Betting on an Omega's Life: She's the Legendary Gambler novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Man Upstairs

Rafe Zielinski offers his house for the game and tests her at a cut-card table. He says Cormac has never read a table in his life.

"What did you just say to me?" I asked.

Cormac flinched.

"I need you in my ear, Lena. Like always. I can't read them. You know I can't."

"I know you can't."

The words came out flat, and he stared at me.

"Six years of reads," I said. "The last four I sat in a back room with a headset and a cold sandwich so you could be a legend."

"You liked it."

"I liked that you promised to stop when Junie turned two. That was four years ago."

He opened his mouth, and a long black car rolled to the curb beside us.

The rear window slid down.

A man looked out at me with dark eyes and a scar that cut through his left eyebrow.

I had seen him on the balcony above the table all night, standing with a drink he never touched.

"Mrs. Tarrant," he said. "Get in."

"Who are you?"

"Rafe Zielinski. I own the Halcyon."

Everyone in the city knew the Halcyon, the tall gold hotel at the end of the Strip.

Cormac straightened up fast.

"Mr. Zielinski, it's an honor, I've always said your tables are the cleanest."

Zielinski did not look at him.

"Mrs. Tarrant, I won't ask twice.

"Your daughter's marker is a fraud on paper and a loaded gun in practice.

"I can help with the gun."

"Why would you?"

"Because Castiglioni wants a neutral room on Saturday, and I'm the only man in Nevada who can give you one."

I looked at Cormac.

He looked at his shoes.

I got in the car and shut the door in my husband's face.

Zielinski's driver pulled out, and Cormac's shape shrank in the window, one hand still lifted.

"Here's what you need to understand," Zielinski said. "Rule Nine bans Omegas from every public high-limit table in this state."

"I know the rule."

"A private invitational game isn't covered, and I can open one at the Halcyon tonight."

"You've read the statute."

"I read everything." He leaned back. "Where's the Legend, Mrs. Tarrant?"

"My husband's in the parking lot."

"No, I mean the Legend."

I kept my face still.

He took a deck of cards from his jacket pocket and slid it across the seat.

"Cut it."

"It's three in the morning."

"Then you won't need long."

I cut the deck, and his hand moved faster than I expected.

He flipped a card, then a second, then a third, with his thumb sliding over the edge.

"Name them," he said.

"You're palming the third one. Jack of clubs, not the seven you're showing."

His mouth moved at one corner.

"Again."

He dealt six more.

I called five of them.

I told him he dealt the sixth from the bottom, because he glanced at his knuckle first.

Zielinski set the cards down very carefully.

"My pit bosses miss that," he said. "I've watched the Legend's table tape a hundred times."

"And?"

"And the Legend never looks at the cards at all. He looks at the other players' hands, their breathing, their wrists."

My stomach turned.

"Your husband looks at the cards. He looks at his own chips. He looks at his reflection in the glass behind the dealer."

"Mr. Zielinski."

"Six years ago I noticed that the Legend's best reads came half a second before he moved." He tapped his own ear.

"Like somebody told him."

The car went quiet, and the driver kept his eyes on the road.

"I've been trying to find that voice for six years," Zielinski said.

I pressed my back into the seat, because there was nowhere else to put my hands.

"Your husband," he said, "has never read a table in his life."

I should have denied it.

I should have laughed in his face and told him he was a rich man with a theory.

Instead I thought about Junie's breath against my neck on the couch.

"What do you want?" I asked.

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