Page 14 of Ace of Hearts

Levi

June

Las Vegas, USA

Everything’s going exactly according to plan.

Thomas and I are still in the game. Rose is still coaching me whenever I have time off. In the evenings, I practice alone in my room with music playing at full volume while she disappears who knows where. Probably blowing her first paycheck.

Every time I bump into Tito, I play the role I assumed at the start of the tournament.

I’m usually with Rose, and I’ve taken her hand so often now, it’s becoming a habit.

We act like the perfect couple, both sickeningly sweet and semi-indecent.

Tito might have had his doubts before, but now I notice his expression changing. He’s starting to believe it.

In his defense, we’re playing our parts so well, I’m almost starting to believe it myself. And that’s saying something.

I doubt Tito gets much sleep before 3 a.m., which is when my music switches off automatically.

My noise-canceling headphones have saved my life.

I bought some for Rose, too, even though her room is on the other side of the suite.

Thomas doesn’t need them—he falls asleep in three minutes flat whether the music’s playing or not.

I’ve paid the staff well to ignore the noise.

Given the bags under Tito’s eyes every morning, I think this tactic must be working. I also make sure I have a drink in my hand every time our paths cross. He looks down his nose at me, but I ignore him, enjoying a private laugh. I’m having a great time.

“Careful!” Rose cried out yesterday, catching hold of me as I stumbled on the hotel steps. “ Amore mio, ” she said. The Italian version of my love . “You should stop drinking so much ...”

“I’m fine.”

Tito was standing nearby. “Perhaps you should listen to your wife,” he interrupted with a nasty sneer.

Rose gave him a murderous look that almost made me laugh. But I merely straightened up, swayed on my heels, and flung my arm around her shoulders.

“Everything’s under control,” I mumbled.

As Rose helped me toward the escalator, I could feel Tito’s eyes boring into my back. Once the doors were closed behind us, I stood up straight with as much dignity as I could muster.

“How was my performance?”

Rose rolled her eyes, failing to hide her amusement. “I don’t understand why you’re wasting so much energy on something like this. It’s stupid.”

“I’ve got to have a little fun, you know.”

The more Tito thinks I’m letting myself go—drinking too much, having sex, and partying—the more he’ll drop his guard. Rose asked me if I really needed to do all this to beat him.

“I thought you were a man of honor.”

That remark hit home. My smile faded, and I replied curtly, “Honor is a two-way street.”

I don’t owe it to that lunatic to behave honorably.

A man who betrayed my family, and then destroyed it and left it in ruins, all the while boasting about what he’d done.

I owe him nothing. I’m acting honorably enough.

I refuse to cheat in order to beat him, if only to prove to my dead father that I’m worth more than both of them put together.

But as for the rest ... I don’t give a fuck.

This morning, I’m doing a required photoshoot.

I hate photoshoots. I don’t like posing while twenty pairs of eyes inspect me from all angles.

The photographer asks me to smile about twenty times, but the whole thing is a humiliating failure.

After an hour and a half, Thomas intervenes, bringing me my phone.

“You need to take this call.”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s Berezniki.”

I freeze. Thomas didn’t say it loudly, but I understood. It’s a call from the prison.

I rush over, take the phone from him, and walk away. The photographer tries to stop me, but I’m not listening anymore. I go outside and find a quiet spot by the pool. I take a deep breath in before lifting the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Son,” says my mother in Russian. “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

Even after ten years, this remains the hardest thing I’ve had to bear. Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder how she’s doing, if she’s OK, if she’s surviving. Every time my phone rings, I’m afraid it’s to give me news of her accidental death.

I hope she can hear the smile in my voice as I talk to her, happy to speak to someone in my mother tongue. “Not at all. It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

My father always used to say I was a “mama’s boy,” and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. He knew I loved her more than I did him. He hated that ... and I think he wanted to make her pay for that more than for anything else.

“I’m fine. I’m keeping on the straight and narrow,” she jokes weakly. I can tell she’s trying to reassure me, as always. “I can’t wait to get out.”

“I can’t wait either. Only two more months.”

I’m counting the days. I’ve been counting them for ten years.

“Are you eating well?” I ask, worried at how weak she sounds, “Nobody’s treating you badly?”

She gives a little laugh, which doesn’t convince me. I know she makes light of things, that there’s nothing she wouldn’t hide if she thought it would help me sleep better at night ... It drives me crazy.

“Always the same questions! Stop worrying! Your mother’s a tough cookie. I’ve held out this long. Two more months don’t scare me.”

It’s not exactly surprising that I worry, though. She paints a rosy picture of things, says everyone treats her well, that she eats enough and that she’s made friends. I know it’s not true. I’m not seventeen anymore. I’ve read about what it’s like.

Conditions in Russian prisons are horrendous. Barely any light or fresh air, thirty prisoners in a cell designed for six, all sharing one toilet. They get a shower once a week—no shampoo. I try not to think about the quality of the food or about the mice and cockroaches that infest the cells.

But the worst thing is the prison guards who are only too happy to use their cudgels, or even their dogs, on so-called “uncooperative” prisoners. I could easily kill any one of them if I ever heard they’d laid a hand on my mother.

All because I didn’t protect her. I’ll blame myself for my weakness and cowardice all of my life.

“And you?” she asks. “What are you up to? Are you at work?”

It must be nearly 5 p.m. in Russia. I lie, as always, and tell her how things are going at the Rasputin.

My mother knows almost nothing about my life.

I’ve hidden as much as I can from her. She doesn’t even know I play poker; she thinks the tattoos on my cheeks are the result of a bet I lost while drunk.

The truth is, she’d be devastated to know I waste my time on such a pointless thing. She’d think I’ll end up like my father.

But I didn’t have a choice. Besides wanting revenge, not just on Tito but also on Jacob, I’ve been obsessed by one idea ever since they took my mother away: I will do everything in my power to guarantee that when she gets out, she has the life she deserves.

The one she abandoned when she gave herself up to the police.

All the money I have now, that’s taken me so long to build up, is for her. Safe and sound in the bank. The reason this is my last year at the WSOP is quite simple: my mother is finally getting out of prison.

Once she’s out, I’ll be done with intrigue, poker, and bad memories. I swear.

“Take care of yourself, all right?” my mother says just as I’m about to hang up. “I know you. You’re your father’s son.”

Ouch . I know she didn’t mean to hurt me, but that goes straight to my heart.

“Please, don’t say things like that.”

She apologizes in a low voice. I promise I’ll see her soon and hang up.

It takes me a few minutes to blink back my tears before I can go back and pretend everything’s fine. I find Thomas bickering with Rose, as usual. She sees me and crosses her arms, throwing me a look of exasperation.

Maybe it’s the call from my mother, but for some reason my heart suddenly feels lighter. I stop next to her, eyeing the fluid silk of her dark shirt—not black, but surely blue or red?—and her high-waisted trousers. I can clearly see that she isn’t wearing a bra underneath.

I think back to the delicious sensation of her hand on my thigh and almost regret the way I rejected her.

“Levi,” she begins, “can you tell your chauffeur that ...”

“You’re looking beautiful today.”

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I wanted to tell her that; that’s all. And it’s true. She’s always beautiful, but I guess I’m feeling bad about being an asshole the other evening.

She appears slightly unnerved by my comment. Her mouth closes, and she blinks a few times and clears her throat. Thomas sighs wearily.

“Please. Are you actually blushing?” he says.

I raise an eyebrow, surprised, and look back at my false fiancé’s face.

Her embarrassed expression makes me smile.

I can’t see any difference in her coloring, though.

She appears as pale as ever. The idea that I’m incapable of distinguishing something Thomas is lucky enough to see fills me with melancholy, a sense of regret I thought I’d left behind years ago.

“I’m not blushing,” she says bluntly.

“She’s lying,” Thomas says.

I smile even more broadly. I wonder why a woman like her would blush at such a banal compliment. I bet people say that kind of thing to her every day, ten times a day.

“Fascinating. In the future ... can you tell me every time you’re blushing?”

Rose looks at me as though I’m crazy. “You’ve got eyes, haven’t you?”

“They don’t work all that well, I’m afraid.”

She must think I’m joking, because she tells me it won’t happen again and storms off, making the excuse that she’s hungry. I can’t help laughing.

I’m still gazing at her disappearing back as I ask Thomas, “What color was her shirt? And her trousers?”

“Emerald green. And beige. She wears a lot of beige.”

I catch a suspicious look in his eyes. I ask him what he’s thinking, even though I already know the answer. He pauses long enough to tell me it’s something serious.