One for the Money

“Where are we going?” she asks as I take a turn away from the Upper East Side restaurant I told her mother about. It’s a very nice restaurant, the kind that Eva Morelli can go whenever she wants. She can go there whenever she wants, but it’s not what she needs.

She needs excitement, like the underground casino.

She needs… Finn Hughes. Not the real Finn Hughes, buried under layers of secrets and grief. The surface-level version. The illusion of a charming, easygoing player. The man who can flirt with the mother and fuck the daughter in the same night.

I drive through Chinatown and over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Curiosity brightens her dark eyes.

Our destination is an abandoned warehouse park on Columbia. It’s not somewhere she would have been before, with its rusted doors and broken concrete. Some of these buildings actually hold crates full of imports. Some of them deal drugs. One is a club that favors lo-fi music and opium. And this one? Well, it’s arguably the worst one.

I park the car, and a man jogs over wearing a white polo shirt and black slacks. “Sir.”

“Take good care of her,” I say, handing over my keys. A couple hundred dollar bills passed from me to him ensures my car won’t get stolen or stripped while we’re inside.

“Where are we?” Eva whispers.

Excitement tinges her voice, reminding me of other times she would sound this way. Breathy and curious. How she would feel underneath me, moaning my name. I force the idea away because there’s also a note of fear. Probably because it sounds like there’s a riot happening inside the building. The metal walls shiver in constant strain. The noise, and maybe even the bodies inside, push against it. They threaten collapse.

I take her hand. “Somewhere fun. You liked that last time. I thought we’d try it again.”

“Are we going to play poker?”

“No, but we’re going to gamble.”

She glances around, where all other pads are dark. “My security would have a fit.”

Not safe. You’re not safe for her. “We can leave if you want to. I’m sure the hostess would give me a table if I showed up without a reservation. We went out a couple times six months ago.”

Eva shakes her head, laughing. My words had loosened her anxiety, which is what I hoped they’d do. “So she’ll give you a table with another woman? Are you really that good?”

Surprise races through me. Followed by lust. She clammed up when I asked who took her virginity. I thought she’d retreat completely, but here she is making innuendo. “Better, sweetheart.”

“I’m almost tempted to watch you try.”

“And I’m almost tempted to take you back to the car, spread you out on the goddamn sunroof, and lick your pussy so well you see stars. That way you’d know for damn sure how good I really am. But I promised I’d have you home by curfew, and if I start now I won’t stop until morning.”

She stares at me, lips parted in shock, eyes dark with arousal.

Fuck, she’s beautiful.

My cock throbs, but I force it down and nod at the bouncer. He opens the door, unleashing a whirl of sound and lights. We head inside to the bookie, a kid who’s perhaps thirteen at most, with uneven complexion and shrewd eyes. At night he helps Old Max run the books. During the day, he ruins the curve in math for a New York State public school.

“Name,” he says.

It doesn’t matter that I’ve known the kid since he was four years old. Charles won the city’s Mathathon, sponsored by a youth charity that the Hughes family supports. At the last charity picnic, he called me Uncle Finn. None of that matters here.

“Finn Galileo Hughes.”

He writes it down.

“Galileo?” Eva asks, laughing.

“It’s really my middle name.” Though that’s not why I said it. I said it to amuse her for the brief, glittering moment we share. It’s like a bubble floating on the air. A perfect sphere that can only end one way—in destruction.

“Bet,” Charles says.

I hand him a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Nimble fingers fly through the bills, checking for more than the denominations. The texture, the weight, the ink. He can spot a fake better than a Fed. “Ten thousand,” he says, confirming the amount. “Your pick?”

“Who do you think?” I ask Eva, pulling her close.

“I don’t even know who’s fighting.”

I show her a picture on my phone, which shows two snarling, muscled fighters facing off. Matthew Thorn is the incumbent. Roth Wagner is the newcomer. “Come on, Eva. I have ten thousand dollars riding on your decision.”

“This doesn’t tell me anything,” she cries. “They both look scary.”

“What are the odds?” I ask Charles, who rattles them off without glancing at the screen.

“Seven point five to one, favoring Thorn.”

“What’ll it be, beautiful?”

“Are they really going to hurt each other?”