[center][h2]The Long Con (Katya Voss cont.)[/h2][/center]

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Now was the perfect moment to take another drink, lest one laughed out loud.

Dorian pressed the glass to his lips, ignoring the offer to play the useful idiot to one of the oldest con games in the ‘verse.  [i]Just give me my share and I’m gone forever.[/i]  The trouble was that so long as there was coin to sniff out, they never were.  He recalled a lyric, a song from Earth-That-Was about a man coming to such self awareness.

[i]”Sometimes I get this crazy dream
That I just take off in my car.
But you can travel on ten thousand miles
And still stay where you are.”[/i]

This Grady lived under the curse, perpetually trapped within a cage of grand desires and the allure of fast money. Dorian could empathize; that desire and other lusts had introduced him to Faeroe, Tall Card, and Poker.  Whatever his intentions, Grady threatened to drag his sister along that dark path.  He wasn’t holding a gun to her head, but in the end, the damage would be the same.  This time, Dorian would not intervene.  He’d known Katya for all of thirty minutes.  She had to weigh her brother’s challenges on her own.

Fingers dipped into the pocket of his silk vest, past the small blade to close around the pocket watch.  Dorian brought it into the light and loosed the catch, checking the time.  It had been roughly twelve minutes since he’d sent the gunman scurrying for the door.  That, and the barked knuckles of Katya’s errant brother, led him to believe that reinforcements were soon to arrive.  How they’d be dealt with was a matter that hung upon Katya’s response to her brother.