Chastity laughed. “No. But props for theForty-Year-Old Virginreference.” She high-fived me. “What he meant was that he thought we’re pretending like we don’t know how to play.”
“I don’t…”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. He gathered his chips and left the table.
Screw you too.
We went back to playing. Things started off shaky, but after a while we came up with a system of signals. And then we got on a roll. In a flash, we cleaned out all three of the guys at the table. Our bankroll was up to $180K.We’re so close!
But then Cole sat down. I almost didn’t recognize him out of his liftman uniform.
I grabbed another drink from a passing waitress.
“I see you found the dice door,” said Cole. “And by the looks of it, you’re doing quite well.”
“Yup,” said Chastity. “We only need 20K more. And it’s going to be a pleasure taking it from you.”
Cole raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see about that.” He slid on some sunglasses and rolled up his sleeves. Just as I suspected, tribal tattoos snaked up his forearms. I wanted to trace them with my tongue and see where they stopped.Oh God, I’m so drunk.
I shook my head and focused back on the task at hand. I couldn’t let him distract me.
The next dozen hands passed without much action. I won a few chips, then he took them back. Then I got them back. And so on.
Then we got dealt a king of hearts and a jack of spades. Chastity kicked my chair - our secret signal that I had a good hand.
I slow played it just like she’d taught me. The flop (Chastity’s fancy name for when the dealer flipped the first three of five cards) gave us a straight.A straight!Unless something went horribly wrong, we were definitely going to win. The best part? I’d played my bets perfectly, slowly tricking Cole into risking $50K on this hand. So if we won, we’d be well over the threshold to cash out our chips. I was already dreaming of buying a new TV with the winnings. I was determined to binge-watch season 3 ofRiverdaleon nothing less than an 80-inch screen.
“All in,” said Cole, leaning forward and pushing all his chips into the center of the table. He lowered his glasses and stared into my soul. I could either call him and risk all my chips too, or fold and let him take my 50 grand.
“He’s bluffing,” I said to Chastity.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yes?” I did not sound sure.
She shook her head. “I think we should fold. Live to fight another day.”
“What?!” I couldn’t believe she was being such a chicken. “Are you blind?” I showed her our cards again.
“He could have...”
I didn’t let her finish. There was no way I was going to let Cole bluff us. “Call.” I pushed all my chips into the center.
Cole flashed me his devilish grin. “Bold move.”
I smiled back as I flipped my cards over. “Read them and weep, buster.”Buster?
“Oh,” said Cole. “King high straight. Very impressive. Not sure that’s worth risking your body, though.”
“Excuse me?”
He dug through my chips until he found one engraved with the dice symbol.
“So you found a chip with some dice on it,” I said. “So what?”
His devilish grin got even more devilish. “You didn’t read the whole card, did you?”
“Of course I did.” I fished the envelope out of Chastity’s purse and read it again. “Welcome to the Club Onyx Casino! Your challenge is simple: Double these chips. If you do, they’re all yours.”
