Well, if a third-rate crook like him turned up here, I bet he wouldn’t last the night anyway.
A restaurant on the third floor of Ra’s Lance
“Um… Why are you being so careful to hide your face?” Eve Genoard asked.
Nader answered confidently. “So that people see as little of it as possible, naturally.”
He was currently on standby with Eve in a restaurant inside Ra’s Lance, before heading down to the casino party as a guest.
Benjamin and the other servants hadn’t approved of her going anywhere alone with a strange gambler. However, Eve’s determination to bring her brother back home seemed to have affected them, and now here she was.
The restaurant was a fairly high-class place, but even after Nader had taken his seat, he kept his hat pulled down low and his thick muffler on.
“Of your face?”
“That’s right. The gambling’s already underway. First-rate gamblers catch your habits and tells from all sorts of places, then use them against you. Everything from the expression on your face to the movements of your eyes, from how your lips tremble to the number of nose hairs you’ve got. People who know I’m your proxy may be here, at this very moment, to steal my tells.”
Nader gave a random excuse, deflecting her question, but Eve seemed to believe him completely. She nodded energetically as she apologized. “Of course you’re right! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. These things are common sense for gamblers, but I know they look silly to folks like you.” Nader shook his head shamelessly. On the inside, though, he was bursting with fear and unease that Hilton might find him. As he listened to himself successfully hide that anxiety and fluently lie to Eve, he realized he truly might have an aptitude for conning people, and he started to feel guilty.
To cover up his guilt about misrepresenting himself, Nader spoke to Eve impassively. “This is going to go for three days, so I’ll spend today sizing up the place. Let’s find out if your brother is here.”
“Right!” Eve responded firmly. Then she turned her attention to Nader again. “…Mr. Nader?”
“What?”
“Thank you so much for agreeing to my request. I know it was selfish of me to ask.”
“…It’s a formal contract. You don’t owe me thanks.”
Nader took one look at the innocent girl’s eyes, then averted his own. He felt unworthy.
What kind of fella puts such a sweet, earnest girl like her through all that trouble?
This Dallas bastard must be a scumbag and a half.
That was when Sonia’s face rose in his mind.
Oh, damn… Guess I can’t talk, huh?
Hadn’t he also left her and gone around lying and cheating and doing whatever he wanted?
Did he have the right to call anybody else a scumbag after all that?
Nader decided to suspend his prejudice against Dallas, at least until he actually met him.
✦ ✦ ✦
…We might actually have a lot in common.
Ra’s LanceThe second-floor lobby
While Nader was hiding his face—
—one man was letting his emotions show while hiding the rest of himself.
“Dammit… There’s no mistake. It’s them, all right!”
The man was watching a certain group, his eyes filled with hate—and terror.
He’d disguised himself with false whiskers he’d bought at a general store and a pair of costume glasses. He’d also pulled his hat down low on his head so that his face was completely obscured.
Hiding behind a pillar in the lobby, the man—Dallas Genoard—ground his teeth.
He was keeping an eye on the three men who stood at the foot of the stairs that descended into the lobby. The Gandor brothers.
He’d once killed some of their men, and then he’d shot up the bosses themselves.
They’d retaliated, and Dallas had spent several years perpetually drowning on the bed of the Hudson River.
Even after he was freed, he hadn’t repented of his dissipated lifestyle. The one thing he had learned was to give the Gandor Family a wide berth.
Since this casino party was being hosted by the Runorata Family, he’d never dreamed that the Gandors would put in an appearance.
What the hell?! I heard they were fighting the Runoratas!
For Dallas, this casino party had been a way to get some money fast, and that was it.
The Runorata Family had killed his father and older brother, and the idea of their party had made his little sister furious. On the other hand, Dallas didn’t hold his relatives’ deaths against them. His father and brother had considered him incompetent and shut him out, and he was happy somebody had bumped them off.
That was why he’d walked right into the Runoratas’ casino party. He’d even considered marching up to them and trying to get money out of them: I’ll act like that business with my father and brother never happened, so… You get me, right?
He’d drunk a liquor of immortality, incomplete as it was, so knives and guns couldn’t kill him now. That trait had made him a little bolder toward the Runoratas.
…But the Gandors were another story.
To Dallas, they were far more troublesome.
Remembering the cold water at the bottom of the river, and the sensation of his lungs filling up, Dallas broke out in a cold, clammy sweat.
Thing is…chances like this don’t come around every day.
He’d spent the last couple of weeks raising money through various unsavory methods. As far as he was concerned, it was too late to just give up.
After all, his pride as a thug didn’t give him the option of tucking his tail between his legs and running from the Gandors.
So after Dallas had spotted them in the parking lot, he’d made tracks for a general store to buy the beard and glasses for his disguise, and here he was.
They’ll never know it’s me.
Oddly enough, his disguise was identical to the one a certain redheaded fellow preferred to use—but at the moment, Dallas had no way of knowing that.