The Artful Dodger

Dark brown eyes flitted over the top of the dirty cards clutched between pale fingers, staring at the fellow men gathered around the rectangular oaken table. A small pile of gold coins glittered in the center of the table, which grew as more and more were added. The brown eyes watched carefully as the pair of oily hands seated directly across from him scooted another mound of coins down the table, adding it to the pile.

A cloth bag was brought from the folds of the oily man's robe, jingling as he set it onto the table, and one of the brown eyes twitched in thought, taking in all the gold seated before him. He only hesitated a moment before emptying the pockets of his maroon suit jacket and adding coins of his own. After checking the time on the pocketwatch of the slumbering spectator next to him, the man brushed a strand of blonde hair underneath his oversized black top hat.

The oily, mustached man who had added the cloth bag full of coins to the pile snapped his fingers, and one of his bodyguards handed him a slip of paper. He pushed it across the table to the blonde man.

"Sign here," he ordered in a low, gravely voice. The blonde man obliged, looking cautious. One of the other gamblers laughed.

"Do you even make that much in a year?" he scoffed.

The young blonde completely ignored him, instead laying his cards face-up onto the table. Two kings and a queen. He relaxed back into his chair as the others around the table whistled; there was no way he could lose.

With a careful stomp of his heel, the oily man placed his own cards on the table. And there, among them, sat an ace, an ace he had not had in his hand a moment before.

"No!" the blonde man said loudly, standing up. "You cheated!"

The oily man's huge bodyguard lashed out with a sudden fist that caught the blonde straight in the nose with a crack, sending him stumbling back, surprised. The oily man reached out and pulled the entire pile of golden coins to his side. While he was clearly the richest person at the table, no other gamblers aside from the blonde seemed perturbed at the slightest that the oily man had pulled the card straight from his sleeve.

"Come on, you all saw him!" the blonde pressed angrily, blood from his nose dribbling down his face and speckling his shirt. "He's a miserable shitting cheat!"

With a guttural growl, the bodyguard grabbed the young man's wrist and roughly forced it down onto the table. He raised a glinting butcher's knife above his head, poised to strike. Panicking, the blonde man screeched for him to wait.

"I'll–I'll get you the money," he stressed, heart pounding, breath heaving. "I promise!"

The oily man raised a suspicious eyebrow, his mustache bending over his sour frown, dark eyes glinting. And the bodyguard, looking to the oily man for confirmation, only had to accidentally lessen his pressure on the blonde's arm by a fraction.

Before anyone could blink, the blonde tugged himself free and bolted from the room.

"After him!" the oily man growled.