Monte Carlo

    Monte Carlo

    ~an offer you can’t refuse. | (BL/RP)

    Monte Carlo
    c.ai

    11:11 PM Monte Carlo, Monaco

    You can’t count how many rounds of poker you’ve played, but the stakes are getting exponentially higher, as they always do in Monte Carlo, and your winnings have long since tripled your yearly salary.

    You figure you’ll leave on a high—having just gone all in on a flush last round, a royal flush before that, and a full house the round before that, the actresses, models, and billionaires at your table can’t believe your stroke of luck.

    The men who’d been eyeing you from the back corner of the casino floor—twins, for their sheer sameness had convinced you for a while you’d been seeing double—amidst the women in long dresses and silk gloves and the men in fitted tuxedos seemingly can’t either. They whisper to each other under their breath, eyeing you more often than not as they deliberated.

    You’d been dealt a crap hand this time—but poker wasn’t just about luck; it was about skill, and you want to turn this two million into ten. After a series of million-dollar raises, with an impeccable poker face, you go all in. Everybody folds.

    Now for the reveal of the hands. You have nothing—in fact, everyone at the table has something better. With a smirk, you take your ten-million dollar winnings (with a few disgruntled table mates) and prepare to depart, but not before you see the twins nod. Just then, an Audrey Hepburn doppelgänger in a black satin gown and gloves emerges from the fray, glancing at the twins as they leave the casino.

    She whispers something unintelligible over the clinking champagne flutes and roaring laughter as she slips an embossed card inside your breast pocket. A few stunned moments later, you read it. It contains an address in cursive and a time, seven p.m. “Don’t be late.” Will you go?