Substitute Wife for the Mafia King R18-Chapter 97: Nothing Is as It Seems
The king...and his queen...?
“I guess you really like playing me for a fool,” I mumbled before pressing my lips into a thin line.
I was sure that I should have been angry at him for humiliating me but surprisingly, that wasn’t how I felt. Once again, it felt like I had very little or absolutely no control about what was happening around me and I was just being sucked in by the strong current with no means of escape. Maybe I was just waiting for it to suck me under for good.
“How so?” he asked as he stared directly at me.
“How is this supposed to be a fair game if you know which card is which? You’ve just been tricking me and playing me for a fool,” I replied accusingly.
“Not at all. I just wanted you to know that nothing is what it seems. Nothing is fair and everything is being manipulated someway or another,” he explained casually.
“You mean that nothing is fair and that everything is manipulated in your world, right?” I snapped as I glared at him.
“I guess you might be right but that doesn’t just apply to my world. It also applies to the real world and whatever world you think you belong to,” he explained before grinning wryly.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I muttered as my anger started bubbling to the surface.
“The only difference is that if you’re in the real world, you’ll be stuck with the cards that you’re either given or that you’ve drawn...” he continued as he reached for a card randomly.
Bradon held that card in front of my face. Not surprisingly, it was a low ranking card that seemed to have been randomly selected. The four hearts displayed against the white background of the card seemed to jump out at me. If I had to compare my life to a hand of cards that had been dealt to me, what cards would represent my life so far?
Would my life be a mere four of hearts just like he’s showing me right now?
Bradon pulled the card away from my face and with a swift wave of his hand, the card suddenly transformed from the lowly four of hearts to an Ace of Spades. It all happened so fast, and I couldn’t follow how he managed to display a trick like that. It just felt like I was watching a magician work his magic right in front of me and there was no point in trying to unravel his tricks. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
“In my world, I can turn all your cards into Aces, Dahlia. What about in your world? Is there someone who can help you do the same?” he asked as his eyes narrowed slightly at me.
What is he trying to say?
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say, and it doesn’t matter. I’ve already had enough,” I declared as I felt my fingernails digging into the palm of my hands.
After sucking in a deep breath and glaring wordlessly at him, I turned on my heels and walked as fast as I could toward the exit of the casino.
...
**Around a week later – Bradon’s point of view**
It has been around a week since the first time that Dahlia came to the casino with me. Despite her complete defeat in all the games and her massive losses, Dahlia never gave up on the idea of returning to the casino. I wasn’t sure how she would react after being crushed over and over again with defeat, but I soon found out that her spirit could not be easily broken.
The casino wasn’t wired to create winners. Everyone would simply lose all the money that they had or even more whenever they ventured inside. That was simply how things were designed to work out. There were no unintentional exceptions. Anyone who would win and make profits from the casino was simply allowed to do so as part of the plan to milk them further. Initial wins were dished out to fuel a person’s addiction to the games. Once the fish was hooked and they became a regular, that was when the poison would sink in to kill that person slowly from the inside out. In the end, no money or any form of wealth would be left.
It wasn’t fun seeing Dahlia lose out on all her bets, but it was indeed interesting to see her excitement and enthusiasm regardless of the result. In short, she was eager to learn and that surprised me more than a little. Instead of focusing on the outcomes all the time, Dahlia was more interested in learning about anything new. The way her eyes lit up as she observed or played a new game truly made her feel very real and very alive.
Although she seemed slightly nervous at first because she was somewhere where she normally shouldn’t be, her excitement quickly took over. Soon enough, it felt like she was naturally blending in. When I first heard from Jenna that Dahlia had been going around asking everyone about what I did at work, an entertaining thought entered my head that I might as well just show her. Admittingly, I thought that she would be shocked and then appalled by this world running in the shadows.
I thought that I would show her what it was really like once and that would be the end of it. After seeing everything that she wanted or didn’t want to, she would stop pestering me to take her out of the mansion since there was no normal destination waiting for us. I knew from the very first moment that she laid eyes on the grand floor of the casino where all the action was taking place that I was absolutely mistaken. I was surprised by the way she acted as if she had just seen something unbelievably amazing.
For a moment, she looked like a young girl, and I couldn’t resist her desire to explore the new world that had opened up in front of her as she pulled on my arm just so that I would walk a little faster.
--To be continued...
