Ryan looked at the text for longer than was probably obvious from the outside.
*We are onto you Russo. It’s only a matter of ti.*
Unknown number. No context or signature.
He read it three tis, each ti hoping the words would rearrange themselves into sothing less concerning. They didn’t.
His first thought was the IRS. But the IRS sent emails with letterheads and formal language and eting requests. They didn’t send late night texts from unknown numbers at agency parties.
Which ant soone else.
FBI. A private investigator hired by soone. Soone at the bank who’d noticed the deposits and decided the official channel was too slow. He didn’t know, and the not knowing was the worst part — it sat in his chest and radiated outward in a way that was difficult to ignore while also standing in a penthouse holding a drink.
He pocketed the phone.
He could think about this tomorrow. Monday was Diana. The IRS letter had a date still over a week out. Whoever had sent that text wanted him scared and off-balance, and standing in this room visibly rattled was not sothing he was going to do.
He looked up.
Across the room, sothing was happening.
---
It had started quietly — a few people gravitating toward the long table near the far windows that Ryan had assud was decorative. It wasn’t. Soone had produced chips, another person was arranging cards with the efficiency of soone who’d done this at this specific table before. Chairs were being pulled out, occupied, the loose social energy of the party tightening into sothing more focused around this one point.
Poker.
The spectator layer ford quickly — people who weren’t playing but were watching, standing back far enough to observe without crowding the table.
Comnts started moving through the group, low and frequent, the energy of people watching money change hands.
Ryan drifted toward it.
The players were six n, all sowhere in the sa tax bracket by the look of things. One of them — at the head of the table, older, the kind of tan that ca from sowhere that required a flight — was already arranging his chips with focused propriety – a person who considered himself the axis around which the ga would turn.
Ryan watched them play.
He watched their body language mostly. Who checked when they shouldn’t. Who bet too fast. Who looked at their chips before deciding, which he’d read sowhere once ant sothing.
Zara reappeared beside him.
"Oh, they started poker night," she said.
"Apparently."
"They do this every ti." She watched the table. "Marvin — the one at the head — he organizes it. He wins about sixty percent of the ti and the other forty he blas on other people."
Marvin, Ryan noted. The one with the tan and the chip arrangent.
"Who’s the one in the blue jacket?"
"Founder of a dia company. He plays aggressively and loses regularly and cos back every ti." She lowered her voice. "I think he genuinely believes the losses are about to stop."
"They’re not."
"They’re not," she agreed.
They watched a hand play out. The blue jacket man bet heavily, soone folded, soone matched, and at the reveal his face did the thing faces do when the cards don’t match the confidence that was put into them.
The round finished.
The man to Marvin’s left — the one who’d been losing most steadily since Ryan had started watching — pushed back from the table and stood up, dropping his cards with finality, he knew his evening had given him everything it was going to give.
"I’m done," he said. "That’s for the night."
Marvin looked around the table, then at the spectators. "We have a seat."
A couple of people shook their heads. Soone made a joke about their wife finding out. The hesitation moved through the small crowd.
Ryan raised his hand.
"I could try," he said.
The room shifted. It didn’t happen dramatically — it was a small reorientation of attention that happened when sothing unexpected entered a space.
Marvin looked at him, he was the one that was being talked about. Looked him over — the full assessnt, top to bottom, the green shirt and the blazer and the fact that he was, in this room, an unknown quantity.
"Buy-in for this table is quite high," Marvin said. "I don’t think it’s sothing IT guys would want to be part of."
Ryan looked at him. "Really. What’s the buy-in? Hundred thousand? Two hundred?"
Sothing moved across Marvin’s face. The smug certainty of a mont ago shifted into an expression he had to recalibrate quickly.
"Thirty thousand," he said.
Ryan nodded slowly. "Thirty." He paused. "That’s a bit anticlimactic. The way you said it I thought I’d at least get the chance to take real money off you lot."
This got a reaction. Not from Marvin — from everyone else. The blue jacket man made a sound that was almost a laugh. Soone at the far end of the table sat up slightly. The spectators around them were paying closer attention now.
Marvin kept his expression even. "You have to produce the thirty thousand before you sit down."
"Yeah," Ryan said. "That’s how buy-ins work." He reached into his jacket and produced his wallet. "Do you take debit or Paysend? I don’t usually walk around with thirty thousand in my pocket."
He held out his card.
The room went quiet how it did when sothing shifted in a direction nobody had expected. Soone who worked the event — one of the catering staff who’d been managing drinks — ca forward after a glance from Zara.
Ryan handed the card over. The man produced a small card reader from sowhere, entered the amount, turned the screen to Ryan.
Ryan tapped the card.
The machine beeped.
Approved.
He took the card back and put it in his pocket without looking at Marvin or anyone else, just the simple transaction of a man who had completed an administrative step and was ready to move on.
He pulled out the chair and sat down.
Zara was standing in the spectators. She had the composed expression she wore in public but her eyes were doing sothing else entirely — bright, following everything, privately delighted in a way she wasn’t fully suppressing.
The man in the blue jacket was grinning outright.
Marvin was looking at his chips.
Soone at the table — younger, closer to Ryan’s age, a watch that cost more than most cars — leaned forward on his elbows.
"Confident," he said. "You must be seriously skilled at poker."
Ryan looked at the cards being dealt to him, face down, sliding across the felt.
He smiled.
"Skilled?" he said. "I haven’t played poker a day in my life."
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