The sunlight"it felt new. Months that hung from his arms like dumbbells contorted time, distorted recognition, ruined the "gift' of vacation. The great indoors. A recluse; knitting-back wounds inflicted by a pack of imbeciles that hadn't the right to even speak his name, festering in his own shadow, sharpening his brow, slowing his hand. Bubbling beneath his flesh like a cancer, itching under the nail; Gamble was done with waiting, done with planning, drinking and screwing"a rebirth in afternoon, penance to be won with the draw of a gun, standing on his terrace beneath that fat old sun. He bends while hopping down the concrete steps, mindful thumbs stroking the creases upon pressed pant, nostrils enlarged to accept the divinities of a windy day. Gamble strays from the shadow of his home, keeping charge of his coattails as mature breezes snag them while passing by, his eyes caught in the contemporary marvel of downtown. That shy, fiery buzzard tossing light from a wall of cloud catches an iris; one-thousand bands of green lay in a cyclic row within, tightly packed like emerald bars in a tire, sleek, peerless and paired from their sullen housing above the nose. Stretching a smile, he looks-on to the woman he'd asked to tag-along.

"Come, Natalia. It's a beautiful day.?

A coy silence seals his mouth, a mouth ensnared with a grin-of-purpose, eyes careful not to stray into the girl's hypnotic counterparts. A flat block of mild suburbia feeds directly into the sapien-swarms puttering around the nucleus of their downtown hive. Mufflers spit spines into the atmosphere, uneducated tongues peddle profanity, mother's tug on raggedy children they hate"all things missed. Gamble snaps open his cigar case.

"Just need some air, my Queen. Been cooped up too-long. Wanna" drop in on an old friend."

He lights, his lip the muffler now.

"Well I say," smiled the usually-guarded man, accepting her limber weight without hesitation, going so-far as it tug her in a bit closer as they made their way into the city's stomach. Streetcars clack on the tracks packed with blank and ignorant faces; tourists; their heads craning out the car likening a cage of oversized pigeons that was tossed down the avenue. The further they stroll the shorter Gamble's cigar becomes, the swankier the shops, the more ominous and stately the buildings. Taking the girl by the wrist, he leaps onto the pavement and sprints across the street towards a fountain amidst artsy shrubbery and nonsense-sculpture. The scene is straight from a romance film; traffic stops, horns sound, people gawk, and laughter"rare and fulfilling laughter'sputters from his cheeks. He steps back, face mildly flushed, and examines his girl with a long and warm eye.

"Yes. I love you too, Natalia. You've made me a better man.?

Gamble returns the kiss, lips flat in acceptance with ideas of a grin teasing the ends. Arms ensnare, hands snap and fondle, getting the most they could with succulent handfuls. With a friendly pat on the rear, Gamble steps away and whiffs his head back-towards the main avenue.

"I'm glad you're happy, My Queen. Let's go so we can get back home quicker, and into bed quicker."

He wouldn't spell-it-out, didn't think he had to. The man gathers her dainty wrist and continues on, passing block-after-block until his heels finally brake. Gamble turns and looks up, above is a foreboding terrace of black-glass and antennae, dozens of stories into the sky, writing God-knows-what. The building's logo is unseen on the ground-level as it was scripted near the top-floor.

"Here we are"I believe today is the day he works his official job. Gotta" look good to the feds, ya" know?? Gamble flashes a wink and steps forward to peel-back the door for his lovely escort.

"Today we claim El Dorado, Little one." The mystic verse slithers from front teeth that bare the question, piercing the bottom-lined squish of his lip, reddening all areas as the excited beast trumps ahead towards a cute little receptionist. Smoothing the breeches of his coat, fingers clamped as they run-down like fleshy elevators, Gamble approaches, a facetious grin nesting on his mouth.

"Hello there, young lady. I was wondering if John Sherzer still had an office on the 25th," in his sweetest lyric, winks dazzling the bespectacled girl with the telephone latched to her ear.

The girl returns with a smile and masks the phone's receiver. "Yes, Mr. Sherzer is in today"Now...I don't think I saw an appointment at all," her shrilling, girlhood voice trailed-off as she began to snap a few keys into the computer before her.

"Just phone up and tell him "Florence Ruiz" is in the lobby"tell him it's very important." A final squish, and he steps back"the girl acknowledges, a queer eye running over him'she didn't see him as a "Florence Ruiz". A minute later the girl, now visibly shaken, lowers the phone.

"He didn't sound happy to hear that, Mr. Ruiz"maybe you should come back, I've seen him when he?"

"Did he say it was okay for me to go up?"

She nodded.

"Then thank you, miss. Good-bye." Pleasantries to-bed, he travels back to usher Natalia for the elevator, hopefully before she asked who-in-the-hell Florence Ruiz was.

Staring up at the neon bulbs shedding mild light upon the car, "To hell with her"chipped fingernails and rough knuckles'she gives out handjobs to execs; bet her knees are raw to-boot." The elevator rises, bestowing that 'stomach in your shoe" feeling as it zooms up the rectangular causeway it was built into, the tiny, spherical lights adorning numbers ascend with them, reaching the 25th in a hurry. Upon the lighting of "the 24th", Gamble quickly smacks the red emergency button causing the elevator car to brake suddenly with an awful hiss and sway. Tucked-away beneath his belt was a pistol, he draws it and yanks on the slide, loading a cartridge, a long and slender suppressor rolled onto the threaded muzzle.

"Alright baby. Ya" ready?? Eyes alive, dangerous, filling her innocent blues with tainted-swamp green.

Gamble's eyes lurk upon the girl with a protest of their own, his mouth, that had shortly-been toying with a raucous smile, went flaccid as he leant his weight against the elevator rail. He crosses arms, an eye dropped onto the face of his gold watch.

"Mr. Sherzer is the reason we've had to move, is the reason I haven't gone out, the reason we don't go out, Natalia. He's a bad man with power"above the law in almost every way. And this," raising the pistol, marveled in its black-iron finish, "This is an equalizer. It removes the tape and the bullsh;t and the foolery"it's the only way out for desperate men. And right now, Natalia, I am a desperate goddamn man. And our lives will continue to be a never-ending hustle of packing, moving and seclusion until he finally catches up."

"I love you, baby," twists the devil, reaching to land a kiss before popping the emergency stop button free, allowing the cab to finish its run to their destination. "I've been here three times before: there's gonna" be a guy right outside the elevator, and two in his off?" Too late! With his head turned, Gamble hadn't realized the doors had begun their repeal, exposing them to the aforementioned guard whose cautious hands were already enroute to the weapon holstered at his side"Gamble wasn't ready as his hands went lame and dropped his pistol to the matted floor of the elevator car.

After the commotion, Gamble leans to snatch his weapon from the rug, an odd distaste in his eyes, sternly leveling Natalia out within them. He drops his furious eyes onto the lone guard only once before slapping the elevator's button to pry the doors ajar. Before stepping out;

"What the hell, Natalia! Just fu;ckin" kill the bastard, we don't have time for you to be playing with your food,? straightening his collar, taking a single step out of the cab.

"Good job, baby. I'm sorry, but it had to be done." Following the empty laud, Gamble collects himself, riding that compulsive dog of self-grooming, pandering his scalp with flattening palms, thinning out his shirt and overcoat. The hallway was short, a pair of ruby maple doors punctuating. The burping whines of the floor-at-his-feet order a surplus of excitement, trigger-finger heavy, ready to pop. He slowly kneads a shoulder into the door, waiting to spring, carrying his eyes back to the poor wolf in the elevator covered in the blood of a man she didn't want to kill. Though absent of exterior emotion, Gamble understood psyches, tendencies"he could collect a great deal through a simple sip of another's eyes. He knew the girl was anything but a murderer. That's what made it so much better.

Gamble waves the gun to issue a silent order; it said to line-up behind his back, against the wall.

"Sherzer's going to be the man with the slicked-backed hair, tied in a little tail or some sh;t. "Bout forty-five, tall"n skinny, probably be at is desk, the other will probably be suited idiots. Do what you want"but Sherzer's mine, got it?"

Gamble flattens his face under the influence of a deeply etched and dry palm, skin rippling behind the trail of his hand like toes against the stream, a funny smile running-up to catch the fever burning in his veins. The hand then reaches for the brass handle, each fleshed tendril rattling to the nail in anticipation, waiting, waiting, begging for the sight of their loose-jawed faces before dousing the air in lead. Nothing rivals the picture of sprawled, maimed flesh; the crooked sarcasm broken onto their mouth, eyes large and black like wrecking balls, all crowned atop the mollified husk strewn upon carpet; the grand artisan's architecture of man in his final, frozen form. Completing the sermon with a click of the tongue, Gamble bursts into the office, shoulder-lead, gun-hand projected out to nose through the miasma, that silver-eyed sight threading the unseen, a beacon to signal the sensorium entrenched at the housing of his arm.

Inside there are no guards, no armed men, nothing besides an oily-haired man with shocked brown eyes and two fat men, all dressed to accommodate their surroundings, a while-collar jubilee. Gamble eases back the revolver's firing pin before resting the sterling-spined foresights upon the slick, vested gentleman seated at his desk with the un-amused, un-phased look, mindlessly eyeing papers, purposely removed from Gamble's sharpened cadence.

"Hey, John."

"Gamble," throated, lifting a folder, sticking an eye into its breech.

"Something we can do for you?"

"Eh," the funny killer shrugs, "Just wanted you to meet the wifey." A sparkling smile before stepping to the side, revealing the blonde beauty, Mr. Sherzer continuing to sift through stacks of paper without notice. The two portly businessmen seemed quite rattled in contrast, taking bold steps to their rear to avoid the nose of Gamble's revolver.

Natalia had stolen the man's attention, his gun lowered, sensing no threat from the three men-of-business enrolled within the office. "You what?" An angered look is dropped between the eyes, brows sunken-in to fang into his nose like a broken board. "Lock the door, Natalia," finally raising a smile before crashing a nod. The festivities were grand in his eyes, irises shone like emeralds in sand, purged from his tanned skin, notion and rich green mingling beneath the jewel, nestled against coal pupil.

"No one gets out."

It was then that Mr. Sherzer decided he had enough, the side of his fist lifting pen and paper in the reverberation of force applied to the oaken desk.

"Enough of this, Gamble! I know you to be many things, but I know you wouldn't jeopardize your life for a vendetta! You start shooting the place up, security will be downstairs to put a bullet in your brain! So get the hell out of my office." John Sherzer whips the crease of his palm across the oak sending stacks of paper onto the carpet.

Gamble knots his brows funnily, the man's tongue visible from behind his flesh as it rolls contemplatively, eyes failing to mark any single area of the room.

With this occupied look, he uncrosses his arms, lifts the bulky magnum and blasts-away one of Sherzer's cohorts. The rotund man is leveled by the magnificent force of the high-caliber round, both arms circling at his side seeking balance while feet are lifted from the very turf below. The glass window accepts the exit wound along with each stringy tendril of blown-out organ and tendon, an artistic burst of dark red striking the pane. The fat man thunders to the ground, dead on arrival.

"Hmm," a blight of inquiry seizing his face, scratching his chin with the smoldering barrel of the weapon.

"You done, or have you more to say about what you "know" about me, John?"

"Jesus, Gamble..." Sherzer wheeled back until the spine of his chair tapped the glassy encasement surrounding the sunlit room. The man's face showed little age, an approximation could be left at thirty, truth standing a decade ahead, surely a youth won from the back of a dollar. A fleeting youth as that decade-plus-one suddenly sat on his face in terror, brown eyes bulging, afraid to tear his sight away from the murderous cad looming at the head of his desk.

"Just...tell me what you want, Gamble," John Sherzer says on the lame bows of low, frightened breaths.

"El Dorado."

"What??"

Gamble fires his booted heel at Sherzer's desk, its legs tear-up the carpet as it slides back from the force. His face is some abbreviation of anger as it quickly reclaims his unusual calm.

"The city of gold, John."

Sherzer hasn't the ability to award Gamble with an answer or solution to his cryptic request. He can only shrug defensively, his jaw still loose and unable to close with his life balancing on the nose of Gamble's gun.

"Money?" I can?"

"Don't," short; interrupting, a finger raised, "Insult me, John. I want the city of Gold." Gamble's wicked smile amplifies the ridged lunacy casually emitted, mindful little fingers drag and rattle on the tabletop while he laughs. "The ultimate prize, the power and every stitch-and-seam that comes with it. I want your job, John. I want that big comfy chair at the head of the table, ya" know" Not for the money, or respect' I just want it for the sake of wanting it, really." A man without grey-areas was a simple danger, but a-one without avenues of retreat"his assaults were direct and true like a straight-blade, no curves of finesse to imply deceit or escape.

"You...hah, Gamble you're fu"king insane! I can't do anything for you! The board, its members?I can't just throw you into the mix! They've already wrote-you-out as a danger to the house, you're a dead man! No matter how many times you escape, they'll catch up. They'll catch up, Gamble, you should of just stayed secluded."

About this time, Sherzer's remaining aide, the less-fat man with the cropped blonde hair, decided to take his chances with Natalia, his arms out-stretched to collide with the door and its mechanisms, trying to manipulate the lock.

The man erupts with laughter at the sight of the portly fellows timely end; the bands of blood, the turmoil in his rupturing eyes as those claws sunk in, the pitchy yelp"it brought an ecstasy. "Oh' John, you see this" Isn't she?"

While Gamble had lost himself in Natalia's carnage, John Sherzer had procured a pistol from his belt, and as Gamble's jovial green eyes turned to ask John for a smile, they'd be gifted with the sight of a chipper nine-millimeter. Mr. Sherzer's first shot rips into Gamble's chest, a vile plume of sanguine mists the air, fragments of red spray the immediate area as he steps back, accepting the lead's inertia. Gamble coughs a healthy bar of blood onto the rug, backing up, his hand pressing-back against the wall to support him. John leaps to his feet and fires six more rounds. His haste sends three of the bullets astray, they bite into the wall, great bogs of smoke fire from the holes created. The remaining bits of lead tear into Gamble's belly, a great road of blood splashes onto the air as he falls to the floor, lifeless.

Sherzer, struggling with fear and exasperation, crosses over from behind the desk, the pistol held in his right hand and lowered to meet Gamble's dead face. "You" I'd never think that you'd be so stupid, Gamble. I don't think I've fired a gun more than six times in my whole life, and here I am, standing over the inner-city cowboy himself. What a waste." With the gun still lowered, Sherzer raises his brown eyes to the Russian girl, thinly examining her sensual figure now-sullied in the spray of men's blood.

"Even if you killed me, you two didn't stand a chance"and that, most of all, still confuses me." Working his eyes over the corpse, the slick-haired honcho squints, thoroughly lost in thought. "You're many things, Gamble" fearless, but you'd never commit suicide. You knew this was suicide, had to know. The other members of the board would have spared no expense to see you dead, even if you managed to make it out of his building alive."

Sherzer lifts the gun toward Natalia, something blank and unwanted pinned to his lips and empty eyes. "You're a pretty one. I don't think I can kill you, really. I'll have someone else do it." He backs up and reaches for the phone resting on his desk. It's then, with a dropped jaw and ghosts in his eye, the sight of Gamble rising to his feet stops his heart. The receiver bounces off the desk with a plastic bang, Sherzer's lips embossed in sterling shock. He doesn't say anything, probably couldn't, Gamble approaching with his revolver raised. The once-dead man takes a slow step forward, face absent of a clich' "risen-again? smirk, instead a piercing severity enacted. He fires at Sherzer, accurately separating him from his pistol with a shot to the shoulder, shuttering pain lying to synapse, forcing his fingers to relinquish what they held. Sherzer yelps and shields the wound with his other hand, backpeddling to the window where he shrinks and presses his cheek to the glass. There'd be no plea, the shock coupled with the inevitable left little room for bargaining. It's a strange thing, knowing when you're going to die.

Gamble doesn't reply to Natalia's snide side-remark"but inside, buried beneath the blackened heart and fiery will, something went dim. A frown cuts deeply into the raw bone of his chin as he steps forward towards John, who was simply dazzled in the spectacular web of his life's final seconds; he knew Gamble well-enough, and no amount of struggling, swearing or bargaining would award him more time. Gamble reaches to the metallic lever screwed upon the roof of the windowpane. He twists, and soon the window is open, excited afternoon air comes to sanitize the death-heavy scents and sensibilities boarding in that room. Gamble crouches, pinches one-final smirk to John, and yanks to his feet by the collar of his expensive shirt.

"No! No, Gamble! No!" Thrashing and beating his hands and feet against the frame of the window, John had exchanged the curt acceptance for the usual plight of man's savory need of a miracle. Gamble's expression remains mute as he shoves harder, each little limb squeezing through the broad, rectangular space twenty-five stories into the air.

The sounds of fingernail scratching across windowframe would be John Sherzer's last. Actually, the carhorns and alarms that ripple beneath his hollow corpse as a result of their collision could be stated his last.

Gamble closes the window, turns with a scowl, and lifts the pistol to Natalia's face, three steps taken to devour the distance between them.

"Don't fu"king tell me what to do, Natalia. EVER!"

A fat minute of silence fills the space between them; Gamble is unmoved, an expression robbed of expression, the pristine silver barrel of his revolver expertly knotted between the sultry wolf's tantalizing cerulean eyes, eyes scoured-over by the erroneous emerald of The Devil's.

"I don't love you, Natalia. Never have. It's done, I've had my fill of you."

To say her tears hadn't an affect would be time wasted"it fueled him further rather, every deeply twisted region asking, begging for the sight of her curled, and bleeding pleas. The barrel is served into her chest like a small iron fist, and in one striking moment of heartless glory, Gamble fires a premium round into the node of her belly. Moments like these were better left in Hollywood"a sepia-strobed highlight littered on a pocked screen in slowmotion'trust lost, truth found at the end of a gun. A hard lesson, hardest of all when one's life is the final piece of such-the strange and awful puzzle.

"No, no," hushes the demon, instead of a finger raised to mime the words, the barrel of his revolver, a sultry kiss for the silverlong wand, the heat from the smoldering pipe creasing a grin most-fowl. Gamble kneels, and using the weapon as a tool once more, draws it from her toes to her scalp; it reaches the girl's forehead and it's there he fires it like a child, a " "pachoo!" from his mouth before he smiles and raises the gun with faux-recoil from the phantom shot. "Oh' Natalia," admiring the mess his poor Russian had made.

"Look at this" my lord, just look at it!" Fury snaps from his jaw, wholly upset with the sight. "I mean' the fck"n dress, it's" useless now, Jesus" Natalia" God." Wrapped in the flagrant sheets of his raucous temperament, Gamble paces the room. "So much' I did so much for her, ya" know" For the bloody life of me, I don't understand. God," itching his brow with the barrel, "I don't understand."

He stamps his foot and twirls, standing aside the window that poor Mr. Sherzer had taken to the asphalt. With arms outstretched, a point-to-be-made, lips ajar with something awful awaiting baptism. He halts and slowly strolls to the sprawled-out blonde curled in agony. He kneels and presses his palm upon the girl's cheek.

"Oh, Natalia" Natalia, what have I done," soft and genuine, green eyes sadly mute, "Oh, you didn't deserve this. But I can't stay, I'm sorry"This is all Sherzer's fault, not mine. It's a shame, but," slapping her knee like a father lauding his son's homerun, "It's just the way it works out, baby."

Gamble groans as if tired, stretches with yawn, and pockets the mighty revolver, making for the room's exit as sirens circle below; escape on his mind.

In the doorway, he taps the frame.

"Oh," turning with a smile, "I'll be sure little "Nika is well taken-care-of. She's a tough cookie, but she and I" well, let's say we had a bonding experience.

Good night, My Queen."