Page 31 of Ace of Hearts

Rose

June

Las Vegas, USA

I don’t stop to think for long.

My hands still trembling, I hurry to Thomas’s room to wake him up. I have absolutely no idea what to do, but he’ll know. I knock, but nobody answers. He must be asleep.

I can’t wait—I open the door.

“Thomas? Sorry to disturb you, but Levi isn’t well ...”

I stop short. Thomas isn’t asleep. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, and Li Mei and Lucky are sitting next to him. The three of them look at me wide-eyed, as though I’ve caught them red-handed.

“What’s going on?” Thomas asks. He’s already jumped up. “Where’s Levi?”

I’m still shaken, but I reply, “In his room. I don’t know what happened. I think he’s having a panic attack. What are those two doing here?”

Thomas doesn’t reply. He heads straight for Levi’s room. I have no idea what’s going on. Li Mei gives me a weak smile and puts her hand on my arm, murmuring, “Don’t worry. Come with me.”

OK ... Lucky doesn’t say anything, but he looks worried.

We all follow Thomas. When we get to Levi’s room, he’s just where I left him, sitting on the floor and leaning back against his bed.

He’s still wearing the noise-reducing headphones.

Thomas squats down in front of him as Li Mei and Lucky follow him into the room. I’m the only one who hangs back.

I feel strangely uneasy, as though I don’t fit in here. As though I’m not welcome.

“Levi, are you OK?”

His eyes are still closed, but his breathing is calm. I’m almost sure he hasn’t heard. Thomas turns to me and asks what happened.

“We ... were talking,” I lie, trying not to draw attention to my thin nightdress. “Then all of a sudden, he started panicking. I think it was the fireworks. They scared him.”

Thomas’s furrowed brow relaxes as if in sudden understanding. He takes the headphones off Levi, who slowly opens his eyes.

“Tommy,” he says weakly, seeming surprised.

“Are you OK?”

Levi gives him a tired, lopsided smile. “I’m perfect.”

He refuses to look at me. He registers the presence of Li Mei and Lucky but doesn’t seem very surprised. More like resigned.

“He’s lying. He’s not OK,” I say to Thomas. “He ... he said something. I think he’s delirious.”

“I’m not delirious.” He laughs softly, then heaves a deep sigh. “I wish I were.”

“What did he say?”

I glance at Thomas, then at the others, unable to open my mouth. I can’t say it, not in front of them. I’m about to tell them to forget the whole thing when Levi looks up and urges me in a low voice, “Go on. Tell them.”

I still hesitate. What if he isn’t delirious? After all, I haven’t known Levi for long. But I can’t help trying to deny his claim. I don’t want to believe it. Because I have to know him. To like him. Levi isn’t a murderer.

“He said he killed his father.”

Nobody says a word. But they don’t seem surprised. All three look at me, then turn to Levi, who shrugs.

“Well, this isn’t embarrassing at all ...,” Lucky says.

“This is the kind of thing you’re meant to confess once you’re actually married , Levi,” jokes Li Mei. “Definitely not in the middle of a roll in the hay, for God’s sake.”

Thomas frowns at her. “Huh?”

“Oh, come on! That’s obviously what they were doing. ‘Talking’ is code for ‘fucking.’”

Oh my God .

“Even less embarrassing now!” says Lucky.

I look at them, dazed, not knowing how to react. What the hell is all this? Why are they joking about something so serious? More to the point, why does Li Mei seem to know this is a fake engagement?

“Levi?”

He finally looks me in the eye and nods. “Yeah, I know. I owe you an explanation.”

I cross my arms as he gets up, his shirt half-unbuttoned over his chest.

“Rose, my love, let me introduce you to Thomas, Li Mei, and Lucky, my one and only family.”

All five of us are sitting on the sofa in the living room in silence. Lucky has made coffee, and I’ve pulled on a bathrobe over my nightdress. What happened between Levi and me seems strangely distant already.

I glance furtively at Li Mei and Lucky, who’ve started squabbling about something.

They look like totally different people.

The poker queen has swapped out her colorful girly clothes for an oversized tracksuit, and her acolyte is wearing a plain T-shirt and jeans, a far cry from his retro shirts and fishing hats.

“So ... you know each other? Outside of the tournament, I mean?”

“We’ve known each other for years, yes. We’re his only friends—no offense, Levi,” says Li Mei.

He forces a smile at this, but his eyes immediately return to me. I don’t know how to react. I’m way out of my depth. I guess Li Mei and Lucky must also be in on the act, helping him with his stupid revenge against my father; it’s the only explanation.

“Tell me everything,” I say firmly. “From the start.”

He agrees readily. I cradle my coffee in my hands as he begins in a low voice.

“My father was Russian, and my mother’s Spanish.

They met when they were very young ...

and it was love at first sight. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Jacob and Paloma.

My father had already started playing poker before I was born.

It was his life; much more important to him than his wife, who preferred her child, her handicapped runt of a son, to him. ”

Ouch. This is painful to hear, maybe because I know what it means to have a father who puts his passion over his family. I guess that was the reason our parents were friends; they had that much in common.

“He would often leave us to go and play cards, especially after he got to know Tito. My father became his new best friend,” Levi says mockingly, shaking his head in disgust. “He admired Tito, I think. Too much—he became jealous. He wanted to be like Tito, and he ended up hating his life with us. I think there was a part of him that resented us for not being rich, too, but he resented himself the most.”

I’m not too surprised to learn that Levi doesn’t come from a rich family.

Even though he has money now, he hasn’t got the attitude that usually comes with it.

I’ve seen how he tips waiters and car valets, and it’s clear he does it not just because it looks bad not to.

He doesn’t spend money carelessly either.

He’s very aware of the money going in and out of his pocket, but he’s never stingy.

“I wanted him to teach me to play poker, mainly so I could get closer to him, because that was the only thing he loved, and I sort of ... wanted to be part of it. He said a dope like me could never understand all the subtleties.” He smiles bitterly at me.

Li Mei rolls her eyes, mirroring my own reaction. Levi ignores us and carries on in the same detached tone.

“Then one day, Tito made a proposition: he wanted my father to invest a huge sum of money in his business. He promised my father he’d be rich, like him.

It was ... a lot of money. My father agreed right away, thinking our lives would finally change for the better.

He borrowed money, more than he should have, convinced he’d be able to pay it all back once he hit the jackpot. ”

I listen carefully, confused. My father never told me about this. Levi must be lying, or misremembering. And yet I feel my heart tighten because it knows; it knows I’m burying my head in the sand.

“My father never saw a penny of his money again, of course.” Levi gives me an ironic smile. “He was stupid to have believed a thing like that. Tito stole all the money we had, and the money we didn’t have.”

I resist the urge to hang my head in shame. My cheeks are burning with guilt. How could he have done something like this? It’s not as though he needed the cash!

“But why?” I gasp.

“Because he was scared, I guess. Just like he’s scared again now—of me. And he’s right to be scared.”

I know exactly what he means by that. My father is a megalomaniac and a proven narcissist. He was happy to be friends with Jacob Ivanovich as long as he wasn’t a threat, but as soon as Jacob came close to beating him, Tito couldn’t handle it. So he found a way of keeping Jacob down.

I hide my trembling hands under my legs as Levi goes on.

“We were poor. My father could still play in tournaments because he was sponsored, but that didn’t bring in as much money as it used to; not enough to repay his debts. He started drinking. A lot. And he got nasty, of course ...”

He doesn’t say it in so many words, but we all understand what he means. His father’s alcoholism made him violent. I clench my teeth as I imagine a man taking out his anger on a sweet little boy with beautiful eyes. It makes me sick.

“You told me your mother was in prison for murdering your father ...”

“She is.”

“But . . .”

“I told you she was sent to prison. Not that she was guilty.”

Oh . That changes everything. I open my mouth, stunned. Everyone watches me, wondering how I’m going to react. All I can do is return Levi’s unflinching gaze. Did this man really kill someone?

“What happened?” I ask in a voice that I hope sounds stronger than I feel.

“I was seventeen. I got back from an evening out, and I saw my father hitting my mother. He was blind drunk. I went and fetched the gun to scare him; that usually worked. But that evening ... I don’t know.

It was different. He was determined.” For the first time, Levi allows his pain to show.

“He jumped on me, shouting about how ungrateful I was, and we fought. He was stronger than I was. He was throttling me. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but this time his eyes were different.

I knew he was going to kill me. He wasn’t himself.

I managed to push him away, but he lunged back. So ...”

I steel myself for what’s coming. His gaze remains level as he says the rest.

“I got scared. My survival instinct kicked in, and I fired.”

Oh God .

Levi sighs, his face bleak, and tells me that after that single shot, his father collapsed, an expression of shock and fury on his face.