Oberen planted his foot into the sand with enough force to kick up a sharp spray of grit, the grains flashing briefly in the light before settling back down around his boots.
His stance widened, aggressive and braced, as though the ground itself had become an enemy to be challenged, before he jabbed an accusatory finger toward me with all the righteous fury of a man who'd just discovered his certainty was flammable.
"You manipulative little whore!" he roared, spittle flying with enough velocity to qualify as projectile weaponry. "You think you can waltz in here with your pretty face and your clever little tricks and accuse me—me—of running illegal operations?"
His voice climbed higher with each accusation, gaining volume and losing coherence in equal measure. "You're bluffing! You have to be bluffing! Nobody could possibly have obtained documentation of—of something that doesn't exist! You're making shit up because you got lucky with the crowd, because you managed to con a bunch of drunken nobles into throwing money at you, and now you're trying to leverage that into something bigger by inventing crimes I've never committed! Money laundering? Illegal ledgers? What utter bullshit!"
He was gesturing wildly now, his bandaged hand waving through the air like he was conducting an invisible orchestra dedicated entirely to his rage.
I rolled my eyes with enough force that I briefly worried about retinal damage, because honestly, this performance was getting tedious and we both knew the truth lurking beneath his theatrical denials.
"Now's not the time to dance around the topic," I said flatly, "I have the evidence. That's all that matters. Everything else is just noise you're making to feel better about how thoroughly you've been played."
Oberen's mouth worked soundlessly for several seconds, his brain clearly attempting to process multiple catastrophic realizations simultaneously and struggling to prioritize which one deserved his panic first.
"Wait—that means you—this entire time... the match, the wager, the fingers, the crowd betting—all of it was—you weren't actually trying to—" His voice was climbing in pitch as comprehension dawned. "You never cared about winning or losing, did you? This wasn't about the money or proving yourself at all—this was all just—"
"A distraction!" I interrupted cheerfully, bouncing slightly on my toes because standing still when revealing clever schemes felt like a waste of perfectly good dramatic energy. "Yes! Exactly! Gods, I'm so glad you're finally catching up—I was starting to worry we'd be here all night."
I gestured grandly at the empty air between us. "The match was merely theater—entertaining theater, admittedly, and significantly more painful than I'd initially budgeted for, but theater nonetheless. My real objective was taking place behind the scenes while you were too busy gloating about psychological dominance to notice your entire operation being dismantled."
I paused for effect, savoring the moment like fine wine. "You see, Byron was quite helpful in this, actually. Before his untimely demise—well, 'untimely' might be generous given how thoroughly he deserved it. He sold you out completely. Gave me detailed information about your money laundering operation, the location of your incriminating ledgers, the security measures protecting them, everything I needed to orchestrate a proper theft."
I let that sink in before continuing. "And conveniently, I used this game as a way to pull your two most valuable assets away from guarding the place. Can't have elite combat specialists interfering with a simple break-in when they're busy standing around watching their boss lose his fingers to prove a point."
Oberen stood there completely motionless, his mouth hanging open in an expression that transcended mere shock and entered territory that might've charitably be described as an "existential meltdown in progress."
Around us, the crowd had begun to murmur—not the excited chatter of entertained spectators, but something darker, more focused, as hundreds of minds tried to piece together what was happening from fragments of overheard conversation and observed evidence.
"Did he say money laundering?" someone whispered, their voice carrying through the sudden hush with uncomfortable clarity.
"Illegal ledgers?" another added, the words rippling out through the assembled masses.
"Byron sold him out?" a third voice contributed, tinged with a hint of scandalized delight.
"Is this entire casino built on criminal enterprise?" The murmurs grew louder, building on themselves, speculation feeding into conspiracy, theories feeding into wild accusations, until the air itself felt thick with judgment and mounting outrage.
Oberen's eyes danced frantically around the crowd, darting from face to face as he registered their expressions shifting from curiosity, to suspicion, to something approaching hostile understanding. He was cornered now—trapped between my blackmail and the court of public opinion, both closing in with equal menace.
I watched him calculate his options with the desperate speed you only see in people whose backs are pressed firmly against walls made of their own terrible decisions.
His jaw clenched, his remaining fingers curled into a fist, and something hardened in his expression as survival instinct overrode caution and he made his choice.
"Seize him!" he shouted, his voice cracking slightly on the second word but carrying enough authority that his Velvet guards responded instantly. "Get that envelope! Now!"
The guards moved without hesitation.
I'd like to say I tracked their movement, that my enhanced sight let me follow their trajectory and anticipate their destination, but that would be a lie.
One heartbeat they were standing beside Oberen in flawless formation, solid and unmistakably present, and in the very next they were gone. Not moved. Not blurred. Simply erased from the space they'd occupied, leaving behind two enormous plumes of sand that detonated upward with a concussive boom that rattled straight through my ribcage and sent my ears ringing.
The displacement was so violent, so instantaneous, that the air itself seemed confused about what had just happened, rushing in to fill the vacuum their movement created with an audible whoosh that sent a few nearby spectators stumbling back in horror.
I spun just in time to see the outcome.
Brutus was already restrained, both guards flanking him with cruel symmetry, one on either side, their grips locked in place as if he'd been designed to fit there.
He thrashed, muscles bunching as panic poured strength into him in a raw, desperate surge, but it made no difference. The Velvets didn't even sway. They held him with effortless control, the kind that didn't need to assert itself because resistance had never been part of the calculation.
The male Velvet reached up with his free hand, plucking the envelope from Brutus's grasp with casual ease, his movements precise and economical as he tore it open with a single sharp motion.
His eyes went wide as he looked inside, his expression shifting from professional efficiency, to confusion, to something approaching alarm in rapid succession.
"It's empty!" he shouted down toward Oberen.
Oberen's face fell into deep confusion then, his brow furrowing as he tried to process this unexpected development, his mind clearly racing to understand how this changed the equation and what it meant for his situation.
The crowd's murmuring intensified, speculation building on itself as hundreds of voices tried to make sense of contradictory information—evidence that didn't exist, threats without substance, a con that seemed to be eating itself from the inside out.
My snickering cut clean through the tension.
It started small—just a quiet chuckle, barely audible over the crowd—but grew steadily louder as I let myself enjoy the moment, satisfaction bubbling up from my chest until it demanded release through increasingly undignified sounds of amusement.
Oberen's head snapped toward me with enough force I swear I heard his neck crack, his expression hovering somewhere between fury and desperate confusion.
"What's so funny?" he demanded, the words coming out strangled. "What are you laughing about? You had nothing! The envelope was empty! Your entire blackmail scheme just collapsed! So explain to me what about this situation you find amusing!"
I let my laughter taper off naturally, taking my time about it, before meeting his eyes with a smile that carried the weight of absolute certainty.
"Oh, Oberen," I said, "You beautiful, trusting fool. Did you really think I'd put the actual evidence in that envelope? That I'd leave my only leverage sitting in Brutus's hands where your guards could just snatch it away and destroy it in an instant?"
I shook my head slowly, savoring his dawning horror. "I already sent the contents to another colleague—someone you don't know about, someone who's currently making their way toward the Spire as we speak. Unless I send the signal to stand down, those documents will be delivered in full to the tower's regulatory officials within the hour."
Oberen's breathing started coming faster—short, shallow gasps that made his chest heave like he was trying to inhale the entire room's worth of air and failing miserably at the attempt. His eyes had gone wide, pupils dilated so far they'd nearly consumed his irises as a fine sheen of sweat began forming across his forehead despite the relatively cool air.
"No," he whispered, the word barely audible. "No, that's not—you can't—there has to be—"
"Let me explain the position you're in," I continued, because apparently explaining people's hopeless situations was becoming my new favorite hobby. "If I released this blackmail outright, if I simply threatened to expose you unless you handed over your assets immediately, you'd lose everything regardless of whether you complied or not. Compliance means surrendering your casino, your wealth, your power. Refusal means the evidence gets released and regulatory authorities seize everything while criminal charges get filed. Either way, you walk away with nothing."
I paused, letting him absorb that logic. "And I strongly suspect—given everything I've learned about you tonight—that if faced with losing everything, you'd rather go out leaving me empty-handed than give me the satisfaction of claiming your empire as spoils. Am I wrong?"
Oberen said nothing, but the way his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened told me everything I needed to know about the accuracy of that assessment.
"So that's why I'm proposing this final gamble instead," I explained, my tone shifting into something almost reasonable. "One final game. If you win, you collect not only my entire fortune—all the wealth I've accumulated tonight plus whatever I walked in with—but also complete immunity from my blackmail. I'll send the signal to my colleague, the documents get destroyed, and you walk away clean with enough money to solve your financial problems and then some. Your secrets stay buried, your operation continues, and I disappear from your life forever having learned an expensive lesson about challenging people above my weight class."
There was a long, heavy silence as Oberen processed this, his mind clearly working through the implications and searching desperately for alternatives that didn't exist. Finally, he spoke, his voice flat and defeated in a way that suggested the fight had temporarily drained out of him. "I don't have a choice, do I?"
I nodded in confirmation, keeping my expression neutral because rubbing it in his face seemed unnecessary when he'd already grasped the fundamental hopelessness of his position.
Oberen took a deep breath, then another, visibly composing himself as he forced his shoulders back and his chin up in a pantomime of confidence he clearly didn't feel.
"Fine," he said, the word coming out clipped and hard. "One final game. Winner takes everything, loser walks away with nothing but regrets and whatever dignity they can salvage from the wreckage. What did you have in mind?"
I made a show of tapping my chin thoughtfully, as though this were a spontaneous decision rather than something I'd planned down to the smallest detail.
"You know what?" I said slowly, "I'm feeling generous. You pick. Choose whatever game you want. Seems only fair, given that I picked the terms and the stakes."
Oberen's eyes lit with something that looked disturbingly like manic delight, his expression shifting from defeated acceptance to predatory excitement so quickly it gave me whiplash just witnessing the transition.
A smile began spreading across his face—not the polite, professional expression he wore for patrons and public appearances, but something raw and genuine, threaded through with the kind of dark anticipation you see in people who've just realized they might actually win after all.
He let out a soft chuckle, low and dangerous, the sound slipping out like a private indulgence he hadn't meant to share. It deepened as his smile widened, stretching into something that showed far too many teeth to be reassuring.
"In that case," he said, and I felt it immediately—the shift in his voice, the careful settling into a cadence meant not for argument but for revelation—"allow me to educate you about this casino's history."
He spread his arms slightly, palms open, not in surrender but in invitation, as though he were welcoming us all into a story he'd been dying to tell. "This casino has stood for over thirty years. Three decades of gambling, fortune, ruin, triumph, and despair all playing out across these very floors. And in that time, there has been one game—one game above all others—that has been used to settle the highest of stakes, the most desperate of wagers, the bets where everything truly hangs in the balance."
The crowd leaned forward as one, their collective attention captured by Oberen's theatrical delivery. Conversations died mid-word. Even the Velvets stilled, statuesque and watchful.
Against my better judgment, I felt my own attention snag, my instincts bristling as something old and dangerous took shape in the air between us. I hated to admit it—but Oberen knew exactly how to command a room when he chose to.
"It's not a game of skill," he continued, his voice dropping into something almost reverent. "Not in the traditional sense. It requires no mathematical genius, no ability to read opponents, no talent for deception or psychology. What it requires—what it demands—is something far more primal. It tests your nerve. Your courage. Your willingness to stake your life alongside your fortune. A game where you stare death in the face and dare it to blink first. A game that reduces all the complexity of gambling down to its most essential question. How much are you truly willing to risk?"
Oberen turned smoothly toward the shadowed edge of the sand pit and lifted his hand, gesturing with the casual authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question. He waved toward the overseer—who'd been standing so motionless I'd almost forgotten he was there.
"Bring it," he commanded simply.
The robed figure inclined his head at once, understanding flickering through that obscured posture without a word needing to be exchanged. Then he turned and moved toward the main hall, gliding across the stone with that same unsettling smoothness that made it difficult to tell whether his feet were touching the ground at all.
He disappeared into the shadows, the crowd tracking his movement with rapt attention, and returned moments later carrying something small and black, roughly the size of his hand, cradled in his palms with the kind of careful reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts or unexploded ordnance.
As he drew closer, emerging from the dim hallway into the light of the pit, I got my first clear look at what he was carrying and felt recognition slam into me with physical force.
It was the box.
The same black box Willow had stolen from the front desk attendant after seducing him senseless, the same box who's contents I'd spent hours working with in Jazmin's quarters, hands cramping, mind burning, body pushed to its limits as I bent its secrets to my will.
The lacquered surface caught the magical light with a dull, almost reluctant gleam—unmarked, unassuming, its only distinguishing feature the small brass latch holding it firmly closed.
It looked harmless. Ordinary. And yet, seeing it there—here, elevated to the role of centerpiece in what Oberen clearly believed was our final confrontation—I felt the pieces clicking into place with such satisfying precision it almost made me laugh.
Oberen's eyes locked onto the box, his smile transforming into something approaching religious ecstasy as the overseer presented it to him.
"Let's see if fate favors the bold," he said, accepting the box with reverent hands. "or if it punishes the arrogant."
Looking at that box, knowing what waited inside, feeling the weight of every decision that had led to this moment pressing down on my shoulders, I found myself smiling too.
Because I'd planned for this. Prepared for this exact scenario. Spent those hours in darkness ensuring that when this moment arrived, fate wouldn't be nearly as random as Oberen believed.
The game was about to begin, and I'd already won.