Ace Of Shades. Amanda Foody

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СКАЧАТЬ habit of his. He hated the way people talked to him in this city—like he was nothing. No, like he was worse than nothing. Like he was a joke.

      Levi reached into his pocket and pulled out a silk pouch filled with seven orbs. He set it on the table in front of the captain.

      The man raised his eyebrows and opened it. He pulled out the first orb. It was a clear glass sphere, about the size of a billiard ball. White sparks, called volts, sizzled within the glass.

      The captain held it up to the lamplight and examined it. “This is good quality.”

      “Only the best for my clients,” Levi said smoothly.

      “You make it?”

      “No. I’m not in the orb-making business.” Not anymore.

      “Yes, we’re all aware what kind of business you’re in,” the captain said drily. He pulled out a mechanical volt reader, flipped open the orb’s metal cap and slipped the antenna inside. The meter read 180 volts. He did this with the other six orbs, even though it was widely known that Levi would never cheat a client. They were all there. Every volt he owed him.

      Dealing in orbs was a very official way of doing business—it made Levi look more legitimate. As a currency, volts could be traded in two ways. Glass orbs, like the ones Levi had given the captain, were the traditional method. Alternatively, you could carry volts in your skin. This was the hardest to track, the most difficult to steal and the favorite method of the city’s gangsters.

      The captain slipped the last orb into the pouch. “It’s a pity. The Glaisyer orb-making talent is the best of them all.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to know how you got these.”

      Levi’s eyebrows furrowed. “The investment was a success. You’re lucky you paid in when you did. The venture—”

      “Was a scam, boy. Don’t lie to me.”

      Levi’s sense of alarm never crossed his expression—he had too skilled a poker face for that. But what exactly was the old man suggesting? He couldn’t know. That wasn’t possible.

      “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he answered coolly.

      The captain leaned forward. “I’ve got it all worked out. You promise an investment with outrageous returns. One man invests, then another, then another. Then when their deadlines roll around, you pay them back with the volts from the newest investor and pocket a bit yourself. Not a bad scam. It just keeps going and going, all until you run out of investors and have no ways of paying people back.”

      No. No. No. Levi had covered every trace, tied up every loose end. After two years of running the scheme, he was nearly done with it. He had only two people left to pay back, and the captain was one of them. He was so close. He wasn’t about to go down now.

      He fingered the pistol at his side, even as he tried to think of a clever way out. He always did. Levi the card dealer. Levi the con man. There was no player he couldn’t outplay. But he’d rarely been so easily backed into a corner.

      Damn it, Vianca, he thought. I could hang for this. And it would be your fault.

      As if his employer gave a muck about what happened to him.

      “What do you want?” Levi growled.

      “I don’t want anything,” the captain said. He was obviously lying. Everyone wanted something.

      Grady set Levi’s Snake Eyes on the table, bubbling in its champagne glass. “Anything else I can get you, Levi?”

      “Nah, thanks, Grady,” he muttered, forcing a smile. He still had one hand on his gun.

      “What about you, um...sir?” Grady eyed the captain hesitantly. Grady was a good man, but he wasn’t a respectable one. Whiteboots always made him tense. “What can I get for you?”

      “Nothing for me.”

      Grady returned to the bar, where he yelled at an old man on a stool trying to order his fifth glass of absinthe.

      “You know him?” the captain asked curiously, as if he still expected Levi to be capable of small talk at a time like this. Levi had a grim suspicion he was about to be blackmailed. Or worse.

      “He’s an old friend,” Levi said curtly.

      “That’s why you’re not like the others. The other lords don’t have friends,” the captain said matter-of-factly. “They have victims.”

      Levi was mucking tired of hearing how he wasn’t like the other street lords. Tired of hearing each and every way they were better than him.

      “How old are you?” the captain asked.

      “Eighteen this October,” Levi said stiffly, even though that was four months away. Better to seem older than be treated like a child.

      “If you live to October. Have you ever considered that you might be in over your head?”

      Levi clenched his fist beneath the table. He thought about it every night, during the hours when he should’ve been sleeping but couldn’t. He didn’t choose to start this scam. He didn’t choose to involve the most dangerous people in the city. Ever since he started working for Vianca, he hadn’t had many choices at all.

      “Who else knows?” Levi murmured, the quietness of his voice betraying his fear.

      The captain rubbed the scruff on his scarred chin. “I’m not the smartest man. So tell me, if I figured it out, who else might’ve, too?”

      Levi caught his breath. He was referring to Sedric Torren, the twisted, perverted don of the Torren casino Family. The kind of man who could clear a room with the snap of a finger. The kind of man who could ensnare his prey with only a smile. The kind of man Levi didn’t want as an enemy.

      Sedric Torren was Levi’s final investor. Once Levi paid Sedric back, he’d be done. Clean. Safe. But it’d taken Levi weeks to scrape up the nine hundred volts for the captain, and he owed Sedric ten thousand.

      If Sedric did figure out the scam, would he wait for Levi to pay him back, or would he kill him to make a point? Conning a Torren was flirting with destruction.

      The captain stood. “I’d prefer not to keep hearing your name.” Then he nodded at Levi and left the tavern. No blackmail, no coercion. Just a warning.

      Levi let out a breath of relief. He supposed he was lucky—he could’ve been arrested, or worse. But he didn’t feel lucky. The whiteboot captain didn’t bother arresting criminals he considered dead men walking.

      I’m almost done. I’m almost safe, he reminded himself. The only person I have left to pay is Sedric, then I can finally focus on the Irons.

      With all the time he’d been spending on Vianca’s scam, his gang was slowly crumbling. Their income was tight, their clients were irritated and Levi hardly recognized some of his own kids. But Levi refused to fall with this scheme. He had a destiny to forge and an empire to build.

      Levi stood to leave. As СКАЧАТЬ