Violence happens in my world. Not as often as people think, but often enough that the reputation sustains itself.
I wouldn't have sat down across from him and had a conversation.
"He's either part of the ring or he isn't," I say. "If he is, keeping him contained gives us leverage. If he isn't, he might be able to help us find who is. Either way, letting him go tonight would have been a wasted opportunity."
"And he’s your prime match." Viktor doesn't phrase it as a question.
I ignore his comment. "He offered to look at the data. He says he can identify the pattern. If he's lying, we'll know soon enough and we can deal with him then. If he's telling the truth—"
Viktor leans forward. "The ring could have put him here deliberately. It's exactly what I'd do. It’s not a secret you had a prime match. All they had to do was track him down."
I've thought of this. I thought of it in the elevator on the way up with Theo's scent still thick in my nose. I don’t really care. Which is the problem.
"Possibly," I say. "He was eighteen when he registered. Homeless. No connections. We need to find out where he’s been for the last eight years. "
I sit down at the desk and open my laptop. The screen throws light across the surface and I type the name from the fake ID. Theo Garnett. "I'm running the alias now. Let's see what he's been doing. Make sure whoever you’ve sent to the motel checks all the hidey holes for more ID. This won’t be his only one."
“Already done.”
Viktor watches me work.
The search returns almost nothing. I don’t have access to everything, of course, but casinos work together to identify these guys. I get two hits on him under variations of his name in our shared databases. He’s been caught card counting twice in eight years. Both times, he was simply banned and sent on his way. Twice in almost a decade is impressive. He’s good at what he does.
I broaden the search. Try variations of his name and find nothing. Nothing. This man moves through the world without leaving a mark on it. No family. No contacts. No friends. No footprint at all.
I sit back and look at the screen.
I know his real history. I’d ordered a profile after he ran after the match. His mother died when he was nine and his fatherwhen he was twelve. After that, the file became a list of foster placements until he aged out of the system.
I didn't look for him. But why should I? I’d never met him. He wasn’t a person to me, just a potential match. If he didn’t want a match with me, then why should I disrupt my life making him?
I had an empire that was in the middle of a succession and a father that was being a complete pain in the ass about every choice I made.
What was I going to do? Drop everything to chase an eighteen-year-old omega across the country because the damn Bureau said our pheromones aligned?
Besides, the last thing I needed was a prime match. Attachment is weakness: a point of failure that your enemies will find and exploit, and when they do, everything you've built comes down.
My father has said many things to me over the course of my life. Most of them I've forgotten or chosen to forget. But there is one I haven't.
I was fourteen. He'd brought me to this office for the first time. It was a Saturday and the casino was quiet below us and my father was showing me the security feeds, the way the cameras covered every angle.
"The house always wins," he said. "Do you know why?"
I said I didn't.
"Because the house has the power. The house has the building and the money and the staff and the cameras and the security and the lawyers. The house will be here tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. The player has one night and whatever cash is in his pocket. Even if he wins, he'll come back, because he cares. He wants things. Everyone knows that the house always wins. The difference is hope. He gets reckless because he’s hoping he is going to be different. The house feels nothing. It just sits there and waits for the player to lose."
He put his hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm and the weight of it pressed into the joint.
"You are the house," he said. "The moment you start wanting things, you become the player. And the player always loses in the end."
I close the laptop and pull up the surveillance system instead. The security feeds are archived by floor, by camera, by timestamp. I find table fourteen and scroll back to 20:47: the point the shift manager first flagged the play.
The angle is from above and to the left. Not perfect. Theo chose his seat well. The image shows the top of his head, the slope of his shoulders in the too-big shirt, his hands on the felt. The dealer slides cards. The man to his left receives a seven. The woman in the red dress gets a king. Theo gets a ten.
I watch him not react.
That's what I notice first. Everyone else at the table has a tell. The man on the left pushes his chips forward with his thumb when he's confident and pulls them with his fingers when he's not. The woman in red touches her collarbone when her hand is strong. Even the dealer has a rhythm. She's marginally faster on the deal when the shoe is cold, impatient to get through the dead hands.
