She gripped her cards, sitting ramrod straight for half a minute, scarcely able to believe she would fail at such a crucial hurdle—until it suddenly dawned on her that she didn't have to tamper with the faces of the plastic-coated cards at all.
"Did you check?" Milady asked. "It's not just the faces. You can mark the edges, too. Like the four corners… You don't need a lot of marks, just blackening the corner on a few key cards would be enough. But, I… I didn't dare check too closely. I was afraid of causing trouble."
The moment the words left her mouth, she knew it had worked: they were suspicious.
The men looked at each other, their expressions darkening.
"Damn it, no wonder we keep losing," a shorter man spat on the ground. "Let's go check again. If there's so much as a speck of dust on them, I'll rip that punk's head off."
Milady, afraid they would grab her too, immediately feigned a look of surprise. Before they could react, she turned and bolted. Her speed and reflexes had always been exceptional; even a grown man couldn't catch her. In a matter of seconds, she had crossed most of the casino floor.
Watching from a distance as the group stormed toward the Black Jack table, Milady hurried over to a bodyguard in the corner.
With the hint she'd given them, it wouldn't take long for the group to discover that the top-right corners of several key playing cards were, indeed, blackened. 'When that happens, they'll at least cause a scene, right?'
Of course, they would never know that those were charcoal stains, transferred onto the cards when Milady had secretly pressed their edges into her fingernails.
The reason she had sat at the Black Jack table for half an hour wasn't that she wanted to lose money. It was because she had to wait patiently for the right moment—when she was dealt a key card—to make her mark. The more she hit, the higher the chance of getting one of those cards, so she had to grit her teeth and intentionally bust, time and time again.
Even though she wasn't a habitual gambler, she knew one basic truth: for a cheater, marking the cards is only half the battle. The other half is actually getting those cards dealt to you; otherwise, the marks are useless.
Perhaps that was precisely why the dealer hadn't grown suspicious. Milady had absolutely no control over which cards she was dealt or when. 'If her only goal was to win, who would bother marking cards under these circumstances?'
But winning was never her goal for the evening.
"You'd better get over to the Black Jack table, quick," she said, running up to the bodyguard. "Those guys from the White Shark Ship look like they're about to start something with the dealer. I think I saw something tucked into their waistbands—some kind of weapon, I don't know."
Weapons and Military Mechanisms were forbidden in the casino, but rules were made to be broken. The bodyguard's gaze fell upon the distant group, and just as she'd expected, his expression filled with alarm. With no time for questions, he shouted to a colleague nearby, and several of them rushed over.
Milady bounded up the stairs, gripping the handrail tightly and holding her breath in anticipation.
Just as the men shoved the dealer aside, snatched the deck, and began flipping through the cards one by one, the bodyguards arrived. At first, it was just a shouting match and a minor scuffle. But when they discovered the blackened card corners, it was like throwing water on a grease fire. The situation instantly spiraled out of control. A moment later, a bodyguard was sent flying, crashing into one of the machines and knocking it askew.
Tables were overturned amid screams and curses. In the ensuing scrum, someone took a heavy punch. In the blink of an eye, blood spattered through the air.
The thud of countless footsteps echoed across the casino floor—some fleeing, some rushing toward the chaos, some trying to intervene. The group of men was like the center of an ever-accelerating whirlpool, pulling in anyone who got too close. A chaotic din reverberated from the casino ceiling as the brawl escalated.
'Will all this chaos be enough to get me what I want?'
Amid the pandemonium, Milady waited, the seconds stretching out agonizingly. After what felt like an eternity, she finally heard a voice rise above the terrified screams: "Quick, go get Mr. Hanrui!"
'He must be the one in charge, right?'
A waitress shouted, "Right away!" and turned, hurrying toward the far end of the casino.
A chill shot through Milady, but it felt as if she could finally breathe again. 'This is my only chance.' She immediately vaulted over the side of the staircase, swiftly dodging the chaotic collisions on the floor below. She followed the waitress to a locked door at the back of the casino, one not open to the public.
The waitress frantically fumbled for a key and unlocked the door. Anxious to get moving, she ducked inside the moment it opened, completely unaware that the heavy door, slowly swinging shut behind her, had been caught by a single hand.