Queens, Knaves, and Jokers
Lorena wasn’t sure if she would get over what had happened that day. What Varis did. However, her husband, Sein, is an amazing man, and she could not be a luckier woman. After the incident he had taken some time off work to spend with her and their son. It seemed he devoted his every waking moment to them, showing his love and affection.
She could not help but feel spoiled by all of the attention, his hugs and touches, and his words of love and reassurance. Not to mention the chocolates, and cherries, and other sweets he bought. And her heart practically melted all over again when he also brought home the orchids she had been looking at when they had last went shopping together.
Truly there was no other man she could love more than Sein, or could love her more than him.
And while Lorena was being treated like a queen, Varis, however, was getting a very different kind of treatment.
He remembered leaving the building as fast as he could after his failed ‘stunt’. He also remembered trying to head someplace where he could think and lament once more about how Lorena should be his. The last thing he could recall, however, was suddenly feeling a near blinding pain in his shoulder. Then things went dark for him.
Gabriel had caught up to him and shot him in the shoulder with one of his sleeping bullets. He wasn’t trying to paralyze the man, or kill him, though he had the skill to take the aim to do either. No, Gabriel did not want Varis’s punishment to be quick. It would not be satisfactory to him, and he doubted it would have been satisfactory to Sein either. Not after what he had just done. Not after the things he had done and said before.
When Varis was conscious once more, Gabe had used a more potent bullet than intended, it was to the sound of cards being shuffled. And although he was groggy, he could at the very least tell be was bound to something. Maybe a chair.
“Oh look Roulette, seems our ‘player’ is finally coming around,“ the Card Queen of the Liore family said with a short chuckle and a particularly loud shuffle of her cards.
“Ah, it would seem so...” Gabriel said as he looked up from his special suitcase and over at Varis.
Varis opened his eyes slowly to see the Stellato male, and a woman that he could’t quite recall if he know or not. She looked vaguely familiar, but maybe he had just seen her in passing before. Granted he was perhaps more distracted by the glowing set of cards that were floating around her at the moment.
Mazella had brought two decks with her for this. One she could idly shuffle while waiting or talking, as was her habit, and one she enchanted for their purposes. She moved closer to the where Gabriel was sitting at the table and held out the deck to him. “Time for the games to being, and for the wheel to spin, as you would say. Draw a card my friend and we’ll see which of us goes first,” she said.
Gabriel chuckled and drew a card. It was the queen of diamonds and he showed it to her with a grin. “The odds are in my favor for going first, Lady of Chance and Luck.”
“Perhaps, chance is funny that way“ she said with an amused snort. She then drew her card, the nine of spades. She showed it to him. “Close, all things considered, but you are going first Roulette,” she said as they placed the cards back into the deck and she went back to shuffling. Gabriel took out one of his revolvers and opened the chamber. From his suitcase he picked out three random magic bullets and loaded them in.
He gave it a spin and closed his eyes before closing it when he felt the time was right. Gabriel then stood and then walked until he was in front of Varis. He aimed the revolver at one of his legs and prepared to shoot. “You had been warned t about your actions and words in regards to Lorena. For a time it seemed that you had came to your senses. How wrong I was. But now you’ve gone too far, and maybe by the time we’re through with you...the message will be loud and clear.“
“If not? Well, let’s just say your chances will be looking very grim...“ Mazella added.
