Jack pulled out the chair and sat.
No one objected.
The dealer gave him a brief look. "Buy-in?"
Jack set down a small stack of coins. The dealer tapped them once and slid him into the next hand without ceremony.
The table was quieter than the rest of the room. Not silent - but contained. The noise of the hall pressed in around it all the same. Laughter cracking from somewhere behind him. Dice rattling. A burst of shouting from the gallery above that rose and fell and was forgotten.
Closer in, it was different. Measured. Coins clicking softly against wood. Cards whispering as they slid.
Three other players.
The man to Jack's left had thick hands, scarred knuckles, the kind built for something other than cards. He tapped the table between plays — two fingers, quick, restless — and his jaw worked when he was deciding. Not subtle.
Across from Jack sat a narrow-faced man in a dark coat, too clean for the room. His coins were stacked with the kind of precision that took effort. He touched them only when he had to, and when he did, he straightened them again after.
And beside him — the one worth watching. Relaxed. Leaning back slightly in his chair, his eyes moved around the table without hurrying, taking things in
Not the cards. The people.
Jack recognised the habit.
A girl passed behind him, tray balanced on one hand. "Drink?"
He shook his head. She moved on without breaking stride, already smiling at the next man.
Jack spotted Rourke across the room.
Big. Easy in his skin. Like nothing in the city could touch him.
Jack felt his jaw tighten. He’d seen men like that before. The kind who broke things and never looked back.
Then he pushed it down.
That was who he’d come for.
***
He folded his first two hands. Just watching.
The dealer was good. Smooth, efficient, his voice the same each time - play or fold - his hands moving with the automatic ease of long practice.
Jack entered the third hand with a modest bet. Nothing ambitious. He wanted the rhythm more than the money.
He won it. Small pot. The scarred man pushed his coins across with a grunt.
"Lucky."
Jack gathered them without comment.
---
He played four more hands over the next stretch. Two wins, a loss, folding the fourth when the pot didn't justify it. His pile grew slowly. Nothing remarkable. He kept his face easy, his movements unhurried.
But something wasn't right.
Jack stopped thinking about the game.
Started watching instead.
The narrow-faced man folded a hand he should have played.
A decent draw. He studied it. Then laid it down.
Next hand, he stayed in when he shouldn’t have and won.
Jack played the next hand straight and lost it without much interest. He was paying attention to something else now.
The dealer's hands.
The cards slid out clean, one after another, exactly as they should. Nothing wrong there.
But between deals, when the deck sat still for a moment, the dealer's thumb moved along the edge of it. A small stroke, back and forth.
Nothing. A habit, maybe.
Except that Jack had spent enough time around gambling halls to know that good dealers didn't have habits. Habits got noticed.
Jack could leave it. Take his winnings. Walk out.
But that wouldn’t get him what he came for.
A small crowd had gathered behind the players - not close enough to interfere, but close enough that Jack could feel them there. Someone’s breath over his shoulder. The faint smell of ale.
He folded the next two hands early, not looking at the pot.
He was looking at the thumb.
***
When the next hand came around, Jack let it build.
The scarred man was bluffing - had been since the second card, his fingers going still in the way they only did when he had nothing and knew it. The narrow-faced man had something decent, but not what he was pretending.
The pot built. Coins sliding. Stacks shifting.
Someone behind Jack whispered, “Big one,” under their breath.
Jack raised
A murmur from the crowd that had drifted in behind the table. Closer now
Jack had caught, from the corner of his eye, Rourke moving through the room. He'd stopped two tables back, watching. Waiting to see how this played out.
Good.
The scarred man folded, swearing under his breath.
The narrow-faced man stayed in. Of course.
The final card sat face down on the table.
The dealer reached for it.
"Don't bother," Jack said.
The dealer's hand stopped. Just above the card.
The table went quiet.
Jack looked at the narrow-faced man for a moment, then nodded toward the card.
"It's a queen."
No one moved.
A laugh started somewhere -
Died quickly.
Jack glanced past the table to where Rourke stood. The man's expression hadn't changed, but he'd gone still in the way people did when they were deciding something.
Jack turned back to the table. He reached out, slow and deliberate.
"May I?"
No one said no.
He turned the card.
Queen.
He left it where it sat and picked up the deck.
Ran his thumb lightly along the edge.
"Seven," he said. And turned it.
Seven.
A sharp intake of breath from someone behind him.
He set the deck back down.
"The edges are marked. Not much. But enough"
The scarred man leaned forward, squinting.
"Let me—"
He didn't finish.
Two chairs scraped back hard, the narrow-faced man and the dealer moving at the same instant.
The narrow-faced man made it half a step before one of Rourke's men came off the wall and had him by the collar, driving him back into the table hard enough to scatter the coins.
The dealer ran for the gap between two tables.
He didn't make it far.
A short club connected with the back of his head. Not a full swing. Efficient. He dropped without a sound, face down on the floorboards, blood already threading out from somewhere beneath his hairline.
Rourke's men moved him without being told, one taking each arm, dragging him toward a door at the back of the room that Jack hadn't noticed before.
The narrow-faced man went the same way, walking under his own power, one hand twisted up behind his back.
No fuss. No shouting. The room made space for them, then closed again.
For a moment, the table stayed as it was. Cards where they lay. Coins where they'd scattered. The empty chairs pushed back at odd angles.
Then Rourke stepped forward.
He took in the table first. The cards. The scattered coins. The empty chairs.
Not rushed. Not pleased.
Then his eyes settled on Jack.
“Him too” he said as two more guards grabbed jack, pulling him towards the door at the back of the room