All Chapters of When I Became the House’s Chip: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I tilted my face up and pulled out the practiced, obliging smile.He froze where he stood.His eyes were locked on the bruise across my knee.I'd earned it the night before, kneeling three hours on crushed gravel for a gambler with particular tastes.Dante's chest rose and fell, hard.He bit down on his back teeth and kept staring at the bruise.Once, years ago, I'd tripped at his front step and scraped the skin off my knee. He'd crouched in front of me, cupped my ankle in his hand, and blown very seriously on the red patch. I'd looked down and seen the top of his head. He told me if he blew on it, it wouldn't hurt. I don't know whether it worked. What I know is that his palm under my ankle was warm.I lifted my eyes and found him in the crowd.Same hands. Resting on Sabrina's shoulder now. Not moving.Around us, the wolves started laughing."She's cheap, Mr. Castellano, but she listens! That's the thing about her!""Yeah—throw her a few chips and she'll crawl like a dog. That's a dea

The cashier's cage on the ground floor of the casino.Marco had cleared the other staff out in advance. He stood behind the counter himself and took me in, dripping.He watched me pull the blood-smeared chips out of my soaked clothes. Something moved in his eyes. He didn't ask.He counted fast and clean."Three million, exactly."He hit the keys and cut me an unnamed Swiss bank card.He reached under the counter for a dry towel and pushed it to me. Then he leaned toward the bulletproof glass and dropped his voice."Sabrina's men are waiting for you at the front and the side corridors."He nodded at the passage to his left."Take the staff fire exit. No cameras."He slid the card through the tray."Don't let this show. Go save her."I took the card.I pressed it flat against my chest and bowed to him."I won't forget this."I didn't stay.Dante could come down any minute.If he saw me at a man's counter, saw that man count chips for me, hand me a towel, lean in to whisper—I knew exactl

He stood frozen. Then he lunged for the phone on the floor.He read the notice.The lock screen was a small girl in an oxygen mask.The eyes and brow were stamped straight from his own face.His breathing stopped."No… that's not… no…"He shook his head and turned and roared at the bodyguards waiting down the corridor."Get a car! To the hospital! Fly in the best medical team in the country, right now—move!"I didn't look at him.I didn't look at Sabrina, whose face had gone the color of paper.I dragged my broken fingers along the floor and started down the stairs.Marco was at the far side of the fire door.He shrugged out of his long black coat and wrapped it around me.He said nothing. He picked me up in his arms and carried me fast toward the garage.Dante was at the other end of the corridor.He saw it.A man. Carrying me. Walking fast.In the way his mind worked, there was only one explanation for that.---County General. Basement level two.The corridor outside the morgue.Dan

Three days later.A cemetery on the west edge of Las Vegas.A storm had opened up over the desert. Wind was driving the rain sideways.I was in black.Marco stood beside me, holding a large black umbrella over us.It was a funeral with no mourners.Only a priest, reading the service into the wind and the rain.Out beyond the cemetery gate, on the asphalt—Dante, mud to the bone.He lifted his head, and the first thing he saw was Marco holding the umbrella over me.The same man. At the hospital. Here. Always next to her.He looked for a long time.Then he lowered his head and kept crawling.He had no umbrella. He let the rain strip his face.From the gate.Three steps, and his forehead to the ground.Every time, his head hit the concrete hard.Blood and rain ran down his face.He came up on his knees, one length at a time, until he reached Emily's new stone.From inside his jacket he took out a notarized document."Sienna…"His voice was cracked open."This is the transfer of every asse

Steel groaned as it twisted.The hydraulic press let out a long hiss of brakes.One second before the Porsche would have gone flat, it stopped.The cabin had closed up around her.Her arms, her legs, her spine—pinned between folded steel.Crack. Crack.Bones snapping inside the small space.A scream tore out of her.Dante had held back just enough. He'd missed every vital.She lost control of her body. Warm fluid and blood soaked through the seat.Boom.The gate of the scrapyard blew in.Searchlights swept up to the control deck and found him.Dozens of rifle lasers came to rest on his chest and forehead.A SWAT captain raised a bullhorn."Castellano! Hands up! You're surrounded!""Stand down! Surrender, now!"Medics ran in toward the wreck.They brought in cutters and started prying Sabrina out of the metal, blood all over her.He didn't resist.He reached over and killed the power to the control deck.He stood up.In his hand, the bank card—broken in half—and a crayon drawing Emily h