Milano August, 2015

“All in.”

I was playing with a 3 and a 5. The table had a 6, a jack and a queen. Playing with me on the table were the owner of a popular car company, an artist who some called the best of his generation, a luxury clothing brand owner, and one of the most notorious Mafiosos this side of the Atlantic.

I was winning, or if you’d allow me the opportunity to rephrase, over the past few hours I had extracted 25 million euros from the small crowd. I suppose you wouldn’t fault me for considering a quick exit. However, that is not what I did, and I can blame that on two things: first, at that point I thought I was playing the last game of my life, and hence this was my last chance to collect a large retirement bonus. Second, I was on the brink of succumbing to the animal instinct to continue playing while I was winning.

Fortunately for me, it was not just me who is occasionally taken over by the animal inside us. It is indeed a malady that haunts everyone, and once triggered, it’ll make you do things that would seem unnatural at any other time. I had to carefully nurture, tease and draw out that animal towards that final round where they’d be willing to bet everything on the game.

“I’ll go all in,” I said.

This was met with blank stares from the others. “I’m out,” said Giovanni.

“This is a disaster!” said Federico.

“You bastard!” said Emmanuelle. It wasn’t the first expletive directed towards me that night.

Don Camorra played on. He looked at the dealer and then tapped the table to indicate that he would see the hand out.

We turned our cards on the table while the dealer flipped the turn. It was a 4. My heart must have stopped for a few seconds as the dealer paused before flipping the river. The 3 and the 5 in my hand longed to unite with the 4 and the 6 on the table. A 5-card sequence is a party in Poker, 4 cards are only good enough for what-ifs.

“Two. The full house wins.”

The Don was out of money, the game was over, and I had pulled in a 50 million retirement bonus. The others gave me churlish glances while I slowly signed the dealer slip and added my bank details to the note.

“Are you leaving?” said Don Camorra as I began to get up.

“I can stay if you like, but I’m usually terrible company after a game.” It was hard to maintain an air of self- reassurance on the outside when my mind was busy planning how I was going to spend my fortune.

“Do you want to play more?” he asked.

Go home to Victoria, my heart said. “Sure,” my brain responded instead. The others looked at the Don as he made a phone call to sanction the funds.

“May I have some whisky, please?” I asked a server.

“Are you sure you want to drink while you are in the middle of a game?”

“Very sure.”

He nodded.

The dealer’s phone beeped soon after. “Don Camorra’s credit has been granted.”

This is a good moment to apprise you of three more facts.

Fact number one: I do not understand how losing might feel, because I never lose. Nada. Nope. Never. I refuse. I have never walked away from a weekend of playing in my life with less money than I’ve entered with. Second, my name is Caesar. It is not the name I was born with, nor one that I was given. It was the name I took. Third, I’m a man of very limited needs. But recently, I had come across a task that needed a sizeable investment. An investment along the lines of a hundred million euros, and here I was sitting at a table with just the right amount of money that I needed at stake.

The game that day brought back memories of another night from a long time ago; it was an important event that we should go back to at some point. But for now, let’s stay in the present. I often forget the present. Is that something that happens to you too? I like to digress. It is perhaps the finest human skill, digression. Why arrive at something quickly when you can walk around in circles all day?

Don Camorra played like a man who wanted to win his money back. There were no subtle testing hands.

“Two pairs win,” the dealer said. I lost a hand. The Don decided to go all in on a hand where the best I had was a king.

I managed to turn it around a little over the next few hands.

The dealer turned two kings on the flop along with a low card. I raised the bet; the turn had another king hiding behind it. The Don went all in again. Unfortunate as it was, he hadn’t given the law of averages enough credit and this is the first lesson that I can pull out of the annals of my not so humble life – if you go all in over and over again, one of those hands will eventually end up going against you. And if that is how you play, then the only hand that matters is the last one.

On that particular life-defining hand, I had the fourth king. I flipped it on the table, threw what I then considered to be a respectful nod at my competitors and walked out before I could be persuaded to play again. Last game ever, I thought. It is almost morbidly funny, how wrong I was. Then again, life’s morbidity is best expressed in humour; wait, make that humour and digression. Anyway, let’s get started, for this is my story of loss, of gain, of one not-so- great escape, and of three rather unfortunate deaths.

Excerpted with permission from The Hundred Million Bet, Atul Koul Randev, Srishti Publishers.