Chapter 417: Thanks
Neville watched as the realization finally dawned on her.
Let her choose, Neville thought. There’s no door she can walk through without bleeding.
"I..." Lilianna started.
Then stopped.
Her eyes changed.
Neville had been watching her closely enough to catch every microexpression and muscle.
But he did not know what he was looking at now.
Everything was happening so quickly that nobody, not even Chronos, would be able to notice, aside from him.
Lilianna’s irises bled to a bloody red, turned inhuman as he had seen before.
But then he saw another thing he hadn’t seen before.
Her hair hung loose past her shoulders, gold strands catching the ambient lighting.
Something moved, hidden where the strands fell thickest against her neck—
A small, pale protrusion, pointed and bone-like.
It pushed against the skin from the inside like a fingernail. It poked out of the flesh behind her neck before retreating as if nothing had happened.
What the—
Neville had seen a lot of things since his full moon transformation. But something in that pointy bone made his skin crawl uncontrollably.
Meaning it was something unnatural that even his instincts were screaming to get rid of it.
What was that? I’m sure that’s not normal.
He forced his breathing steady.
Calm down. Don’t react. She doesn’t know you saw it.
As Neville was comforting himself, everyone was waiting for the conclusion of this drama.
Helena decided that she should mediate between the two.
"Here’s what I think happened."
Helena said. setting both palms flat on the edge of the table, positioning herself between Lilianna and Neville like a referee.
"The dealer got overconfident in her ability. So overconfident, in fact, that she couldn’t even tell what was right from what was wrong anymore. Because, clearly—"
She swept a look around the room, lingering on every face.
"—nobody wants to make a scene over some card game. Right?"
Finally, her gaze landed on Neville.
Meaning: Yield. Drop it. Let’s move on.
But Neville didn’t meet her eyes. He was still shaken, processing what he had just seen.
However, Helena took his silence as agreement.
"Good," she said, straightening. "If you guys want, we can just reset the game and give back the money. Is anyone in for that?"
It was a reasonable offer.
But then, Grayson opened his mouth.
"Whether she got in over her head or not is her own problem." His voice was low, unhurried. "Why should we step back for her wrongdoings?"
He casually put his hand on Neville and sneakily squeezed it, seemingly trying to snap him back to his senses.
Helena’s expression tightened, but she quickly fixed it to smile.
"General," she said politely, "we’re all friends here. Gathering to have fun after a long time. Things like this... they should be put under the rug."
"Having fun means everyone gets to have fun," Grayson said. "Why are you asking my boyfriend to step back?"
He tilted his head, eyes staring back at Helena as if to read her thoughts.
Bryan had his chin propped on one hand and raised both eyebrows.
"As you said, we’re all friends," Grayson continued, with a dangerously friendly tone. "Not to mention that this is the first time he’s met everyone, my friends. Now, you’re telling him to back down in front of all of them?"
He paused.
"Don’t you think you’re being too much?"
Helena was speechless.
From the couch, Chronos uncrossed his legs and spoke up.
"I agree with the General." He said, "If someone did something wrong, they don’t get to cry when they’re caught. That’s not how life works."
"Zero—" Helena began.
"Also," Chronos added, holding up a finger, "it’s rude to ask the person who did nothing wrong to apologize. Even a kid knows that."
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
Sarah leaned over to Thiago and whispered, "Is it always like this?"
"Usually worse," Thiago whispered back, not looking up from the drink. "Last reunion, someone flipped a table. Literally. With a mecha arm."
While they were arguing, Lilianna stood at the dealer’s station like a statue.
She hadn’t heard a word of what Helena said or anyone’s.
’You can’t let this nobody corner you. Not in front of them. Not in front of him.’ Her inner voice cautiously said.
Lilianna’s jaw tightened, hand clenched.
She didn’t look at Grayson; she couldn’t.
"You can’t prove that," she whispered, her voice came out smaller than she intended.
Neville looked up, his eyes wavered for a second as he braced himself to tremble again, even though he knew that the pointy bone was already gone.
But when he looked at Lilianna directly into the eyes, he didn’t, and secretly sighed in relief.
Lilianna looked normal.
"I don’t need to prove it," Neville said calmly. "The table already did."
Lilianna’s expression crumpled in confusion, and she asked, "What are you talking about?"
Neville leaned forward.
"Miss Lilianna, you were so busy making sure you are in control that you didn’t notice something."
He gestured toward the automatic shuffler, its holographic interface still glowing faintly between them.
"You see, the house shuffler has a fail-safe function; it works even if you didn’t use it and just placed the cards there. It’s buried in the terms of service—section fourteen, subsection C, if you’re curious."
"It says, when the system detects blatant, consecutive cheating from anywhere on the table and doesn’t flag an error or lock the table. It does something much cleverer."
He paused and said, "It mirrors the deck."
Bryan’s eyebrows climbed another inch.
Ciel exclaimed quietly, "There’s something like that?"
At the couch, Chronos tilted his head as if he heard something fascinating.
"Mirrors?" Helena repeated, frowning.
"To prevent a house loss."
Neville explained.
"Every time Miss Lilianna rigged any card to her liking, the system’s countermeasure automatically routed the best card to the non-dealer seat that had lost the most. Which, in this case, after Sarah was gone, it was mine."
He tapped the edge of his chip stack. The towers swayed but didn’t topple.
"I don’t have to hack anything or slip any cards, Miss Lilianna. I just need to sit here and let you cheat for me."
Neville met her eyes again with sympathy.
"Every blackjack I got tonight? That was your gift to me."
A beat and a smirk silently appeared on his lips.
"Thanks, by the way."
