He flipped the card over.
Cheng smacked his forehead, the sound as final as the game’s result.
Yiran smiled. “Twenty-one. The house wins.”
Sweets let out a low whistle. “Nice. King of spades.”
The dark king, Yiran thought out of the blue. His smile suddenly felt forced. The game had ended. There was nothing left to look forward to.
Theo and Sweets handed over their stacks of twenty-dollar bills without hesitation, but Cheng was still clutching his face.
“Pony up, Nicky.”
“But I—”
“Shh.” Yiran held a finger up. “You knew this might happen when you said you wanted in. My game, my rules.”
Cursing, Cheng removed his watch. “My dad’s going to kill me. He got this for my sixteenth birthday—it’s worth more than your freaking car.”
“No one’s interested in your sob story, darling.”
Muttering under his breath, Cheng handed over his watch. Yiran heard the wordassholeand possibly something worse. Grabbing his bag from the deck chair, Cheng left in a huff.
Sweets whistled, peering at the watch Cheng had left behind. “Collector’s edition. That boy’s got some nerve. What are you going to do with it?”
“Same thing I always do,” Yiran replied, shuffling the cards.
Which was nothing at all.
The treasured possessions he won from his schoolmates were piled up in the corner of his wardrobe. Useless trinkets he never touched. He thought about selling them from time to time. Never got the energy to go through with it. Rumor at school was that Yiran funded his lavish drug-filled lifestyle with the sales of his winnings. It was insulting; he would never ingest a drug intentionally. He couldn’t bear to relinquish control of his own mind, not when his grandfather controlled everything else. But he did relish the myth of the person Song Yirancould be, even if it was far from the truth.
“Your babysitter’s here.”
Yiran looked up. Theo was pointing to a man in a tidy black suit who had appeared by the entrance of the roof deck. The man wore a pair of generic sunglasses over his generic face. His head was slightly bent, a hand by his ear like he was listening to instructions from his earpiece.
Yiran shoved the pack of cards and Cheng’s watch into his messenger bag.
“Hey, Robert,” he called out.
He didn’t know or care if the man’s name was Robert. His grandfather’s people were all the same to him. An endless stream of men inblack suits who chaperoned Master Song’s precious grandson. Well,chaperonewas a euphemism, and Yiran wasn’t precious. His grandfather was merely afraid Yiran would besmirch the reputation of the esteemed Song family and the Exorcist Guild.
The man in the suit approached. “It’s time to head home.” He added, “Er shaoye.”
It was lip service. The honorific was used, but the man didn’t lower his head by even an inch. Yiran got the message: he wasn’t worthy of real respect.
“It’s still early. I don’t have to be home yet,” he said. But his feet were already moving. No one kept the Song patriarch waiting.
The man kept in step with him. “Master Song wants to see you before dinner. It’ll take thirty minutes in this traffic to get back to the mansion.”
“I can do it in fifteen.”
“Master Song instructed me to drive.”
“My car—”
“Has been towed.”
Yiran almost dropped his bag. “What? But I—”
