A Debt in the Dark

THE GAME

Sera Pov

I didn't gamble.

Tonight I had nothing left to lose.

Camilla found us a spot at the bar and ordered without asking me and I drank what she put in front of me. The music was loud enough to displace thought, which was the only thing I needed from it. The crowd moved and talked and the lights shifted overhead and I sat on a barstool and felt slightly outside of my own body in the way that sometimes happened after significant events, like a small delay had opened up between the thing happening and the self experiencing it.

"How are you doing?" Camilla said.

"Fine," I said.

"You are not fine."

"I know," I said. "But I'm functioning, which is close enough."

She looked at me for a moment. Then she ordered me another drink.

"He was blackmailing Mark," I said.

"I know. You told me in the cab."

"I keep saying it because I can't make it land."

"It's going to take a while to land," she said. "Drink."

I drank.

"What are you going to do?" she said.

"Divorce him."

"Okay. And before that?"

"I don't know. Tonight I'm going to drink and not think about it."

"That," Camilla said, "is the first reasonable thing you've said in two hours."

She went to find the bathroom and I sat at the bar and looked at the room. The crowd was the kind that did not look at you unless they had decided you were worth looking at. The music was something low and layered that I could feel more than hear. I was on my third drink and my edges were softening slightly, which I was choosing to view as a medical necessity rather than irresponsibility.

I was on my third when I noticed the table.

Private. Far corner. A velvet partition that was more suggestion than wall. Three people sat around it with cards in their hands and a quiet around them that was distinct from the rest of the room, the way some conversations were distinct even in a crowded space. I couldn't see the stakes. I could see that two of the three players were uncomfortable and one was not.

The one who was not uncomfortable was wearing a mask.

Not a costume. An actual fitted mask, black, covering his face from nose to jaw. He was leaning back in his chair with the ease of someone who had never been in a room where he was not the most powerful person present and he was somehow managing to project this while also sitting completely still and doing nothing in particular.

I watched him for about thirty seconds.

Then I picked up my drink and walked over.

I told myself I was going because I was a lawyer and I was curious and the card game was interesting. I told myself it had nothing to do with the fact that he was the most controlled-looking person in the room and I was currently about as far from controlled as I had ever been.

I sat down across from him.

The other two players looked at each other. The masked man looked at me.

"Are you lost?" he said.

"No," I said.

"Then you're joining the game."

"I'm observing," I said.

"People who are only observing don't sit down."

He had a point. I put my drink on the table.

"Fine," I said. "Deal me in."

The other two players excused themselves within the next few minutes. I didn't watch them go.

"You cleared the table," I said.

"They were managing nerves badly," he said. "You're not nervous at all."

"I'm furious," I said. "It looks similar from the outside."

Something shifted in his expression. Just slightly. He picked up the deck and cut it with one hand.

"Bad night?" he said.

"Catastrophic," I said. "Deal."

He dealt.

We played. He was better than me. I knew it and he knew it and neither of us said anything about it. My father had taught me poker on Sunday mornings and the lessons had stuck, watch the hands more than the face, count what's been played, don't let the other person see you adjust. I applied all of it. He still had the advantage but he had to work for it.

"What do you do?" I said.

"I own things."

"What things?"

"The kind worth owning." He laid down a card. "You?"

"Lawyer."

"Corporate?"

"Yes."

"You lost today," he said.

I looked up from my cards. "How do you know that?"

"You came in angry and you've been drinking steadily but you're still sharp. That's someone processing a professional loss, not a personal one." He paused. "Or both."

I looked at my hand.

"Both," I said.

We played two more rounds without talking. The music from the floor changed tempo. Someone laughed loudly somewhere to our left and then the sound faded.

"What would you bet," he said, "if you decided to go reckless."

"Everything," I said.

"Everything."

"I have not historically been a reckless person," I said. "Tonight feels like a reasonable exception."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he said, "One hand. Your bet."

I looked at my cards. They were not good. They were, in fact, quite bad.

"Ten thousand," I said.

The silence between us was very complete.

He laid his hand on the table face up.

I looked at it. Then I looked at mine.

"I don't want ten thousand," he said.

The room was loud and I could hear my own heartbeat and the partition beside us was moving slightly in the airflow from somewhere and none of those details were the most present thing in my awareness.

"What do you want?" I said.

He looked at me with those dark, steady eyes above the mask.

"You," he said.

Before either of us could move, something erupted at the far side of the bar. Glass breaking, then shouting, then the crowd shifting in the sudden collective way of people navigating between watching and leaving. Camilla appeared at my shoulder as if she had been waiting for this exact moment.

"VIP," she said. "Come on."

"Camilla.."

"Now, Sera." She had my arm and was already moving.

She pulled me through the parting crowd and up a staircase I hadn't noticed before and through a door into a space that was cooler and quieter than the floor below. I was still catching my breath when I turned and saw what she had already seen.

Across the VIP lounge, in a private alcove that was less private than its occupant had perhaps believed.

was Pamela Salvador.

My mother-in-law.

And she was very much not in any situation that could be explained away.