My Married Roommate Asked Me to Give Her a Baby

By normal logic, Jack Carter understood the damage gambling could do. He should never have taught his son cheating techniques.

But Jack had never been a normal man.

He had seen too many ugly waves in his life, so he liked doing things backward.

In Jack's view, if he wanted Evan to stay away from gambling for life, lectures were useless. He had to break open the dirty tricks inside cheating, crush them into pieces, and show them to Evan bloody and raw.

Only after seeing how deep that water was would Evan learn to fear the table.

To be fair, the old man's method worked.

Evan had no interest in gambling at all.

He knew better than anyone that there was always someone better outside your little mountain. Once someone at a table truly wanted your money, no matter how good your skill was and no matter how ridiculous your luck seemed, they had ten thousand filthy ways to bury you.

The reason Evan made an exception tonight and sat down personally was simple.

First, he truly treated Wayne as a brother and wanted to take back the money Wayne's father had earned selling corn under the sun.

Second, his own pride had been stirred.

He wanted to see with his own eyes what level these outside cheaters had.

Across from him, the banker was still the bearded man who had beaten Wayne last night.

Seeing Evan sit down like he owned the place, the bearded man grinned and took a sip from the bottle of iced tea beside him.

"Well, well. New face."

He glanced sideways at Wayne hiding behind Evan.

"Fatty, you lost your underwear last night, so you brought backup tonight?"

Wayne immediately found confidence. He leaned over and started kneading Evan's shoulders like a devoted attendant.

"Damn right. Wash your necks and wait. My brother Evan is sweeping the table tonight. He's going to win even your underwear."

The bearded man spat a sunflower seed shell and laughed.

"Stop running your mouth. If you've got balls, play."

Evan did not waste words.

He took five hundred dollars from his pocket and exchanged it for plastic chips.

The game began.

Counting Evan, there were five players at the table. The bearded man was the banker. The dealer was a sleazy man missing two front teeth.

Cards were shuffled, cut, and dealt.

Three face-down cards landed before each player.

After dealing, the bearded man spoke first as banker.

He did not touch the edge of his cards.

"Blind ten."

The next player, a tall, thin man with gold-rim glasses, carefully peeled up the corner of his cards. After one glance, he shook his head and threw them into the dead pile.

Fold.

Then came the middle-aged man who had dragged Wayne earlier.

He looked at his cards, hesitated with a frown, and threw in twenty to call.

It was Evan's turn.

Since he had just arrived and did not yet understand their routine, Evan chose to play steadily first.

He covered his cards with one hand and lifted only a corner.

Not bad.

Ace of hearts, ace of spades, and a useless side card.

Pair of aces.

In three-card brag, that was already a powerful hand.

Evan threw in twenty chips.

The bald fat man after him looked at his cards, sighed, and folded.

Now only the bearded man, the middle-aged man, and Evan remained.

Evan watched the surroundings without changing expression.

Plenty of people stood around the table watching. Among them, a woman in a slit red dress stood out sharply.

She wore nude stockings, had a full, curving figure, and leaned against a pillar with a thin women's cigarette between her lips. Her eyes were lazy, but she watched the table with interest.

The second round of betting began.

It came back to the bearded man.

This time, he stopped betting blind. He picked up his cards and glanced at them.

Apparently satisfied, he placed them back face down and threw in twenty.

The middle-aged man called twenty.

Evan called twenty as well.

In the third round, the bearded man continued with another twenty without hesitation.

The middle-aged man began to waver.

His hand was not big, not small, stuck right in the most painful middle. If he kept calling, he might get butchered. If he folded, it felt like a waste.

After struggling, he gritted his teeth and threw twenty chips toward the bearded man.

"I open you."

The bearded man sneered and slapped his cards onto the table.

The middle-aged man stretched his neck to look, then his face went black. He scratched his head in frustration and threw his own cards away.

He had a pair of eights.

The bearded man beat him.

Now only the bearded man and Evan remained.

They pulled back and forth for two more rounds.

At the end of the second exchange, Evan chose not to drag it out.

"Open."

He revealed his pair of aces.

The bearded man looked at the two aces. A smug smile rose at the corner of his mouth. Slowly, he flipped over his cards.

Two of hearts, three of spades, four of diamonds.

The smallest mixed straight.

But according to the rules, a straight crushed a pair.

Evan lost.

The one hundred and twenty chips before him were swept away by the bearded man.

Behind him, Wayne was so anxious sweat poured down his forehead. He bent near Evan's ear and whispered, "Brother Evan... are you sure you can do this? Bad start."

"Shut your filthy mouth and keep massaging my shoulders."

Evan did not even turn his head.

The second hand was dealt.

This time, Evan changed tactics. He did not look at his cards and threw in ten blind.

The middle-aged man, still angry from the last loss, also bet blind.

The other two players looked and folded.

Once again, only the bearded man, the middle-aged man, and Evan remained, all betting blind.

That kind of round was the most exciting and tested nerve the hardest, because nobody knew what anyone else held.

After three full blind rounds, the bearded man finally lost patience. He picked up his cards, looked, and threw chips to open the middle-aged man.

This time his luck was bad. The middle-aged man's cards were bigger.

The bearded man cursed and folded.

Now Evan and the middle-aged man faced each other.

They looked at one another.

Evan threw in twenty to look at his cards.

After seeing them, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. He opened directly.

The middle-aged man had a mixed straight, seven, eight, nine.

Evan had three clubs.

Flush beat straight.

This hand, Evan won back more than two hundred with interest.

He casually pulled the chips before him and stacked them into a little pile.

"Damn! Brother Evan! Kill them!" Wayne stomped excitedly behind him.

For the third hand, Evan continued betting blind without looking.

His luck was decent. Although three players folded early and the pot was not large, he won a little with a pair of kings.

Fourth hand, Evan looked at his cards, called two rounds, and lost when opened.

Fifth hand, Evan went blind again and won.

After five hands in a row, Evan noticed a fatal pattern.

This was absolutely not coincidence.

Once he chose to look at his cards and ended up one-on-one with the bearded banker, Evan usually lost.

Why?

Evan replayed each round quickly in his mind.

As long as several players at the table looked at their cards, the bearded man would also look. And every time he folded, he did it cleanly, decisively, and at exactly the right moment, as if he had see-through eyes and could perfectly avoid all dangerous hands.

That meant someone behind the players was secretly reporting points to him.

To confirm the thought, Evan took out his silver windproof lighter.

With a crisp click, he lit a cigarette.

But after lighting it, he did not put the lighter back into his pocket.

He placed it casually on the table and toyed with it in his right hand.

Using the smooth, mirror-like metal surface of the lighter, Evan adjusted the angle.

There it was.

In the reflection, he saw a small-time punk in a black tank top standing in the crowd behind his right shoulder.

Ordinary onlookers at a gambling table craned their necks everywhere, trying to peek at every player's cards.

But this black-tank man was different.

His eyes were nailed to Evan's hand.

Every time Evan lifted the corner of his cards, the man's eyes moved with him.

Evan quietly swept his peripheral vision around the table and discovered that behind several other gamblers, there was also one lookout each.

Good.

This was not some lone trick.

This was organized cheating.

But how were they passing each player's card information to the bearded man?

Evan smoked slowly and watched every tiny movement around him.

Soon, he found the answer.

The missing-tooth dealer.

After dealing three cards to each player, the remaining deck was not placed quietly on the table. The dealer kept holding it, shuffling and cutting it over and over as if bored.

To normal eyes, he looked restless.

To someone who knew the trade, every shuffle method, cutting rhythm, and finger tap against the card edges was coded language.

He was reporting information to the bearded man.

Then how did the dealer know what the players held from across the table?

That relied on the lookouts standing behind the players.

Evan noticed that after those lookouts peeked at cards, their hands moved in extremely subtle ways.

Sometimes they rubbed their noses. Sometimes they scratched their chins. Sometimes they rubbed their eyes.

Evan had not fully decoded what each gesture meant yet, but there was no doubt.

That was their signal system.

The bearded man, as banker, could not keep staring at the outside signalers without exposing himself. So their pipeline worked like this:

The hidden lookouts peeked at cards and reported through face-touching signals.

The dealer, who seemed invisible after dealing, received those signals.

Then through shuffling movements, he told the bearded man what the biggest hand currently on the table was.

Finally, the bearded man decided whether to fold and cut losses or keep raising and slaughter the pig.

This assembly-line cheating technique could not guarantee one hundred percent victory, but the win rate was already terrifying.

As long as the game went long enough, they could stay unbeatable.

Evan exhaled smoke.

His eyes gradually turned cold.

Through the drifting smoke, he stared at the bearded man and the dealer.

Fine.

You like watching?

Tonight, I'll let you watch until your eyes bleed.

Author's Note:

This story will continue updating here.

If you want to read more, you can unlock it here:

/c/TYMercer

Thank you for reading.