Jiyong set down our bags and looked around the room. “This is nice, right?”

I glared at him and he raised his brow. “What?”

The zipper of my suitcase whined as I pulled it around its borders, and I shook my head. Different strategies and the lack of time crowded my head. “This isn’t a vacation. You shouldn’t be here, Jiyong.”

In the next moment he was behind me, crossing his arms around my middle. “I go where you go.”

I leaned my head against his chest and sighed. “I have to get on the floor. You can stay here or check out the Strip. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“I’m going with you.”

“I don’t want you there, Ji.” A hurt expression weighted his face and I touched his arm. “If I’m going to win fourteen thousand dollars in one weekend, I have to concentrate. I don’t like who I’m going to be while I’m at those tables, and I don’t want you see it, okay?”

He brushed my hair from my eyes and kissed my cheek. “Okay, Babe.”

Jiyong waved to Bom as he left the room, and she approached me in the same dress she wore to the date party. I changed into a short gold number and slipped on a pair of heels, grimacing at the mirror. Bom pulled back my hair and then handed me a black tube.

“You need about five more coats of mascara, and they’re going to toss your ID on sight if you don’t slather on some more blush. Have you forgotten how this game is played?”

I snatched the mascara from her hand and spent another ten minutes on my makeup. Once I finished, my eyes began to gloss over. “Dammit, Dara, don’t cry,” I said, looking up and dabbing under my eyes with a tissue.

“You don’t have to do this. You don’t owe him anything.” Bom cupped my shoulders as I stood in front of the mirror one last time.

“He owes Benny money, Bommie. If I don’t, they’ll kill him.”

Her expression was one of pity. I had seen her look at me that way many times before, but this time she was desperate. She’d seen him ruin my life more times than either of us could count. “What about the next time? And the next time? You can’t keep doing this.”

“He agreed to stay away. Park Soo Man is a lot of things, but he’s no welsher.”

We walked down the hall and stepped into an empty elevator. “You have everything you need?” I asked, keeping the cameras in mind.

Bom clicked her fake driver’s license with her nails and smiled. “The name’s Jennifer. Jennifer Lee,” she said in her flawless southern accent.

I held out my hand. “Krystal Young. Nice to meet you, Jennifer.”

We both slipped on our sunglasses and stood stone-faced as the elevator opened, revealing the neon lights and bustling of the casino floor. People moved in all directions from all walks of life. Vegas was heavenly hell, the one place you could find dancers in ostentatious feathers and stage makeup, es with insufficient yet acceptable attire, businessmen in luxurious suits, and wholesome families in the same building. We strutted down an aisle lined with red ropes and handed a man in a red jacket our IDs. He eyed me for a moment and I pulled down my glasses.

“Anytime today would be great,” I said, bored.

He returned our IDs and stood aside, letting us pass. We passed aisle after aisle of slot machines and the blackjack tables and then stopped at the roulette wheel. I scanned the room, watching the various poker tables, settling on the one with older gentlemen in the seats.

“That one,” I said, nodding across the way.

“Start off aggressive, Dara. They won’t know what hit ’em.”

“No. They’re old Vegas. I have to play it smart this time.”

I walked over to the table, using my most charming smile. Locals could smell a hustler from a mile away, but I had two things in my favor that covered the scent of any con: youth … and .

“Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if I join you?”

They didn’t look up. “Sure sweet cheeks. Grab a seat and look pretty. Just don’t talk.”

“I want in,” I said, handing Bom my sunglasses. “There’s not enough action at the blackjack tables.”

One of the men chewed on his cigar. “This is a poker table, Princess. Five-card draw. Try your luck on the slot machines.”

I sat in the only empty seat, making a show of crossing my legs. “I’ve always wanted to play poker in Vegas. And I have all these chips,” I said, setting my rack of chips on the table, “and I’m really good online.”

All five men looked at my chips and then at me. “There’s a minimum ante, Sugar,” the dealer said.

“How much?”

“Five hundred, Peach. Listen … I don’t want to make you cry. Do yourself a favor and pick out a shiny slot machine.”

I pushed forward my chips, shrugging my shoulders in the way a reckless and overly confident girl might before realizing she’d just lost her college fund. The men looked at each other. The dealer shrugged and tossed in his own.

“Jinyoung,” one of the players said, offering his hand. When I took it, he pointed at the other men. “Mel, Pauli, Joe, and that’s Winks.” I looked over to the skinny man chewing on a toothpick, and as predicted, he winked at me.

I nodded and waited with fake anticipation as the first hand was dealt. I purposely lost the first two, but by the fourth hand, I was up. It didn’t take as long for the Vegas veterans to figure me out as it did Jiro.

“You said you played online?” Pauli asked.

“And with my dad.”

“You from here?” Jinyoung asked.

“Busan Korea,” I said.

“She’s no online player, I’ll tell you that,” Mel grumbled.

An hour later, I had taken twenty-seven hundred dollars from my opponents, and they were beginning to sweat.

“Fold,” Jinyoung said, throwing down his cards with a frown.

“If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would have never believed,” I heard behind me.

Bom and I turned at the same time, and my lips stretched across my face in a wide smile. “Hae Jin,” I shook my head. “What are you doing here?”

“This is my place you’re scamming, Cookie. What are you doing here?”

I rolled my eyes and turned to my suspicious new friends. “You know I hate that, Hae Jin.”

“Excuse us,” Hae  Jin said, pulling me by the arm to my feet. Bom eyed me warily as I was ushered a few feet away.

Hae Jin’s father ran the casino, and it was more than just a surprise that he had joined the family business. We used to chase each other down the halls of the hotel upstairs, and I always beat him when we raced elevators. He had grown up since I’d seen him last. I remembered him as a gangly prepubescent teenager; the man before me was a sharply dressed pit boss, not at all gangly and certainly all man. He still had the silky brown skin and green eyes I remembered, but the rest of him was a pleasant surprise.

His irises sparkled in the bright lights. “This is surreal. I thought it was you when I walked by, but I couldn’t convince myself that you would come back here. When I saw this Tinkerbell cleaning up at the vet’s table, I knew it was you.”

“It’s me,” I said.

“You look … different.”

“So do you. How’s your dad?”

“Retired,” he smiled. “How long are you here?”

“Just until Sunday. I have to get back to school.”

“Hey, Hae Jin,” Bom said, taking my arm.

“Bom,” he chuckled. “I should have known. You are each other’s shadow.”

“If her parents ever knew that I brought her here, all that would have come to an end a long time ago.”

“It’s good to see you, Dara. Why don’t you let me buy you dinner?” he asked, scanning my dress.

“I’d love to catch up, but I’m not here for fun, Hae Jin.”

He held out his hand and smiled. “Neither am I. Hand over your ID.”

My face fell, knowing I had a fight on my hands. Hae Jin wouldn’t give in to my charms so easily. I knew I would have to tell him the truth. “I’m here for Soo Man. He’s in trouble.”

Hae Jin shifted. “What kind of trouble?”

“The usual.”

“I wish I could help. We go way back, and you know I respect your dad, but you know I can’t let you can’t stay.”

I grabbed his arm and squeezed. “He owes Benny money.”

Hae Jin closed his eyes and shook his head. “Jesus.”

“I have until tomorrow. I’m calling in a solid IOU, Hae Jin. Just give me until then.”

He touched his palm to my cheek. “I’ll tell you what … if you have dinner with me tomorrow, I’ll give you until midnight.”

I looked at Bom and then to Hae Jin. “I’m here with someone.”

He shrugged. “Take it or leave it, Dara. You know how things are done here. You can’t have something for nothing.”

I sighed, defeated. “Fine. I’ll meet you tomorrow night at Ferraro’s if you give me until midnight.”

He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “It was good to see you again. See you tomorrow … five o’clock, all right? I’m on the floor at eight.”

I smiled as he walked away, but it quickly faded when I saw Jiyong staring at me from the roulette table.

“Oh ,” Bom said, tugging on my arm.

Jiyong glared at Hae Jin as he passed, and then made his way to me. He shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at Hae Jin, who was watching us from the corner of his eye.

“Who was that?”

I nodded in Hae Jin’s direction. “That is Park Hae Jin. I’ve known him a long time.”

“How long?”

I looked back at the vet table. “Jiyong, I don’t have time for this.”

“I guess he chucked the youth minister idea,” Bom said, sending a flirtatious grin in Hae Jin’s direction.

“That’s your ex-boyfriend?” Jiyong asked, instantly angry. “I thought you said he was from Busan?”

I shot Bom an impatient glare and then took Jiyong’s chin in my hand, insisting on his full attention. “He knows I’m not old enough to be in here, Ji. He gave me until midnight. I will explain everything later, but for now I have to get back to the game, all right?”

Jiyong’s jaws fluttered under his skin, and then he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “All right. I’ll see you at midnight.” He bent down to kiss me, but his lips were cold and distant. “Good luck.”

I smiled as he melted into the crowd, and then I turned my attention to the men. “Gentlemen?”

“Have a seat, Shirley Temple,” Jinyoung said. “We’ll be making our money back now. We don’t appreciate being hustled.”

“Do your worst.” I smiled.

“You have ten minutes,” Bom whispered.

“I know,” I said.

I tried to block out the time and Bom’s knee bobbing nervously under the table. The pot was at sixteen thousand dollars—the night’s all-time high, and it was all or nothing.

“I’ve never seen anything like you, kid. You’ve had almost a perfect game. And she’s got no tell, Winks. You notice?” Pauli said.

Winks nodded; his cheerful demeanor had evaporated a bit more with every hand. “I noticed. Not a rub or a smile, even her eyes stay the same. It’s not natural. Everybody’s got a tell.”

“Not everybody,” Bom said, smug.

I felt a familiar pair of hands touch my shoulders. I knew it was Jiyong, but I didn’t dare turn around, not with three thousand dollars sitting in the middle of the table.

“Call,” Jinyoung said.

Those that had crowded around us applauded when I laid down my hand. Jinyoung was the only one close enough to touch me with three of a ki