by Skylar Cross
"Just a minute!" I shouted through the door.
"Kiri, do you remember Sebastian and Valentina?"
That's odd. Caden asked me the very same thing.
"No," I said, not wanting to share my flashback from this morning.
"Yes you do," he said.
How does Agent Henderson know this?
The stab of fear returned full force. My mouth went dry and I started to shake.
"I do?" I said.
"Yes," said Agent Henderson. "I hate to have to tell you like this, Kiri, but Sebastian and Valentina murdered your parents and you saw it."
The room collapsed in on me.
"You deceived me!" shouted the man with the cigar as he leaped toward my father. "You thought you could take my money and give me this?!"
He slammed a locket down onto the deck of the yacht and pulled out a small gun. His face was very red and he was breathing hard.
"Sebastian, don't!" shouted the tall pretty woman in the flowered dress.
"No!" shouted my mother as she leaped in front of my father.
The gun fired.
Several times.
I stayed in the corner of the galley where I was hiding, shut my eyes, and put my hands over my ears.
Mastered by His Touch 4
Chapter 1
The brutal sun was back.
Maybe today would be the day.
I knew I was going to die. I just didn't know the hour.
The tiny boat still tossed in the waves but now I couldn't even feel the motion that made me so sick before. Shit, that was days ago, wasn't it?
Every once in a while I saw a large bird fly across my field of vision. Then another. Then another.
They're waiting for me to die, aren't they?
Well, don't worry, my friends. I will be your lunch soon enough. Almost there.
I looked over at the girl. I couldn't tell if she was dead or not. I couldn't see any breathing going on. Maybe she's already gone. I'll do my best to keep the birds off her until I go.
When I saved her from the sinking yacht, I didn't think I was bringing her to a worse way to die. Maybe it would have been more humane to let her drown, instead of keeping her alive only to rot away slowly in the sun.
I should tip the dinghy over. Yes, that's a great idea! That would end it quickly for both of us.
Done. Decision made. I'm going to tip the boat over. Drowning must be better than this.
I sat up.
Well, not really. I tried to sit up. But I couldn't. I was only able to get a tiny arm movement going.
Shit, I don't think I have enough strength to even tip over the damned dinghy.
Okay, just relax, I told myself. Close your eyes and let sweet death come.
How the fuck did this happen? Why am I going to die in this tiny boat at age eighteen?
Let me try to figure this out before I go.
What was the trigger event that led me to this miserable and prolonged death?
Poker.
Yes, that was it. A stupid card game.
Poker.
The damned game made me a million dollars but also killed me.
If I were given the chance to go back in time and never play the damned game, would I take it?
Hm, tough choice. The game molded me into the person I am today. Which is not saying much. Not to mention it's ending my life.
Poker was the only thing that kept me sane as my father dragged my mother and me from base to base as the U.S. Army moved him wherever they needed him.
I discovered the game when I was eight years old.
I could already do math in my head when I was six, multiplying and dividing large numbers without a calculator. Way intelligent beyond my years, I was always the star of my class.
The problem was we were always on the move. I swear the longest I lasted at any school was six months before we had to pack our bags and move to another base.
There were only three constants in my life. First was the fact that my father ignored me. Second, my mother was drunk. Always. Perpetually.
I would be there at some tiny kitchen table in some apartment on some base, eating my Frosted Flakes. She would stumble out of the bedroom, go to the cabinet, pour some vodka into a large glass, then drink the whole thing down like an elixir. Then she'd turn on the TV and sit on the couch all day.
At age eight, I was the master of the laundry, the chef who made the meals, the housekeeper who cleaned the apartment, and the caretaker who pulled the blanket over my mother after she passed out.
The third constant in my life was poker.
I first played it with some other kids at an elementary school near Fort Riley in Kansas. A big kid named Mike taught me to play.
I grasped the concept of the game immediately and won several times that first day. I didn't see what the challenge was. With each hand, I got better at mapping the probabilities based on the way the dealer dealt the cards.
It was easy.
But I soon realized that I was the only kid doing this. Even Mike who taught me the game couldn't do it. While I was calculating the odds and percentages of hands, the other kids were just randomly betting and crossing their fingers.
Then they got bored and went to play kickball.
I, however, didn't get bored. My mathematical brain became obsessed with the game.
At Fort Riley, I had secured a job sweeping up at the barbershop. The sergeant paid me $5 a shift to mop up hair every afternoon.
I liked that $5. It was full of potential. Not to mention that all the other kids I knew were being given $1 a week as an allowance. I was raking in $25 a week.
For an eight-year old, I was rich. I liked being rich.
One day, I took my earnings and invested it in a deck of cards. Then I set out to find some older kids.
I found a group of them and asked if they wanted to play poker. They weren't interested until I plonked down $100 I had saved.
Suddenly they were very interested. Most of them were twelve or thirteen and $100 was a lot of money to them. Especially back in 1985.
We set up in the corner of a cafeteria on base and played. I ran the odds, calculated percentages, and cleaned them out for about $10 each. I had converted my $100 into $160. That was double an entire week's pay from the barber shop in under three hours.
I was hooked. This was too easy. Why work when I can just do this?
I quit my job sweeping hair and spent my afternoons charming older kids into playing poker.
At the end of a month, I had made $500. I was eight years old.
Now I was super-rich.
But something happened that I hadn't counted on.
Word spread that I was some kind of card shark and nobody wanted to play with me anymore.
I had been blacklisted.
I remember sitting on a bench in front of a flagpole, watching the officers and enlisted men walking around. I shuffled a deck of cards in my hands, but I had nobody to play with.
Most people would have quit, but I looked at my problem as a mathematical equation. I kept asking myself: Where can I find more players? Better players, not kids.
My gaze drifted over to the enlisted barracks. Why not just walk over there and challenge some adults to a game of poker?
Because I was eight years old, that's why.
What are the odds that I could get away with it, though? I made some calculations.
Before I knew it, my high-tops and Def Leppard T-shirt were making a beeline for the barracks. I had already learned in my short life that action trumps fear.
Head held high, I waltzed right into the building through a side door and into an area that looked like a recreation room. Several off-duty guys were lazing about on that hot summer day. Most were shirtless. A couple smoked. There was no air conditioning. The old fan in the window hummed loudly.
It was much easier than I thought.
I walked over to a table with my deck of cards, slapped $500 down, sat down, and said "Who wants to win five hund
red dollars playing poker?" I took out my deck of cards and shuffled.
The room stood still. Nobody spoke. The look on the enlisted men's faces was one of humorous shock. Several laughed.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," said a private. "Go home, kid. You shouldn't be in here."
I just sat there, shuffling. I made eye contact with the private who told me to go home and held it.
"Kid's got balls," said a black corporal with a laugh. But he sauntered over to his shirt hanging on the wall. He put his hand in the pocket and took out his wallet. He began counting his cash, laughing some more.
"Go play with the other kids," said another guy. "Go on!"
"They won't play with me anymore," I said. "I'm too good. I've been blacklisted. I need some real men to play with. Are you real men or did I walk into the ladies' barracks?"
The room exploded in laughter. "Holy fucking shit!" said one guy.
The black corporal finished counting his cash. Cigarette hanging from his mouth, he walked over to the table and put down $200.
"Deal me in, partner," he said. "What's your name?"
I told him.
"Anyone else?" I said. "Or are you just a bunch of pussies?"
The room roared again. Growing up on Army bases, I knew how to talk to these guys. I may have been only eight, but I figured out early on that challenging people is the best way to motivate them.
Four more guys sat down at the table.
I dealt the cards and we played some poker.
But something weird happened that day.
I lost.
I started with $500 and ended up with only $100.
I couldn't figure it out. How did I lose? I did the same math in my head, valued the hands the same way, and crunched the numbers like I always do.
And yet somehow those guys kicked my ass.
I would have lost my final $100 if not for the black corporal who told the other guys to quit and let me walk away with some dignity.
Most kids would have given up.
But I was grateful. I had learned something. I wasn't sure what I had learned, but it was something. There was apparently more to the game than calculating odds and percentages.
I had to know. I had to figure it out.
So I did what every other kid wouldn't do.
I went to the base library.
There, in a tiny section labeled "Games", I found five books on poker. I took all of them over to a table and began reading.
I had never been so overjoyed in my short life! Those books became the Gospel to me. They were chock full of all the answers I sought. I still didn't know how to do what the books taught, but I knew I could teach myself.
My math-oriented brain had been looking at poker as nothing but a series of calculations and equations. I was too young to understand yet how lack of parental care had molded me into a cold and calculating machine.
In that respect, poker taught me to feel emotions. Because in those books, I learned about tells, bluffing, reading people, and all the psychological aspects involved in being a good player.
I bought a little notebook and filled it with notes.
Then we moved again.
I found myself at an air base in Germany, a whole new world to conquer. Nobody here knew I was a card shark.
So I started with the kids. Like before, I made $500 then marched into the enlisted barracks again.
The scene repeated itself similar to the first time. But this time, I only lost $200 instead of $400.
I was getting better, but I was still losing.
Most kids would have given up.
As you have figured out by now, I'm not like most kids. Or grownups, for that matter.
I play to win. I get what I want.
And I wanted to be the world's best poker player.
So I kept playing. And studying human nature. And playing. And studying.
I read books way outside my age range. Books on persuasion, sales, deception, influence, and psychology.
Every day, wherever I went, I tested the principles I learned from the books. I became a natural charmer. I could walk into a store, dazzle the person behind the counter with wit, and walk out with free stuff.
At poker, I became a master of tells. I got ridiculously good, able to tell when a player was bluffing about ninety percent of the time.
One year and two Army bases later, I was making $500 a week.
For a kid, I was super-duper rich.
Everywhere we went it was the same. Nobody could believe a ten year-old boy played serious poker.
Two hours later, they couldn't believe a ten year-old boy walked away with their money.
On top of my poker skills, I got all A's in school and skipped a grade. I was beginning to believe that life held no challenge I couldn't conquer.
Except my parents.
I couldn't reach either of them.
My father remained a distant and cold man, obsessed with whatever work he did for the U.S. Army. My mother remained drunk.
Life continued on that way for two more years.
I got ever better and better at the game. My talent for reading and manipulating people grew. I could sit on the corner of any street and point out the cheating husband, the homosexuals, the high-class hookers, and the thieves. I could also get them to do whatever I wanted by playing on their weaknesses.
Then, one sunny morning, a colonel and a major came to our door to inform us that my father had died.
Chapter 2
From the amount of people gathered for the military funeral, I deduced that my father had been an important man. To this day, I'm not even sure how he died. He is listed as "killed in action" even though we were stationed in Japan at the time. Later, I surmised that he must have been somewhere else when he died. Whatever the reason, it was classified and filed away somewhere.
The truth is I didn't care. I didn't really know the man. As the 21-gun salute fired, I visually rehearsed my next poker game. The soldiers presented my mother with the American flag. She swayed a little as she took it. I could smell the vodka through the black veil.
Next thing I knew my mother and I were living in a tiny apartment in Tampa, Florida. We had moved there because she had an aunt living nearby who she thought could help us.
The aunt apparently didn't care about my mother, though, and within weeks we received an eviction notice because the rent hadn't been paid.
I was twelve years old.
With my mother crying at the tiny kitchen table in the hot old smelly building, I put down a stack of money.
She stopped crying and stared at it.
"Where did you get that?" she said, her eyes aglow at the stack.
"I earned it," I said. "I want to pay the rent. The three months we owe is there, plus another three. But Mom, you've got to get a job."
"I will, honey, I will."
She wrapped her hands around the money with love, an action I never recall her doing with me.
About a month later, I came home from school and my key wouldn't work. I found the landlord who told me he had to lock us out because it's been thirty days since the eviction notice.
I asked him about the three months we got caught up on, but he didn't know what I was talking about.
The cold hard reality sank in.
That was the moment I stopped caring about people. My own mother had robbed me. How could I trust anyone ever again?
I found my mother drunk and passed out in a shelter. To this day, I have no idea what happened to the money I gave her.
There was a nice lady at the shelter who helped me find a place to live with a foster family. I became a ward of the State of Florida. She told me it was only temporary until she could find someone who would permanently adopt me.
But I didn't care.
I had my own plans.
I was determined to take the world for all it had.
Maybe I was mad. I'm not sure. All I know is that I was focused and determined to take
everybody's money wherever I could, whenever I could. I was even willing to cheat if I had to. Fuck 'em.
