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“A seat’s waiting for you at table two,” Dom said near my ear.
No music softened these walls, nor even a stray voice. Every sound, every tic, muted in this room, save for the satisfyingclackof clay chips on felt tables.
I followed Dom’s direction and took the last remaining empty chair at the second of five tables. Seven men sat around me, and somehow, they managed to make this section even quieter once I entered their crosshairs.
“Buy-in’s twenty-thousand, honey,” a man directly across from me said.
My suppressed eye-rolls were long overused, and so I offered him a wink, then deftly sank my fingers into my cleavage and pulled out a roll of hundreds. Running my tongue across my top lip, I unsnapped the elastic and let the Washingtons fan out before I laid them onto the stack in the center.
His swallow was his only tell of insult.
The dealer had already collected my buy-in and replaced the cash with chips. I ran my finger across a stack of them before sitting back.
My mark was two men to the left. Mostly muscle, carved from the coal brought up from mines and an Italian heritage, he sat with confidence, providing a one-nostriled snuffle every time he had a bad hand. It wasn’t obvious, a quick scrunch that, had I not been keeping him in my periphery, I wouldn’t have noticed. Now that I had, I used it to my advantage with large calls and virtually zero checks.
Neri Sebastiani paid me no mind as he focused on his cards. He remained unflinching at my large bets and, when it ended up the two of us on a hand, he used the continued monotone he reserved for cocktail waitresses and dealers alike.
I wasn’t doing well. In fact, I was sucking astronomically. This wasn’t normal, but tics didn’t dare mar my expression. Quirks of the lip were far from appearing as I continued down the river, becoming brash, utilizing my confidence, until all I had left was $500.
Out of $20,000.
Soon, that too was gone. I allowed myself to take a $5,000 credit from the house, and six hands later, I also blew through that. I gestured for another $5,000.
The dealer side-eyed me, and if the others could literally smile with their gazes, they would’ve.Fresh meat,they were thinking.
“I thought she was meant to be a challenge,” I heard the man beside me say. A middle-aged white guy dressed in tailored precision, with his fly undone. “But she’s just another of Dom’s fish.”
“You know who I am,” I said loudly to the dealer. His thin beak of a nose turned up at me like he was a butler at Buckingham Palace. But he did as I asked and stacked two columns of chips in front of me after nodding to a man in the shadows with his laptop open.
Thirty minutes later and despite the two loans, I wasn’t able to beat Neri or any other man at this table. This was a record for me.
After another hour, I found myself $40,000 in debt. If I continued to play, I’d only put myself further in the hole with the House, which was the last position I should be in. Dom collected money owed, and he did it hard. You didnotwant to be on the chum end of the loan sharking business.
The gut-swirl of disappointment was brutal, but I tipped my head and said, “It’s been real, boys.”
“There’s no need to exit gracefully yet. You have two hundred left,” Neri said in a low, buttery voice. The first time during this entire night he’d addressed me.
He had a light African accent. Rumor had it that, while his father was Italian, his mother was from Kenya, and she taught him the meaning of protecting family. If that meant using your bed post as a spear or your blanket as a garrote, you always made sure to stand in harm’s way for those you loved.
I paused halfway between rising, understanding the note of warning. With $200 left in chips, I couldn’t simply forfeit. There was an old saying in poker:all you need is a chip and a chair. I had less than the small blind left, but I was still forced to put it up and go into a hand, because in this next round, I was the small blind.
This made me lookverystupid.
“Small blind is five hundred,” I replied. I clearly couldn’t afford it.
Neri lifted his chin. “Perhaps you have something else to offer in addition to the two hundred you have left.”
I sat back in the velvet chair and crossed my legs, mimicking the move I so carefully perfected a few hours earlier in my hotel room. The slit of the dress fell open, showing a line of calf muscle. “What did you have in mind?”
I had no car in my name, and definitely no house or other assets. All I had was my denim shorts and knock-off Chanel purse thirty floors above. Any money I made was reinvested to protect my cover. This dress was a rental.
The rest of the table remained silent, some attention on my cleavage, some on my legs, but most were focused on Neri.
Neri puffed at his cigar, his full lips curling over the tobacco leaf. His silence left me enough time to notice that, while his bowtie had been undone about an hour ago, his clavicles sparkled with the sweat of mental effort.
He let out a smoke-filled exhale before he said, “You.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Pardon?”
