A Game of Cards - Otherwise Known As - Life and Death

Prologue

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Prologue

Their blank faces stared at her, no emotion, no kindness, yet no anger.

“Evelyn, please withdraw from the dining room and go to your room. Your mother and I would like some time to talk,” a man with a dark suit and an emotionless expression said. The young girl just nodded, curtsied to the man, and left through a large door, leaving the door to thud shut and the man to look at the woman seated beside him.

The woman tentatively fingered a decorative napkin, then her golden necklace, before reaching for a glass of wine. “Yes?” she asked the man. Her dark brown hair moved to cover her face, allowing her eyes to rest in the shadow of her hair. Her dark grey eyes, even under the darkness caused by the shroud, could be described as piercing. Scary, even.

The man’s gaze still rested on the woman, his eyebrows furrowed with concern, his face mingling with different sorts of feelings. You could see tastes of anger, pinches on sadness, drops of frustration.

“Mrs. Oaken,” his rough voice said. “I would like you to consider my offer, if you’d please.”

She gave him a cold, calculated look. “Mr. Conway, I’ve already considered it.”

He raised an eyebrow, erasing any expression he’d left on his face, completely masking himself and becoming much more business-like. “And your answer is?”

She frowned and glanced at the table. “I’m sorry, it’s no.”

His face was still expressionless as he queried. “And for what reason? There is only to gain, nothing to lose.”

She seemed to lose her composure, just slightly, as her voice went up a notch. “There is very well something to lose,” she snapped, trying to keep her voice down. “Something very dear to me.” Her nostrils flared as she set the wine glass down. “If you think I’d sell away my own daughter for your own experiments in that idiotic field, you’re wrong!”

“Sell your daughter? Whatever gave you that impression?”

She glared at him. “That whatever would be the fact you were offering money for me to allow you to take my child from me and teach her in whatever wretched things you teach all those children that either end up dead or without happiness!”

“Now, now,” said the man. “That was uncalled for, correct, Mrs. Oaken?” He stood up and brushed his coat. “But she has such talent, that child of yours.”

“She is my only daughter!” the woman, Mrs. Oaken, yelled. “I will not give her up for money! That is not what a parent does!”

Mr. Conway, the man, just chuckled. “Is that so? Then how come your husband happily gave away any other child you had beforehand? Would you call your lover not a parent?”

Her face was bright red. “He was not a parent,” she said firmly. “And my final answer is no, you cannot rob my daughter of her life, her happiness, just for your ambitions.”

He just shrugged as he turned toward the other door, leading to the outside of the house. A small, glint appeared in his eyes as he reached into his pocket.

Her eyes widened as she stepped back, as he took a single piece of paper out of his pocket. The small card dancing in his fingers was the Ace of Spades. As he snapped his fingers, the card jumped up and glowed, the one spade tattooing itself on her forehead before Mrs. Oaken crumpled to the ground, without a sound.

If Mr. Conway had looked back, and checked her pulse, he could confirm that she would be dead.

He did not, however, but instead snapped his fingers twice as a Two of Spades card jumped in his fingers, and two men appeared. He murmured a command to them and they walked to the door the young girl had disappeared through earlier.

The young girl’s footsteps sounded quickly and short as she fled to her room, as she had been listening and watching the conversation through the keyhole, now scared the killer of a man would find her, do the same to her as he did her mother, or even worse. Something that had to do with his experiments, the field her mother had mentioned.

All that happened was that the two men summoned from the Two of Spades had grabbed her arms as she tried to flee, pinching her lips together so she could not scream, and carried her back to the man in the dark suit, Mr. Conway.

Her eyes shadowed a look of despair when she spotted her mother, laying there, while the men dragged her over the dead body, the young girl’s hand grasping onto her mother’s jacket in sadness.

The young girl threshed and tried to wail as she was taken away, away from the almost empty, but burning, place she used to call home, toward a new, very, very different life.

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Author's Note- Lol I started a new story... hope you like it! Thanks for reading! Please comment for feedback and vote if you liked this chapter! :D (I'll try to update every five days or so)