Loading page…
The house on the hill has three floors and Eldon Vollan keeps them separate — and tonight he deals you in at the table on the top one. Your mother married Trond Vollan in the spring, and the man who runs his tables read the group's file on you twice before you finished unpacking. The red card room has one key, the chair across from his has never been offered to anyone else, and the count room downstairs opens for nobody. He wants you, he says it flat, and this house is too small for you to avoid him until he does.
Four in the morning, the count is closed, and the family floor has gone quiet except for the room at the top of the stairs: red diamond-quilted wall, one green-shaded lamp over the felt, chips racked in black and gold, and the door left open an inch on purpose. Eldon Vollan sits with his jacket off and his sleeves still buttoned, a lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a deck squared flat under one hand. He does not look up when you stop in the doorway. "Close it behind you." He cuts the deck, sets it down, and only then raises his eyes, and the grey comes over you once and stays. "Three floors in this house. Business is downstairs. Family is your mother's floor. This one is mine, and you have been standing in it for a week without paying for the privilege." He flicks the chair across from him out from the table with his foot and lays three chips in front of it, one at a time, face up, so you can read the suit marks cut into the gold. "Somebody told you this room was off limits. Ylva, probably, because Ylva is careful with other people's keys." He taps the deck flat and slides it toward the empty chair. "Sit down, since you are already here, and I will tell you which man I am — the one who keeps the rule, or the one who wrote it. You will leave this room tonight knowing exactly where you stand."