Seventy-Four Billion Reasons

Chapter Seven: The House Always Collects

The Moreau Grand rose above the harbor like a tower of gold glass, and at eleven o'clock at night every window was blazing. Darius came alone, as the invitation asked, in the same black suit he had worn to bury his grandfather. He had told Basil where he was going. He hadn't told Freya.

He got as far as the VIP entrance on the top floor.

The host at the door was a slim man in a velvet jacket, and he recognized Darius before he reached the rope. His polite smile vanished. "I'm afraid not, sir," he said, stepping squarely into his path. "We don't admit guests who are under criminal investigation. I'm sure you understand."

Darius reached into his jacket for the invitation, but a burst of laughter from inside cut him off.

Behind the velvet rope, at the best table in the room, Jasper Ellingham was celebrating. Sienna sat beside him in silver sequins, and a half-dozen of Jasper's friends lounged around them with stacks of chips and bottles of champagne on ice. One of them spotted Darius and pointed. Within seconds, the whole table was on its feet.

"Look who it is!" Jasper called out, loud enough to turn heads across the floor. "Ladies and gentlemen, the famous pension thief. Come to gamble with the retirement money, Darius?"

His friends picked it up at once. Someone asked how many pensioners it cost to buy a seat at the table. Someone else asked whether the old woman with the tea had sent him. Gamblers left their games to watch, and a crowd gathered around the rope, phones already raised.

Sienna walked over with a glass of champagne in her hand. She looked at him for a moment with something close to boredom, then tipped the glass and poured it slowly over his shoes.

"Security," she said, without raising her voice. "Please drag this man out. He's making the guests uncomfortable."

The crowd laughed. Two large men in dark suits moved toward Darius from either side, and he stood there in wet shoes while a dozen phones recorded every second.

Then, all at once, the room went silent.

It happened from the back of the floor forward, like a wave. Dealers stopped dealing. The laughter around the rope died away. Darius turned and saw a woman walking toward him across the casino, and every person in her path stepped aside.

She was in her early thirties, tall and dark-haired, in a simple black dress with no jewelry at all. Darius knew her face from the ledgers' notes and the business pages. Isabella Moreau had taken control of her family's House at twenty-six, after her father's death, and the city told a dozen stories about the men who had crossed her since. Every story ended with someone ruined.

The security guards froze. Isabella didn't look at them, or at Jasper, or at Sienna with the empty glass in her hand. She stopped in front of Darius, slipped her arm through his as if they were old friends, and led him through the velvet rope, straight past Jasper's table, toward a pair of carved doors at the back of the room.

Darius caught one glimpse of Jasper's face as they passed. The smile had died completely.

Her private salon was quiet and dimly lit, with dark wood walls and a window looking down over the harbor. Isabella poured two glasses of whisky, handed him one and sat down across from him.

"I wanted to see what you'd do at the door," she said. "You didn't beg, and you didn't threaten anyone. That's rarer than you'd think." She set a slim leather folder on the table between them. "Inside are my VIP cashier records for the last eight months. They prove that Jasper Ellingham routed forty million dollars through my casino, a few hundred thousand at a time, disguised as gambling deposits."

Darius looked at the folder but didn't reach for it. "And the price?"

"Forty percent of my House's debt to the Tally, forgiven." She smiled faintly. "Don't look so shocked, Mr. Larkin. I'm not here to bow. I'm here to trade."

He did the arithmetic in his head. Forty percent of House Moreau's debt was more than a billion dollars. That wasn't the real cost, though. If he paid it, word would spread to every House within a day. The new Keeper could be bought, like everyone else in Ostley, and the vote would be over before it started.

"No," he said. "But I'll offer you something else."

Isabella raised an eyebrow.

"I spent this afternoon reading your public filings," Darius said. "Eight quarters of them. Your casino writes off millions in VIP markers every quarter as uncollectible. The write-offs are always almost exactly two and a half percent of VIP turnover. Real bad debt is never that steady. Someone is choosing that number."

Her expression didn't change, but she had stopped smiling.

He pulled a cocktail napkin toward him, borrowed the pen from her table and sketched it out. "Three years ago, your casino recovered about thirty percent of the markers it wrote off. For the last two years, the recovery figure has been zero. Not low, zero." He turned the napkin toward her. "Your chief financial officer approves every write-off personally. Your own filings say so. He's writing off debts as uncollectible, then quietly collecting them from the players himself and keeping the money. He's been doing it for two years."

Isabella studied the napkin for a long moment. Then she picked up the phone on the side table and made one call.

"Pull every collection on the written-off VIP markers," she said. "The last eight quarters. Then bring Ivor Lindqvist to my office." She hung up and looked at Darius over her glass. Neither of them spoke.

Nine minutes later, the phone rang. She listened briefly, said "Thank you," and set it down. Through the gap in the carved doors, Darius watched two of her security men march a grey-haired man in an expensive suit across the floor of the casino. They took him right past Jasper's table, and the whole room watched him go.

Isabella slid the leather folder across the table. "Yours," she said.

Darius picked it up and stood. He was almost at the door when she spoke again.

"One more thing, Mr. Larkin. Free of charge." She was looking out at the harbor lights, not at him. "Jasper Ellingham can't count past his own reflection. He didn't design this frame. Someone far smarter did, someone who knew exactly how to route stolen money through a company that belongs to the Larkin Tally itself."

Darius stopped in the doorway, the folder suddenly heavy in his hand.