The legends said Josephine Cross lived in a glass penthouse in the sky, guarded by men with machine guns. Reality was much grimmer. I found myself in a desolate trailer park on the jagged outskirts of Las Vegas, where the wind carried nothing but red dust and the stench of broken dreams.
I stood before trailer number 4B, a rusted aluminum box that looked like it had been through a war. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, harder, the metal rattling under my fist.
"Go away unless you're selling thin mints or salvation!" a gravelly voice barked from inside. "I'm not buying either, and I've got a shotgun aimed at the door!"
"I'm not here for your soul, Josephine," I shouted back, trying to project a confidence I didn't feel. "I'm here to buy your brain. I have fifty thousand dollars in cash and a debt that needs a miracle."
The door creaked open just a crack. A single eye, grey and sharp as flint, peered out at me. Then, the chain rattled, and the door swung wide.
The woman standing there was a ghost of the icon I'd seen in old gambling magazines. She wore a stained grey tank top and cargo shorts, a cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of her mouth. But it was her left hand that caught my attention—the ring finger and pinky were missing, leaving jagged scars that spoke of a brutal debt once paid.
"You're just a kid," she scoffed, blowing a thick cloud of smoke into my face. "Go back to your dorm room and cry into a textbook, sweetheart. This isn't a game for little girls."
"My mother is in a grave, and my father is a hostage of the Syndicate," I said, stepping closer, refusing to flinch from the smoke. "I have thirty days to make five million dollars. If I go back to my dorm, he dies."
Josephine fell silent. She analyzed me with the terrifying intensity of a professional gambler reading a bluff. Finally, she stepped aside. "Come in. Don't touch anything."
The interior was cramped and smelled of bourbon, but in the center sat a pristine mahogany table covered in high-grade green felt. A single deck of Bee playing cards sat perfectly squared in the middle.
"Show me," she commanded.
I picked up the deck. My hands were fast—I'd spent years practicing card tricks to impress my father. I shuffled with a flashy riffle, performed a decent false cut, and dealt a round of cards, slipping a bottom card to myself as the final move. It was the best I could do.
"Garbage," Josephine said, her voice flat. Before I could protest, her three-fingered hand blurred. One second the cards were in a pile; the next, they were fanned out in a perfect, mesmerizing arc across the felt. "You're relying on your fingers. That's why you'll end up in a ditch. A real mechanic doesn't use her hands to cheat, Ivy. She uses her opponent's eyes. She uses their greed, their lust, and their arrogance."
She walked around the table, her presence filling the small space. She stopped inches from me, her eyes boring into mine. "You're beautiful. In this world, that's a weapon, but it's also a death sentence. Men will look at your body and forget to watch your hands. They'll underestimate you because you have a pretty face. But eventually, their hands will want to wander. What will you do then?"
I thought of Lucian's voice on the phone. I thought of my father's empty hospital bed. "I'll break their fingers," I said, my voice dropping an octave.
Josephine laughed—a dry, hacking sound that ended in a cough. "Wrong. You let them think they're touching you. You let them believe they've already won. You make them feel like kings. And while they're busy celebrating their victory, you slit their throats and take every cent they own."
She snatched the deck and threw it at my chest. The cards scattered across the floor like falling leaves.
"Pick them up. If you can shuffle that deck with one hand—one hand, Ivy—in under five seconds, I'll teach you how to stay alive. If not, get out of my sight before I decide to call the Syndicate and sell you to them myself."
I knelt on the dusty floor, my heart hammering against my ribs. My journey into the dark didn't start at a high-stakes table in a tuxedo. It started on my knees, picking up cards in a trailer park. I grabbed the first card—the Queen of Spades.
I am Ivy Sterling, I whispered to the empty room. And I am going to win.