The first thing I noticed wasn't the silence.
It wasn't the way the air went still, or how the room seemed to pause like someone had pulled the plug on reality's background noise.
No—the very first thing I noticed was the Boss's face. It went slack. Not relaxed, not casual, but slack in that way a drunkard loses grip on a glass just before it slips and shatters. His jaw loosened by a fraction. His eyes went a little wider than dignity allowed.
It was the tiniest stutter in his mask of authority, but I saw it, and I savored it. Because nothing—absolutely nothing—tastes better than the moment a predator realizes their prey has teeth.
My eyes, of course, flicked downward because I am, if nothing else, a nosy bitch with zero self-preservation. The cards lay there like smug little slabs of paper, winking up at me with their blessedly obscene alignment.
A full house. Mine. Not his. Mine.
My heart leapt in my throat and then immediately slid down into the pit of my stomach, doing a victory jig along the way.
Then came the noise.
Not from me—not yet, though the laugh bubbling in my throat was already tickling its way upward like champagne gone feral—but from the room. The crowd of thugs, gamblers, and henchmen erupted in a symphony of chaos. Chips clattered. Boots stomped. Someone shouted a curse that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.
The whole place went feral, like I'd just pulled a rabbit out of a hat only to reveal the rabbit was flipping everyone off with both paws.
And the Boss… gods, the Boss. His eyes tore back up from the cards and landed on me. Wet. That's the only word for it—wet, as though disbelief itself had manifested like condensation on his gaze.
And then, slowly, inevitably, that disbelief curled, twisted, and mutated into something far darker. Anger. Not the loud, chest-thumping kind, but the quiet kind, the kind that spreads like mold through wallpaper—slow, certain, and rancid beyond compare.
"You—" he began, voice low enough to scrape the marrow out of my bones, "—cheated."
Now, normally, that accusation might sting. Normally, I might gasp in mock offense, clutch pearls I don't own, bat lashes that could cut glass. But this time? This time, I didn't even hear him. Because my laugh—oh, my precious, wicked, unstoppable laugh—burst out of me like a cannon.
It was seismic. It was volcanic. It was the kind of laugh that made you wonder if someone had just completely lost their grip on sanity and was now holding onto the chandelier instead.
I leaned back in my chair, hands clutching my stomach, and let it rip. The sound shook through the room, bouncing off the stone walls, rattling the hanging chains, probably scaring a few rats into early retirement.
It was not a delicate laugh. It was not a musical titter. It was the laugh of a maniac who had just realized the universe had finally, mercifully, decided to share the joke with him.
By the time I wound down, wiping the corner of my eye with one trembling finger, the Boss was practically vibrating with rage. And that was when I did the worst possible thing. The thing no sane creature would attempt in front of a man who could snap me in half and floss his teeth with my spine.
I wagged my finger at him. Slowly. Deliberately. Like I was chastising a puppy that had peed on the rug.
"Of course I cheated," I purred, my grin so wide it threatened to swallow my face. "What did you expect? Fair play? Darling, please. That ship sailed the moment you pulled that little trick in our first game. Consider this a balancing of scales. An act of divine symmetry. A cosmic reach-around."
The men howled, slapping tables, clutching each other's shoulders, some even doubling over. A few were shouting obscenities I'd rather not repeat, mostly because I planned on using them later in bed.
The Boss, however, stumbled over his breath like it had suddenly turned into knives. He collapsed back into his chair with a grunt, his fury stalled by sheer disbelief. Then came the question—sharp, cutting, singular:
"How?"
I tilted my head, smiled with all the smugness of a cat that had just vomited on an heirloom rug, and said sweetly, "Oldest trick in the book. I marked the cards."
If silence had weight, the one that followed could have crushed me flat. The Boss's eyes went round, then narrowed, then round again as though he couldn't decide whether to be angry or terrified.
"Impossible," he hissed. "I would've seen. I would've noticed." His voice rose with every word, building into panic. "What did you use? Ink? Powder? A spell? What?"
I couldn't help it. I giggled. That was my first mistake. My second was making eye contact while doing it. My third was raising one languid hand, dragging a finger down the slope of my chest, all the way to my stomach, then lower, until it pressed against the faint, sticky sheen still clinging from earlier humiliations. My fingertip came away glistening. I stretched it between two fingers, a shining, obscene string of white clinging like silk spun by demons.
And then I smiled, wide, bright, and wicked. Tongue poking out just slightly in a gesture so lewd even I wanted to slap myself.
The Boss's face did something incredible then. It folded, collapsed, twisted through three emotions at once—horror, disgust, and disbelief—like a carnival mask being melted and reshaped in fire. And then… it cracked.
He laughed. Not a confident laugh, not a victorious laugh. A broken laugh. A laugh with jagged edges and too much air, like it had been ripped out of him by force. He slapped the table once, half-standing, pointing at me like I was some obscene miracle.
"You—you marked the cards with—" His words fell apart, shredded by disbelief. "With cum?"
I nodded. Cheerfully. Like a schoolboy confirming he'd done his homework, except my homework was disgusting and no sane teacher would ever want to grade it.
And then, instead of dignifying the Boss with an explanation, I did something far worse: I turned my head slightly—not to him, not to Brutus, not to the men—but to you. Yes, you. The invisible reader, the voyeur crouched somewhere in the dark corner of my story, drooling into their sleeve and praying I didn't notice.
See, you might be wondering—Loona, how did you pull this trick? You're thinking maybe I slipped something in my sleeve, or whispered a spell, or had Brutus cough at the right moment like some kind of prison-stage magician's assistant. Cute guesses, but no.
The truth is so much worse. And so much stickier.
Back at the start, when I was "inspecting" the deck, pretending to be the suspicious little gutter-wretch who couldn't trust the Boss's integrity, I was actually up to something else. Every flip of the card, every careless shuffle, every bend at the waist that sent eyes glued to the wrong piece of me—I was busy. Busy smearing, smudging, dragging little invisible trails of me across those cards.
Not just me, though. Oh no, I'm a generous artist. I'd been soaking in the men's collective filth this entire time—sweat, precum, spilled shame, all those lovely little offerings they'd left on my skin, and thighs, and hair. A cocktail of degradation, if you will. A buffet of bodily fluids. And I marked the cards with it.
Yes. You heard me. I marked the deck with cum.
Not visible, not tactile—but scented. Using the beastman's gift throughout the game, all I had to do was sniff. My nose picked up the bouquet of sins and told me exactly what the Boss was holding.
It was foul. It was disgusting. It was genius.
When I snapped my attention back to the room, Brutus was gone. No—wait. He wasn't gone. He was there, still leaned against the wall, except he was doubled over, his shoulders shaking so violently I thought he might actually break in half.
Tears were streaming from the corners of his eyes, and the noise—gods, the noise. He was laughing. The kind of laughter that sounds like a hyena just discovered cocaine. He slapped the wall once, then again, choking out wheezes between gasps.
And then the men caught on. The whispers started small, crawling like rats through the crowd, but soon they swelled into shouts.
"Cum cards!" one of them bellowed, and that was it. The room went ballistic. Taunts, jeers, whistles. A man doubled over, wheezing, calling the Boss a "seed-sniffer's bitch." Another yelled, "Lost to the smell of your own balls, Boss!" Someone actually spat out their drink mid-laugh, spraying the table.
The Boss's face was a stormcloud now. His jaw flexed, unflexed. A vein on his temple stood out so sharply I thought it might detach and file a complaint on its own. The insults grew sharper, nastier.
Men who had once bowed and scraped to him now saw an opening, and they pounced like hyenas scenting blood. "Blind old bastard!" "Didn't notice the spunk stains, did ya?" "Cum-blind, Boss, that's what they'll call you now!"
And then—like thunder cracking open the sky—his voice boomed.
"ENOUGH!"
Silence. Instantly. The room froze like someone had pulled the plug. Even Brutus's laughter hiccupped into a stunned wheeze, though the tears still streamed down his cheeks.
The Boss stood, slow and heavy, pinching the bridge of his nose like a weary father dealing with children who'd set the house on fire for the fifth time this week. His eyes closed. His chest rose. He breathed once, twice, then dropped his hand and looked at me.
And gods, that look.
It wasn't hatred, not anymore. It was something far worse: reverence.
"You," he said, voice low, deliberate, a dangerous hymn. "You filthy little parasite. You ridiculous, disgusting, brilliant brat. You've humiliated me in front of my own men, and somehow, I respect you for it." His lips curled into a bitter smile. "A deal is a deal. You'll have your place in the gang. And your share of influence. Earned not by force, not by luck, but by… that." He gestured vaguely at the table, at me, at the entire grotesque spectacle.
I don't know what came over me then. Relief, maybe. Pride, closer. Or maybe I was just high on my own audacity. Because I threw my head back and laughed again. A big, stupid, joyous laugh. I kicked back in my chair like a giddy child, legs flailing, until the chair tipped and I went crashing backwards onto the stone floor with a graceless thud that knocked the breath out of me.
Flat on my back, staring up at the cracked ceiling, I kept laughing until my ribs ached. My vision blurred with tears of my own. And then, above me, a shadow fell.
Brutus.
Towering, golden-eyed Brutus, staring down at me with that infuriating mix of exasperation and affection. He extended one broad hand down, calloused palm open, steady.
I blinked up at him, still giggling, still half-drunk on my own madness. Then I slipped my small, pale hand into his. His grip closed firm, solid, anchoring me as he pulled me effortlessly to my feet. My knees wobbled, my head spun, but I was upright again, thanks to him.
I looked back at the Boss, at the men, at the chaos I'd birthed in this dingy stone chamber. My smirk returned, sharp and wicked. One last tease.
"Well," I said, brushing dust from my hip with exaggerated flourish, "next time you boys want a card game… bring tissues."
The room cracked like glass under a hammer. Half the men burst into laughter again, the other half into groans. The Boss just stared, eyes narrowing, a vein twitching in his temple as though reconsidering all his life choices.
And me?
My vision blurred, my chest fluttered, my body—overheated, overstimulated, exhausted—finally decided it had had enough of this circus. I swayed, smiled one last smug smile… and collapsed into Brutus's arms as darkness claimed me.