The Devil's Ante Chapter 1: Chapter 1 - He Who Threw The Dice

Read chapter 1 of The Devil's Ante by Lerion on NovelPedia.

"On Tuesdays we hit the slots baby!" - I yelled into my phone as I pressed the "start streaming" button. The chat almost immediately flooded with emojis of various colored dice, gifs of slots hitting the unachievable 777 and truly unwelcome tirades that I should get some help before I blow through all my money. There was some truth to these tirades. I couldn't remember the last time I hit the jackpot. To be fully honest, there was a high chance that I had never hit a jackpot. The most I won was exactly five dollars, and that came from a pack of chips that ran a promotion of "find money in your bag". Five dollars was the lowest amount possible to win. I still found pleasure in playing, though. When I was a kid my granddad taught me how to play poker. He explained the cards and their values. He told me what a pair was, what a flush was and what a full house was. We always played when I visited him and Grandma during holidays or other occasions. The first time we played for something, that old fucker bet my toys to sell them later. Let's just say I never took any toys with me to their place after that day. When I was twelve he brought me with him to some old, obscure building. I remember the single security guy standing beside the doorway. He was the ugliest bastard I had ever seen, tattooed fully up to his neck and with some more tats on his face. He looked at me and in his eyes I saw what I thought to be pity. Why would he pity me? I was about to enter heaven and he was standing outside, guarding it. When we got in I saw true beauty. Slots, tables, roulette and chicks with tits bigger than the ass of Kardashians. The air was thick with smoke of every flavor of cigarette and I felt my lungs getting blacker with every breath. I was made a man that day. I placed my first bet on the table, I spun my first slot and went full on black for the first time in my then twelve years of living. This was a day I could never forget. This was what got me into this beautiful hobby of gambling. Grandpa died a year later. They found him in a ditch or a rain canal without his golden tooth and jewelry. Lost one too many bets and got sideways with the wrong kind of people. My bet was on the Italians. They ran every casino in a 40 mile radius from where they found him. I bet the old man tried to gamble his way out of it before he died. That was his nature and that nature was now mine. But I learned from his mistakes. I didn't gamble in mafia-owned casinos. I gambled in locally owned industrial containers filled with slot machines. You know, the ones standing in the middle of a city, with a sign that says "knock three times" and a camera that follows your every move. Of course if you knocked three times you wouldn't get in. That was how they knew you were an outsider. You actually had to knock five times. That was knowledge you had to obtain if you wanted to win big in this game. Today, however, was different. I had picked up streaming not so long ago as a way to help me finance my hobby. It worked quite well as people donated every time I lost a bet or I won some chump change. But, because I was streaming, I wasn't really welcomed at my usual places. So I scoured the city in search of a not-too-big-not-too-small casino and I found it. A perfectly serviceable place with a couple of high stakes slots and a surprisingly friendly staff that consisted of a single guy named Boris - an old Russian fellow whose hairline got left behind when he left his motherland. I read the chat a bit more before entering. It seemed a tad more hyped than on the usual days; there was a lot of "I feel something big is coming up." That hype got into me rather quickly and it wasn't something I felt very often. I genuinely believed that this day might bring me something I hadn't had the pleasure of experiencing. A massive win. I mean, it was due. I pushed the door to "The Gambagool" and Boris immediately welcomed me. "Ay, my favorite lokh! Welcome, welcome!" - he raised his hand