Page 360 of Double or Nothing

For once, none of those words frighten me.

Bryce said he should’ve come back sooner, but he came.

That’s enough. That’s all that matters.

I straighten the next set of papers and resume the task at hand.

Through the columns of figures my mind sees a solid black line.

A black line that kinks and bends before my eyes.

It makes me smile.

I can do this.

We can do this.

“Thanks, BT,” I say to the room, and get to work.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

BRYCE

Eli’s tour of The Argent lasts forty minutes on the dot. It’s excellently delivered. Informative. Factual. But his hawk-eyed vision is constantly checking me out, weighing me up with every move. Nothing malicious in it, just… intense.

Jack is still in his office when we return. The report sits closed on his desk and he’s already got his jacket on. He looks tired, but satisfied. Calm.

The expression is unfamiliar on him.

He sees me beside Eli and smiles. The one that appears in his eyes before it reaches his mouth.

“Enjoy the tour?” he asks.

“Very much. It was fantastic. Great to see.”

Eli gives me a nod, as though I’ve passed some kind of test.

“It was a pleasure,” he tells Jack. “Bryce had some very considered questions.”

Jack wipes a hand across his forehead.

“Fucking hell, Eli. Have you given him every casino stat from the past decade?”

“Hardly. I merely tried to compensate for the lack of information he’d receive from one of yours. All whoops and show off.”

“Ignore him,” Jack tells me. “He’s just jealous because I possess such natural charisma.”

Eli’s stoic expression changes just a touch. Lightening up.

“You possess an inability to stop speaking, Jack. Fine line.”

I laugh along with the two of them, and something inside me relaxes.

I like Eli.

I assumed anybody capable of building a casino with Jack would either be exhausting or half-insane, but Eli is neither. His courtesy is precise rather than warm, but it feels genuine. He asked nothing whatsoever about my relationship with his business partner, just calmly showed me the world the two of them created.

The differences between them may be extreme, yet somehow they make a strange kind of sense together.