Chapter 48: The Subtle Art of Winning
Every breath I took dragged dust and tension into my lungs.
Oberen’s trembling fingers hovered over the card he had just plucked from my hand and slammed onto the table, not daring to flip it just yet, as if even touching it might snap the last thread of his sanity.
I watched him, still and patient, with Jazmin resting in my lap like a decadent afterthought.
Around us, the den watched with dead eyes—spectators too broken to gamble, too haunted to leave. They’d seen men lose everything here. They’d never seen a man like me.
Oberen tapped the back of the card with one yellowed fingernail. Just once. Just enough to make a sound that rang in my ears like the start of a sermon.
His eyes, bloodshot and glistening with anticipation, locked onto mine.
"You’ve got a fine face for failure, boy," he rasped, voice thick with smug rot. "It’s the kind they carve into cautionary statues."
I said nothing.
He chuckled, dry as bone dust. "You ever watch a man break from the inside out? Most scream. Some laugh. The smart ones don’t make a sound—they just look down, realize they were never special, and finally shut the hell up."
He leaned in, the edge of the card trembling just slightly between his fingers. "And you thought you could bluff me. Thought you’d swagger in here with your poet’s coat and your cocky little grin and outplay me. I’ve gutted men who played cleaner games than you."
His grin widened, like the jaws of something that had mistaken me for prey.