bad.If I hadn’t seen the strength of the hands she was folding, I would have stopped this already and ended it before it could go any further. Because she was getting dangerously close to nothing now, still, I had to believe she had a plan.
It seemed as though she was setting him up, feeding his ego and stroking his pride. The problem was how much she had already given him to build that confidence. If she miscalculated, if she pushed even a step too far, there would be nothing left for her to recover with, all while Hugo sat there wearing that smug look on his face.
I was so fucking done with him.
I had already imagined killing him more than once as I stood there watching, the image playing out in my mind with disturbing clarity. I could see it—my tentacles tightening around his throat, crushing the life out of him before he ever had the chance to speak her name again. Dragging his body somewhere far from here, somewhere no one would ever find him.
But the moment that thought took hold, so did the problem. If I interfered or stopped the game, it wouldn’t count as a win. And I didn’t know what that would mean for the contract.
Would it default back to Zavier? Would it still bind her? Would it make things even worse?
The uncertainty was enough to hold me in place, even as every instinct in me screamed to act. So instead, I forced those murderous thoughts to remain exactly that—thoughts, and nothing more.
Hugo was practically glowing with confidence now, his grin widening as he leaned back in his chair like he owned the damn place. “You’re running out,” he said casually, gesturing to her dwindling stack. “Last chance to make this interesting.”
Kara glanced down at her cards, then at her chips, before looking back at him. Her expression shifted into something uncertain, almost worried. But beneath it, I felt it—a steady, unshakable calm.
And without hesitation, she pushed everything forward.
“All in. Winner takes all, and this will be the last hand to determine the result of the contract,” she said, her voice cracked with just enough uncertainty to sell it.
But I could feel her. I could feel the truth beneath the performance, and it was anything but fear. Even with that quiet confidence pulsing through her, I readied myself. If this ended badly, I knew I would have to act, and I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to promise it would be controlled. So I could only hope the confidence radiating from her paid off.
“There it is,” Hugo practically squealed, his eyes sharpening with interest. “About time you stopped playing games.”
He shoved the rest of his chips forward. “All in.”
Kara didn’t respond right away. She gave a small, almost absent nod, her expression slipping back into that unreadable calm.
“Call,” Hugo said, almost eagerly, before flipping his cards onto the table.
A full house.
The sight of the cards made my stomach drop as I tried to recall the rankings, my gaze flicking to the cards still in Kara’s hand.
Hugo leaned back in his chair, satisfaction written all over him. “Told you,” he started, his voice carrying that same cocky tone. “Game—”
Before he could finish, Kara carefully laid her cards down on the table, and as I looked at them, my mind scrambled through the hierarchy of what beat what. As the order finally surfaced and I took in her hand once more, relief flooded through me.
A straight flush.
She won. She actually won.
Hugo stared at the table like it had personally betrayed him, his expression twisting as disbelief set in. “That’s not—” he started, his voice rising. “No. That’s not possible.”
Kara leaned back in her chair, calm as ever. “Maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are.”
“You cheated!”
She laughed softly. “Did I? Or did you just get outplayed?”
