Page 44 of Filthy Little Fix
I go back to my room with my head spinning. I traded my cubicle for a mansion and my fern for a family of mobsters, but the excitement is already fading.
I lean my head on the keyboard and let the plastic keys mark my face. Favors that don't reach the boss don't make me gain Dante's attention, and, in this endless weekend, he doesn't come back.
It's just me, favors, and a fading ache from a recently fixed molar for Svetlana's endless list of collaborators—recovering emails, locations, logs, calls, and hacking into personal accounts without being detected.
The rest of my sick leave—and all the available time off I accumulated in a few years of uninterrupted monotonous work—is spent entirely in this mansion.
Luca accompaniesme back to my room. I don't have much sense of time while working for the Volkovs, so my only clue that it'salready evening is the dark windows and the silence throughout most of the rooms. It's this silence that makes me notice a growing buzz as we approach the corridor outside my room.
We pass a large game room with a polished ebony poker table—a path that is now familiar—and all the buzzing comes from there.
This room, which used to smell of cigars and whiskey, is now almost unbreathable. I see tobacco smoke and some men I recognize from the hallways—men who look like they've stepped out of a cliché gangster movie, all in suits with visible scars—sitting around the poker table. They are names I've heard whispered in the control room: Marco, Grigory, Ruslan. They're capos.
"Full house," says a man I now recognize as Marco—he has a burn scar on his neck, exactly like the rumors—pointing to his cards. "Pure skill, my friend. Pure skill."
"Bullshit," grumbles Grigory, the tallest one, throwing his cards on the table. "You just got lucky."
The man sitting in a corner looks up. That must be Ruslan. I heard he collects knives—he's the only one with one tucked into his waistband.
He stares at me. I'd ignore him if he didn't talk about me.
"Hey, Luca," he calls out. "Is that the one who fixes everything?"
Marco stares at me. "Is that the IT kid? The one who looks at a screen and money appears?"
Ruslan laughs. It's an unpleasant sound. "The one and only. Damn, Dante did a number on you, huh?" He says to me, jeering, though it doesn't sound as venomous as I'd imagined it would. The bruises are still apparent on me. "I heard you liked it. Got a hard-on. Is that true?" He winks at me. It's true.
I feel Luca tense up beside me. He doesn't think this is a good idea.
"Leave him be, Ruslan," Luca says.
"Oh, come on, Luca. He's brave, isn't he?" Ruslan pushes a chair back with his foot, inviting me to sit. "Can you count cards, or are all IT nerds chickenshits like Sal?"
Brave? What a joke. I'm bored. The thought of another night staring at a glowing monitor and sifting through random lives is a form of torture I can no longer endure today. This, at least, is new.
"Sure," I say.
Luca looks at me, looks at Ruslan, then back at me. I bet he's wondering if he should call Dante (I almost hope he does). I don't wait for him to release me to go to the table and sit down, but at some point, he nods. He stays near the door, staring at me as if I'm throwing myself in front of three hungry tigers. That option would be more fun.
It's a bit ridiculous. I'm the youngest in the room by at least ten years—not that that's anything new since I stepped into this mansion. The capos think I'm practically a civilian in their world. The disdain is obvious, mixed with curiosity, as the game begins.
I'm dealt a hand. A pair of tens. It's a solid start. But I don't play. I fold, with a silent click of my chips on the table. The others look at me with a certain contempt for not surprising anyone. I just watch them play the hand.
I don't pay much attention to the cards. I'd rather watch them.
Marco, with his neck scar, has a tell: a quick blink of his left eye whenever he's bluffing. It's a tic, a nervous spasm he can't control. Grigory, the likely oldest man with a perpetually grumpy face, scratches his chin with his index finger when he has a strong hand, and has a nervous tremor in his hand when he feels pressured—which happens often. It's almost imperceptible, but it makes his chips rattle against the felt. Ruslan, on the otherhand, is the most obvious. He can't stop looking at his own hand when it's bad, thinking about how he could make it good. It's just code. A human algorithm.
I lose a small, insignificant amount of chips in the first few hands by barely looking at the cards as anything more than evidence for their tells. They laugh. They think I'm Sal.
"Look at the brilliant IT nerd," Grigory says, taking the pot. "He folds with a good hand and bets on nothing."
"Computers don't teach you about luck," Marco grumbles.
I don't react. I don't care. I've heard better taunts.
I get another hand, a low pair. It's a shitty hand, but I think I have a solid enough foundation now.
Marco folds first. He didn't hide his disdain when he turned over his cards; he didn't even want to try. Grigory raises, Ruslan calls.
