Chapter 19: Paid in Full

Tommaso's POV

On Sunday I went down to the cellar with a stack of flat boxes and a ledger.

The velvet had been taken off the tables. The roulette wheel stood bare, and the whiteboard behind the cage still had a column of chalk on it.

Back by Tuesday. Back by Sunday. Never.

My own name stood beside the highest number, and underneath it a line of smaller bets I had once found funny.

I had not read the list properly in the autumn.

Sixty-one names, and the cashier had written them all in a neat blue hand.

Fifty-two of them were not my friends.

They were croupiers, waiters, a driver, two cooks and the men who held the gate.

The cashier came down the steps at ten with her coat on.

"I came for my last pay," she said, and stopped when she saw the boxes. "Don Tommaso."

"Sit down, please."

"I'd rather stand."

I opened the ledger on the cage counter and turned it toward her.

"Every one of these people put money in a pool because I said that everybody joined in.

"Staff too. You were the one who counted it."

"I did what you said, Don Tommaso."

"I know. I'm paying it back."

She looked at the book and then at me.

"All of it? The house staff put in just over a thousand."

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