All In

Chapter 2

[BIANCA]

My feet and back hurts. My soul hurts a little too, if I'm being honest, but there's no time to feel sorry for myself because table twelve has a drunk tourist who thinks I'm his lucky charm and a pit boss who watches me like I'm a steak.

Deal, smile, pay out. Deal, smile, pay out. Repeat until my fingers go numb and my face cramps from all the smiling.

I've been at this for eleven hours. My lunch break was a granola bar eaten over a toilet in the staff bathroom, because Vincent Calder likes to lurk by the breakroom and breathe on my neck. The man is forty-five, married smells like cheap cologne and bad decisions. He's also my direct supervisor, which means I smile at him too, even when my skin crawls.

That's the job. Smile. Survive. Send money home.

The drunk tourist is named Gary and Gary is losing three hundred dollars an hour and having the time of his life. He keeps calling me "darlin'" and asking if I want to get a drink after my shift. I keep saying no in a way that makes him laugh instead of rage. I've gotten good at that. It's a survival skill, like reading players, like knowing exactly when to say "the house has twenty-one" in a tone that softens the blow.

"Hit me, darlin'." Gary taps the felt. You're my lucky charm.

I deal him a seven. He busts.

"Still your lucky charm," I say sweetly, and he laughs then pushes another stack of chips forward.

My mind is elsewhere. It's been elsewhere for the last two hours, ever since I looked up and saw him.

The man in the black suit.

He's not a man, honestly. He's a monument. Tall and dark, with a face that looks like God sculpted it while angry. Expensive suit, expensive watch, expensive everything. He's been standing by the marble column near my table like he owns the place which, I realize with a cold little jolt, he probably does.

Everyone knows the Bellissimo belongs to the Moretti family. Everyone knows the owner walks the floor some nights it's a popular rumor. Everyone knows you do not, under any circumstances, stare back at the owner.

I stared back.

Then I misdealt my face went hotand Vincent leaned in behind me with his sour breath and said, Getting sloppy, Rossi. Maybe you need a little extra supervision after close.

I didn't answer. I just reshuffled and kept dealing, because that's what you do when you're a girl from Pahrump working a job that pays for your mother's dialysis. You swallow it. You smile. You survive.

But I can still feel the man in the black suit watching me.

His eyes are dark and absolutely certain, like he's already decided something about me. Like he's reading the fine print of my life and finding it interesting. Nobody looks at me like that. Men look at me like I'm a snack, target or an inconvenience. This man looks at me like I'm the only real thing in the room. It's terrifying and I hate that some stupid part of me doesn't want him to stop.

Stop it, Bianca. Men like that don't look at girls like you unless they want something.

I know what men like that want. I've been fending it off since I was fifteen and working my first diner job. It's never anything good.

At midnight, my shift finally ends. My hands ache. My feet have gone past pain into a kind of numb fury. I count out my tray with shaking fingers six grand in chips, none of it mine and hand it off to the cage with a smile that feels painted on.

I'm pulling my purse from my locker when Enzo, the floor manager, appears in the doorway. He's a kind man with a tired face, a son in community college and he's the only person in this building who's ever asked if I've eaten.

Mr. Moretti wants to see you, he says.

My blood turns to ice.

Mr. Moretti?

The owner. Enzo's face is carefully neutral, but there's something soft in his eyes. Upstairs. Now, sweetheart. Leave the tray, you're not in trouble.

Not in trouble. Right. In my experience, being summoned to the boss's office after midnight is never anything but trouble, no matter what words they wrap it in.

Did I do something wrong? I hear myself ask. "Because whatever it is, I can explain—"

You didn't do anything wrong. Enzo holds the door for me. Come on. He doesn't like to be kept waiting.

I follow him through the employee corridor to the private elevator the one that only goes up, the one with the keycard and the mirrored walls that show me exactly what I look like right now. My vest is wrinkled. My hair is escaping its knot. There's a smudge of something on my collar from Gary's spilled drink.

I look like exactly what I am, a girl who's been on her feet for eleven hours fighting for scraps.

The elevator rises and my stomach doesn't.

He's going to fire me, I think and panic claws up my throat. He saw me misdeal. Or someone complained. Or Vincent—

Vincent. Oh God. If Vincent said something, if he twisted it around, I'm done. I'll lose this job and my mother's treatments and Matty's SAT prep books and everything I've been killing myself to hold together.

The doors slide open onto a private floor. Enzo gestures down a short hallway. Last door on the right. Good luck, Bianca.

I don't know why he says good luck. I don't want to know.

The door at the end of the hall is heavy dark wood and no nameplate. I knock once and a voice from inside low and smooth, with a smile in it that isn't friendly says, Come in, dolcezza.

I push the door open.

And there he is. The man in the black suit. The monument. Standing against a desk that probably cost more than my entire apartment, arms crossed, watching me like he's already won whatever game I didn't know we were playing.

"Bianca Rossi." He says my name like it belongs to him. I've been waiting to meet you.

I stand in the doorway, heart slamming and for the first time in three years, I forget how to smile.