Does he mean that I need to settle this amount before I can leave?
Is he crazy?!
“Wait...are you telling me that I lost 28 million dollars today?” I asked without bothering to conceal my utter shock.
“Yes, My Lady. I have the breakdown here if you would like to check,” Sean said with confidence before smiling at me again.
“What is going on?” I turned to demand for an answer from Bradon.
Bradon had a very passive look on his face as if this was supposed to be expected and normal. I glared at him so hard that I thought that my eyes would pop out of their sockets.
“What did you expect? How are you supposed to gamble if you don’t have any money?” Bradon asked as if it was supposed to be obvious.
“Even so! Where does this ridiculous amount of 28 million dollars even come from?” I demanded to know.
“What color chips did you use to bet with, My Lady, if I may ask?” the manager asked with a gentle smile.
“Chip? Hmm...a rectangular bronze one...about the side of a playing card...” I replied as I recalled the chips that Bradon handed to me easily whenever I wanted to place a bet.
“Please have a look this way, My Lady. Does this look like the chip that you’ve been using?” the manager inquired.
My eyes landed on a photo of a chip that matches with the one that Bradon had been handing over to me. I nodded my head to confirm that it was indeed what I had been using to place my bets. The manager nodded his head before gesturing to a large screen on the wall. Instantly, the screen transformed and a table displaying photos of various chips was shown.
“As you can see here, this bronze chip is worth half a million dollars,” the manager explained while pointing his index finger at the table.
“Half a million...dollars...” I murmured as his words had difficulty sinking in.
Each chip that I used was worth half a million dollars?!
I gasped in shock before I turned and glared at Bradon. In that heated moment, I wanted to rip the mask off my face so that I could scream and yell at him without anything blocking my face.
“You never told me that each chip was worth so much,” I started blaming Bradon right away.
“You never asked,” he replied simply like it wasn’t at all his problem.
“How can you do something like this to me?” I snapped at him.
“You wanted to place a bet and that was the smallest chip that I had on me. I don’t carry around anything worth less than that,” he replied with a careless shrug of his shoulders.
“But you told me that you’re not allowed to play!” I pointed out accusingly.
“That doesn’t mean that the people in my company are not allowed to play,” he replied smoothly.
Now that I thought about it, the chips and tokens that he gave me looked different from the ones used by other people. It didn’t mean anything much to me at the time and but now it made sense why that man was calling me gutsy. I glared at Brandon when I realized that this must have been his plan all along.
“You’re such a swindler...” I muttered darkly under my breath.
“What did you just say?” he asked before showing me a mischievous grin.
“Can we have a moment alone please?” I asked sweetly.
“Sure...” Bradon replied.
Without needing to be told what he should do, Sean bowed and quickly left the room. I wanted to scream at Bradon and it was taking a lot of effort to keep my cool. No matter how I looked at it, Bradon had clearly tricked me into this. He knew all along what was going on, but he still let me rack up that huge amount of debt.
“What do you expect me to do now?” I asked as I glared at him coldly.
“What do you mean?” he asked as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“The debt that I happen to owe the casino, or should I say the debt that I owe you?” I replied.
“What about it?” he asked without showing much care.
I was sure that that amount must have meant very close to meager change to him; however, I didn’t have anything close to that amount to my name.
“I don’t have any money to pay you back. I doubt my parents would pay you anything even if you did ask them to bail me out,” I stated factually.
To put it another way, I doubt that my parents had enough money at their disposal that they could use to bail me out. Even now, I was sure that my parents were still living off whatever scraps of money the Vulkans fed to them or allowed them to have.
“I know that already,” he replied emotionlessly.
“Great, I guess we can forget about this and go home then,” I surmised.
“It’s not that simple. This pace has rules, Dahlia,” he said as he shook his head at me.
I was sure that the casino had rules and I was also sure that the one who made up those rules was none other than the evil and calculating man standing right in front of me.
“So? What do you want?” I asked bluntly as I folded my arms under my chest.
“I want you to play a game with me,” he replied before showing me a sweet smile.
“A game? What game?” I asked suspiciously.
“A simple game of cards. If you can win this game, I’ll write off all of the debt that you owe the casino,” he proposed.
“And what if I don’t win?” I asked while catching on quite quickly that there was always going to be two sides of the game.
“You’ll grant me one wish,” he replied a little too fast for my liking.
It was clear that Brandon had something planned that would not work in my favor; however, it wasn’t like I could whip out 28 million dollars from thin air either.
--To be continued...