This Is War - Chapter 9 - The Dice Door
I opened the safe slowly, not sure what would pop out. Was I about to get hit with a giant dildo, like some sort of weird jack-in-the-box? Nope. I didn’t get hit with anything. The only thing inside was a huge pile of casino chips.
I broke the gold seal and pulled out the card. It had the dice symbol at the top, and then a few lines of text:
Welcome to the Club Onyx Casino!
Your challenge is simple:
Double these chips. If you do, they’re all yours.
Challenge? Damn it! So much for getting lucky. “How do you think I double them?” I asked. “By selling my body to some handsome investment banker?”
“I mean…that’s one option. I’m loving your energy right now. But I think you’re probably just supposed to gamble. Since we’re in a casino and all.”
“Ha, right,” I said as casually as possible.
“I was just messing with you.” What is wrong with me?
! Running around a sex club in lingerie was messing with my head.
And it was possible that double-fisting that champagne had been a little aggressive.
Speaking of which… I flagged down the nearest waitress and plucked another drink off her tray.
“So what’s your game?” asked Chastity. “Blackjack? Craps? Poker?”
“Hmmm…” There was a huge crowd around both craps tables.
Pushing through crowds wasn’t for me, so that was out.
Same for the roulette wheels. Not that it really mattered.
I’d never been to a casino before. I had pretty much no idea how any of these games worked. “Let’s start with the slot machines.”
We shoveled my chips into Chastity’s oversized purse and headed to the slots. The sign above the machines promised a million-dollar jackpot. All we had to do was get four of a kind. That was pretty likely, right?
I put a chip in and pulled the lever. The symbols spun and spun and then settled one by one. Lollipop, lollipop, heart, and… Is that a pair of jelly donuts? I studied the final symbol. Nope. It’s boobs.
“Oh yeah!” yelled Chastity as chips poured out of her machine. “Give me those big black dicks!”
She’d gotten three big black dicks and one foot. According to the payout chart, three-of-a-kind was worth $5000. Not a bad start.
It was all downhill from there. Chastity and I lost on our next 20 spins.
Seriously, every single spin was a big fat nothing.
We didn’t even get a two-of-a-kind! And just like that, we’d lost $15K.
Granted, it wasn’t our money to begin with.
But still. If we could get it up to $200K, we’d get to keep it all.
And then I could walk into BIMG and flip a desk and tell those fuckers that I quit.
Or, you know…not do any of that and just keep working there like the good little employee that I was.
I was about to pull the lever again when a douchy guy in a white tux leaned on my machine.
He looked like the kind of person who loved to steal promotions from more qualified women.
I wished there was a candle nearby. Unlike Matthew Caldwell, this arrogant guy was the type of person who should 100% be set on fire.
I wanted him to light up like a Christmas tree.
I pressed my lips together. Apparently losing lots of money made me a little bit of a pyromaniac.
And I was scared of pyromaniacs. Why did I keep leaving my mini fire extinguisher at home? !
“Hey ladies,” he said, shamelessly staring at my breasts. “Looks like you’ve hit a bit of a dry spell.”
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing his arm off my machine. “I’m trying to win a jackpot here.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
I pulled the lever. No matching symbols. Not even one big black dick. Damn it! How was I so bad at this?
The guy shook his head and put one of his own coins in the slot. “Maybe this will change your luck.”
“Dude, take a hint,” said Chastity. “She’s not into you. Paying for one spin isn’t going to get you laid.”
I started to blush. “Actually, we were just about to uh…go play poker. The machine is all yours.” I yanked on Chastity’s arm to get her to stand up with me.
We made it about three steps before a siren started blaring right behind us. I turned around. My machine was lit up with a bajillion strobe lights. Four breast symbols were showing and the JACKPOT sign above it was flashing.
“Are you freaking kidding me?!” I yelled.
Four topless cocktail waitresses in the weird elephant masks came out of nowhere carrying a treasure chest overflowing with chips.
“Your winnings, sir,” said one of the girls.
“A million dollars and four lovely pairs of breasts,” added another. They all waved their hands over their boobs as if they were showing off a prize on a game show.
“So the symbols correspond to what you win?” asked Chastity. “Man, I was so close to getting four big black dicks!”
“It’s a shame he got the boobs instead of the dicks,” I said.
Seeing his treasure carried by four naked men would have made me slightly less depressed about missing out on the jackpot.
But then I would have been sad that I wasn’t getting railed by the four hot guys.
Seriously, what the hell am I saying? I needed to stop it with the champagne.
Although…I blamed Tanner for my current wanting four men mood.
He’d left me and I’d become a horny spinster and I hated his perfect disappearing face.
Chastity laughed. “So poker next, huh?”
Thinking about Tanner made my stomach churn. And whenever that happened, I thought about when I Incident #4’d all over Dr. Lyons. I was spiraling. “Or maybe we should just dump all our chips on the floor and leave.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because we’re gonna lose them all anyway.
Clearly today is just not my day. First I lost the promotion to Xander Frost, and now I just lost a million dollars to that jerk.
And then there’s the little issue of me not knowing the first thing about poker.
All I know is that you try to get 21. Or is it five of a kind? ”
Chastity gave me a funny look. “Wow, okay. Blackjack is where you try to get 21. And it’s impossible to get five of a kind in poker. There’s only four of each card.”
“I rest my case. Do they have a table for Uno? I’ll freaking own everyone in that.”
“Since this is a casino instead of a five-year-old’s birthday party, I think it’s safe to assume that they don’t have Uno.
But poker is even better. Come on…I’m a beast at it.
I’ll double our money in no time.” She pulled me over to a table and forced me to sit.
The dealer dealt us in on the next hand.
We had two aces. Is that good? It seemed good. Chastity whispered in my ear that I should play it. So I pushed a bunch of my chips into the center. Everyone else at the table immediately folded.
“What the hell?” hissed Chastity.
“What?” I said. “I won the hand. Isn’t that the goal?”
Chastity shook her head. “You had the best possible starting hand. And by bidding so high, you telegraphed that to everyone at the table.”
“Since when are you a poker expert?”
“Since always. Daddy and his friends love to play poker. At least…they did. Until freshman year of high school when I took all their money. Now follow my instructions and we can do the same to all these losers.”
Everyone at the table was staring at us.
“I’m not falling for this trick,” said a serious-looking dude hiding behind a pair of aviators. “I know a sandbagger when I see one.”
“Sandbagger?” I asked. “Is he implying our boobs feel like sandbags?” I grabbed one of my boobs but it still felt normal and un-sandbaggy. Everyone was staring at me groping myself. I immediately dropped my hand.
Chastity laughed. “No. But props for the Forty-Year-Old Virgin reference.” She high-fived me. “What he meant was that he thought we’re pretending like we don’t know how to play.”
“I don’t…”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. He gathered his chips and left the table.
Screw you too.
We went back to playing. Things started off shaky, but after a while we came up with a system of signals. And then we got on a roll. In a flash, we cleaned out all three of the guys at the table. Our bankroll was up to $180K. We’re so close!
But then Cole sat down. I almost didn’t recognize him out of his liftman uniform.
I grabbed another drink from a passing waitress.
“I see you found the dice door,” said Cole. “And by the looks of it, you’re doing quite well.”
“Yup,” said Chastity. “We only need 20K more. And it’s going to be a pleasure taking it from you.”
Cole raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see about that.” He slid on some sunglasses and rolled up his sleeves. Just as I suspected, tribal tattoos snaked up his forearms. I wanted to trace them with my tongue and see where they stopped. Oh God, I’m so drunk.
I shook my head and focused back on the task at hand. I couldn’t let him distract me.
The next dozen hands passed without much action. I won a few chips, then he took them back. Then I got them back. And so on.
Then we got dealt a king of hearts and a jack of spades. Chastity kicked my chair - our secret signal that I had a good hand.
I slow played it just like she’d taught me.
The flop (Chastity’s fancy name for when the dealer flipped the first three of five cards) gave us a straight.
A straight! Unless something went horribly wrong, we were definitely going to win.
The best part? I’d played my bets perfectly, slowly tricking Cole into risking $50K on this hand.
So if we won, we’d be well over the threshold to cash out our chips.
I was already dreaming of buying a new TV with the winnings.
I was determined to binge-watch season 3 of Riverdale on nothing less than an 80-inch screen.
“All in,” said Cole, leaning forward and pushing all his chips into the center of the table. He lowered his glasses and stared into my soul. I could either call him and risk all my chips too, or fold and let him take my 50 grand.
“He’s bluffing,” I said to Chastity.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yes?” I did not sound sure.
She shook her head. “I think we should fold. Live to fight another day.”
“What?!” I couldn’t believe she was being such a chicken. “Are you blind?” I showed her our cards again.
“He could have...”
I didn’t let her finish. There was no way I was going to let Cole bluff us. “Call.” I pushed all my chips into the center.
Cole flashed me his devilish grin. “Bold move.”
I smiled back as I flipped my cards over. “Read them and weep, buster.” Buster?
“Oh,” said Cole. “King high straight. Very impressive. Not sure that’s worth risking your body, though.”
“Excuse me?”
He dug through my chips until he found one engraved with the dice symbol.
“So you found a chip with some dice on it,” I said. “So what?”
His devilish grin got even more devilish. “You didn’t read the whole card, did you?”
“Of course I did.” I fished the envelope out of Chastity’s purse and read it again. “Welcome to the Club Onyx Casino! Your challenge is simple: Double these chips. If you do, they’re all yours.”
Cole reached over and flipped the card. There was more writing on the back:
Be careful, though.
If someone wins your dice chip, they own your body until sunrise.
Do you dare risk it all?
I read it again. And again. Shit. Shit, shit, shit ! What the hell had I gotten myself into?