The excitement inside the casino had transformed completely. Olivia watched from the sidelines, speechless at what she was witnessing. The two women who’d mercilessly tormented her only moments earlier had turned deathly pale, and their hands trembled with fear as they held their cards.
Dolly moved to throw away a card, but Leon pinned her with a hard look. “Hold it. You sure you want to risk losing an arm? If you try to switch in that card you’ve got hidden, it’ll be all over for you.” His gaze moved to the axe still embedded in the table.
Dolly sucked in a panicked breath. The axe was intended to chop through a door or wall in an emergency, so its edge was finely sharpened. She only had to look at it once to rethink her intention to cheat. Her breaths were fast and erratic, but it was no surprise that she was so on edge. Leon had already won back all the money she and Donna took from Olivia.
At this point, Dolly and Donna were the ones putting themselves in debt to buy more chips. Meanwhile, there was a mountain of chips piled beside Leon.
Having given up on cheating, Dolly and Donna threw down their cards. They had fairly decent hands. Then Leon, with a perfect poker face, set his cards down.
“Victory’s mine again,” he said. “Give me your chips.”
They obediently pushed their chips to Leon’s side, cleaning themselves out. At this point, they’d already done that—and then put themselves deeper into debt to continue playing—countless times.
Leon glanced at the dealer and nodded, signaling him to deal again. Then he glanced at the two women sitting across from him. “Time for the next hand. Get your chips ready fast.” He was essentially telling them to dig themselves even further into debt, since that was the only way they could keep playing. And, due to the way things had unfolded, their debtor was Leon. He’d put a much steeper rate on their loan than they’d given Olivia, and the amount they were borrowing only climbed higher and higher.
Donna burst into tears, collapsing forward onto the table. Tears also streamed down Dolly’s cheeks.
“Have mercy,” wept Dolly. “We’re sorry for being such a pain, all right?!”
“Yeah! Take it easy on us,” sobbed Donna.
It was painful for Olivia to watch.
At first, the girls’ card game with Leon had been perfectly ordinary. Then they’d begun losing to him repeatedly. As soon as their chips began to run low, they’d stooped to all sorts of methods to cheat their way to winning. Olivia couldn’t even tell what they were doing, but Leon could. He saw through each and every attempt—and let them get away with it. Even so, he beat them. They couldn’t best him when they cheated, and they certainly stood no chance when they didn’t.
Perhaps most humiliating of all was that, every time Dolly and Donna resorted to cheap tricks and still lost, Leon always ended the hand by saying, “What a shame you couldn’t beat me even by cheating.”
At the beginning, the two girls kept brave faces on. As the card game pressed ahead, though, their spirits broke. They regarded Leon with looks of terror. They’d been wary of Deirdre initially, but it was Leon who struck fear into them now. That was partly their own fault, given their arrogance and selfishness. Leon shattered their pride and left them in tears, pleading for leniency. It was a complete role reversal; their own rules, which they’d created to trap Olivia, were backfiring on them.
“If I remember correctly, you said the game only ends when all the players agree, right?” Leon said pointedly. “You also said the loser needs to pay their debt, however steep. Those are the rules you decided on.” Despite his winning streak, he wasn’t smiling. There was no emotion on his face at all. He wasn’t acting triumphant and rubbing his wins in their faces; he was curt and businesslike, as if he found the whole situation burdensome.
Still sniffling, the girls signed another promissory note in exchange for more chips. A minimum bet was in place to ensure no one could weasel through the game by simply conserving their chips each round—yet another rule they’d put in place for Olivia. Every single trap they’d laid for her now came back to haunt them.
Chips were added, and the next round began.
Once the cards were laid out, Leon said, “There. I win again.” It had taken him no time at all to beat them.
“This winning streak is way too much of a coincidence to be fair play!” one male student complained, stepping up for Dolly and Donna. “You haven’t lost a single round this whole time. It’s obvious you’re the one cheating! Don’t you guys agree?” He glanced back at the rest of the crowd. Around half the onlookers showed agreement in some form.
Deirdre sighed. “In that case, shall we pat him down and search him again?”
Leon shrugged. “This is already the third time. It’s about time you guys gave it up.”
The male student stepped up to search Leon, confident that he could succeed where others before him hadn’t managed to. This time, he removed Leon’s jacket, shirt, and even his pants, trying to find a hidden card somewhere. There was nothing to be found, however. Not a single piece of evidence.
“Y-you’re kidding me,” he stuttered, baffled.
Deirdre snapped her fingers. “I assume you’re ready to face the consequences of interrupting this game for no good reason.”
The male student immediately tried to scramble away from Deirdre. She didn’t even bother to look at him, but Lucle and the others from our group surrounded the student in no time.
“Really sorry we have to do this,” Lucle said in a chillingly casual voice, “but rules are rules.” With that, he and the others dragged the student to another room.
“Something has to be going on! I just know it! St-stop this. You guys can’t—gaaaah!” The student’s screams echoed even after the door closed behind him.