For a full second the room forgot how to make sound. Then it remembered all at once. Curses, laughter, the thin scream of someone's AR feed dying when it tried to overlay odds that no longer mattered. The compliance officer's tablet bleeped and steadied, legalese stacking like bricks. The penthouse in light stuttered, then settled into her column, as if the god at the table had been bored of playing with it and was glad to be told what to do.
Leung didn't collapse. That would have been clean. He sat and watched the white tile like it might confess to a crime if he kept his eyes open long enough. Sweat drew a black line through his powder. His secretary's hand stuttered once—just once—then carried on logging, because good women in wrong jobs always finish the work they're given.
The pit boss's smile changed by half a millimeter. To anyone else it would have looked the same. He bowed his head, just slightly. "Mah-jong called. Hand verified. Stake affirmed." His talismans tugged at his belt as if to say something and were allowed not to.
The dealer's exhale hissed like the ward-ink. She gathered tiles with the tender briskness of a nurse clearing instruments. Overhead, the penthouse rotated lazily, a polite building waiting for instructions.
Iris didn't light another stick yet. The urge was there; ritual wanted its altar. She let it starve and looked at Leung with polite disinterest, the kind you use for men who've just introduced you to their pride and asked if you'd like to take it home.
"Draught problem solved," she said, voice even. "I'll bring curtains."
A ripple of idiot laughter. A sharper ripple of silence after, as if the room had realized jokes might be sacrilege in the wake of whatever just moved.
Leung blinked. Once. Twice. Found his mouth. "Another," he said, hoarse. "Double." The secretary half-turned, then checked herself. The pit boss didn't move; his charms were awake and listening.
"House rules," the compliance man said without looking up, voice dry as scripture. "Stake concluded."
Leung's smile returned without teeth. "I can raise."
"You can," Iris said. The violet ember still wasn't lit; the want for it was a tight little animal under her ribs. "But not with roofs you'll need later."
He considered throwing the table. The thought moved behind his eyes, a fish turning under cloudy water. He didn't. Wealth had trained him too hard. He sat very straight in his chair instead and did math at the back of his skull.
On the mezzanine, Kwan moved again, the kind of movement you only catch if you've trained yourself to watch for exits. The black suit beside him said something that made the smiles around them widen and thin at the same time. Useful lies, polite grammar.
The compliance officer's tablet chimed. He raised two fingers and etched a small sigil over the felt. "Transfer in escrow," he intoned, "witnessed."
The AR penthouse did not bow. It hung placid, waiting for someone to schedule cleaning.
Iris stood. Not fast. The crowd gave way without meaning to.
"Pleasure," she told Leung, and left him to the weight he'd tried to weaponize.
As she turned, the ward-strip along the brass whispered against her fingertips, less like a hiss now, more like a sigh. The charm fragments on the floor had been swept to one side. Someone's hand reached to touch the place where her tile had sparked the rail and then thought better of it.
At the edge of the pit she paused and looked back once, not at him, not at the penthouse in light, but at the dealer. The woman met her gaze for half a heartbeat, then lowered her eyes in a little bow no one taught her.
Outside the ring of felt and breath and superstition, the casino remembered it had other business. Baccarat boomed like temple drums. A roulette wheel hissed. Somewhere a singer hit a note too pure for the room and it shattered softly against the lights.
Iris let herself breathe. The urge for the stick passed; the ritual could wait until the street gave it permission. She touched the jade at her throat, found it less cold than before, and told herself it was only the room's temperature. The compliance man would finish his little ceremony. The registry bot would curl up in its vault like a snake with a stolen egg. The building would stop pretending to be a toy.
Above the felt the AR halo of the penthouse turned slow and smug, glass rooms glimmering like it already knew an owner. The crowd breathed superstition into its edges.
And because the city had exquisite timing, a voice cut in from behind her—dry, disapproving, and seasoned with enough weariness to make good police drink too much.
"What the hell, Lau," Kwan said. "I leave you alone ten minutes."
Iris didn't turn at once. She let the emberless stick roll between her fingers and grinned at the table like it had been her idea all along.
"Inspector," she said, low enough the compliance man could pretend not to hear. "You missed the part where I became a landlord."
Kwan stepped to her shoulder, black suit neat as a reprimand. His eyes flicked over the AR halo, the secretary's slate still humming, the pit boss bowing shallow enough to be read as surrender. Then back to her.
"You don't even pay rent on time," he said. "Now you're collecting it?"
"Diversification." She pushed back her chair. The crowd peeled away, eager not to be caught in the gravity of his badge even if it wasn't showing.
The compliance officer muttered the last line of his ceremony. The halo of the penthouse folded in on itself, a tower eaten by its own light. Only the registry seal remained, stamped in red above the felt before it blinked out.
The pit boss bowed again, deeper this time. "Transfer complete. The house thanks you for your... spirited play."
Iris slung her helmet off the chair, tucked it under her arm. "Spirited," she echoed. "That's one word for it."
Kwan gestured toward the foyer. "We're leaving."
"Always so romantic." She fell into step beside him, the crowd parting like the tide, whispers trailing after them—garnish, ghost, dragon, courier. She lit the stick at last as they crossed into chandelier light, violet smoke curling defiantly into air that smelled of money and fear. "Will you help me move the furnitue?"
"After you've terrified half of Macao and inherited plumbing problems in Central?"
They crossed the foyer together, Iris trailing smoke, Kwan cutting a neat path with the kind of presence that made even money forget itself. The baccarat pit behind them was already straining to roar loud enough to overwrite the omen they'd left.
The limo waited outside, charms taped to its grille damp with rain. The driver pretended not to notice them, gaze fixed on the street.
"Miss Lau?"
The voice was brittle, paper left too long in damp.
Iris turned, grin cutting in reflex. Kwan shifted with her, half a step forward, posture loose but edged—the kind of casual that spoke bodyguard in every line of his frame.
The secretary stood just inside the glow of the jade carpet. She clutched a folio to her chest as if it were armor, heels sinking in the wet pile. Her hair clung at the temples, her lipstick cracked at the corners. Whatever smile she'd rehearsed for men like Leung had been abandoned somewhere back on the gaming floor.
"Miss Lau," she said again, softer now, frayed. "Please."
The secretary stepped closer. The guards didn't stir; the pit staff lingered back, watching like an audience that had already paid for their seats.
"I beg you," she said, her voice trembling now. "The deed. Return it. Show goodwill."
Iris exhaled smoke slow, deliberate, violet haze curling between them. "You think I keep towers folded in my clutch?"
"It isn't paper," the secretary said quickly. "It's blood. That property carries the family's weight. Hold it, and you won't just shame him—you'll inherit his enemies. Enemies you can't ride past."
Kwan's eyes narrowed a fraction. He said nothing, but the hard set at his mouth was answer enough.
Iris tilted her head, grin crooked. "Your man lost it. Fair table, fair hand. If his pride broke on the felt, that's not my guilt to carry."
"Because his pride is larger than him," the secretary whispered. Her hands shook on the folio. "Please. Return it quietly. Spare him. Spare us. Spare yourself."
The plea hung raw in the air. The crowd listened without looking, their attention like knives kept sheathed but near. Iris smiled crooked, cruel.
"You want me to erase a win because it makes your boss look small? Maybe he should have thought of that before he threw his penthouse on the tiles."
The secretary flinched. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "You don't understand who you're crossing."
"That's the fun part," Iris said.
Kwan shifted just enough that his shoulder brushed Iris's. A subtle signal: too far, too much. She ignored it.
"Please," the secretary said again, voice cracking. "You could take compensation instead. Money. Silence. Everyone would forget."
"Forget?" Iris barked a laugh that turned heads. "Sweetheart, every lens in this place recorded your boss burning himself alive. You'll be explaining tonight to auditors and uncles for the next decade."
The woman's eyes shimmered wet. She pressed the folio harder to her chest, like she thought it might hold her together. "Then for pity's sake, don't make this worse."
She looked like she might collapse right there, knees buckling into the carpet's fake weave. Kwan cleared his throat once, polite and neutral.
"We should go."
But the air was already shifting. The canopy lights flickered. Just a stutter, like a bulb about to fail.
The crowd noticed first. A ripple went through them: shoulders stiffened, voices clipped off mid-sentence, attention snapped elsewhere with the twitchy precision of prey scenting the wrong wind.
The guards moved next. Corp mecha shifted their halberds with a metallic whisper, optics flaring red. Opposite them, wardens dragged charms across their skin, cinnabar sigils flaring to life, tattoos alive with sudden twitch. For a heartbeat the forecourt bristled, two sides mistaking the tremor for a breach.
As if.
No noise of approach, no footsteps. One moment the air under the canopy was crowded with perfume and rain-hiss, the next it had made space for a figure dressed in black so clean it seemed to erase the background. Cloth cut like silence, mask up to the nose, gloved hands folded neat at the waist. He wasn't tall, wasn't armored, but the forecourt buckled around his presence as if gravity had been rewritten.
The guards froze mid-motion. Mecha optics recalibrated, cycling through threat matrices before dropping back to idle. Wardens hissed prayers under their breath and eased their staves back to ground.
None stepped forward. They had no right to intervene - not yet.
The secretary saw the figure and turned to glass. All color drained from her face in an instant, lips parting without sound. The shinobi approached them without hurry. The crowd leaned away in the kind of silence that meant no one wanted to be mistaken for a witness.
Shinobi stopped two paces short, bowed in one clean movement, and extended an envelope with both hands.
No words. Just paper and weight.
The secretary broke. Whatever plea she had left cracked in her throat. She bowed too fast, muttered something that could have been apology, and stumbled back, heels striking the stone as she retreated into the safety of the dispersing crowd. She didn't look at Iris again. She didn't need to. The message was carved into the air already.
Kwan stood beside her, motionless. He hadn't shifted when the guards had bristled, hadn't flinched when the canopy trembled, but Iris felt the coil in him ready to unwind. She raised her hand, as in warning.
"Well," she murmured, "that answers that."
The shinobi gave no reply. He held the envelope steady, arms extended, patience infinite.
Iris took it. Warm against her palm, heavier than paper had any right to be. The wax seal gleamed blood-red in the neon wash.
He bowed once more, precise, unhurried. Then he was gone—folded into shadow, reclaimed by the night as if he had only ever been borrowed from it. The guards stood stiff, unwilling to admit they had moved. The crowd began to breathe again, cautious, too loud in the hush that followed.
The pit staff scattered quick, relieved to have been dismissed from whatever had just passed for ritual.
Iris turned the envelope in her hand. Heavy. Too heavy. She didn't break the seal. Not here.
Kwan exhaled through his nose, the closest he came to profanity in public. "You don't make anything easy."
"Wouldn't be worth your overtime otherwise."
He shook his head once, no humor in it, and stepped to the limo door. "Inside."
Iris followed, violet ember trailing smoke across the jade carpet before she flicked it into the gutter. The wax seal throbbed faint in her palm, red and smug as blood. It smelled faintly of ink and smoke, like a shrine left too close to a stove.
She cracked it with a nail.
The handwriting sprawled in black across the sheet, clean and decisive:
Lau—
Since you're in Macao anyway, collect my tea from Huang's on Rua da Felicidade. Shipment to Hong Kong delayed.
No drones. No paperfolds. No omenpaths. Come see me once you are back.
Expenses on me.
—W.
Iris stared, then barked a laugh sharp enough that the driver flicked his eyes to the mirror and then away. She folded the letter once, twice, slid it back into the envelope. Tucked it into her clutch like it was nothing more than a receipt.
Tea. Half the underworld bent under Wei's name, and he had her playing courier for leaves in a box.
Kwan looked at her, puzzled.
She blew smoke at the ceiling, haze curling into the limo's cold air. "Relax, Inspector. It's only tea."
Kwan's gaze stayed on her, the kind of silence that meant he was counting exits.
Outside, Cotai blurred past in wet neon. In her clutch, the envelope sat too warm, too heavy, as if the wax still pulsed with a heartbeat of its own.
Iris let the grin settle back on her face, thin and crooked. "And you know what they say about omens in the leaves."
The car rolled on, carrying her toward the next storm.