Chapter Twenty-Two – Shifting Stakes

 Ramona no longer cared whether Janet ever paid her or if The Globe and Mail printed a single word. The moment Janet discovered her name, everything shifted. The game was no longer about money or ego. It was about self-preservation. And revenge.


By nightfall, she drove her BMW into Edmonton, sliding into the warm glow of the River Cree Casino. The building hummed with noise and light — the mechanical chorus of slot machines, bursts of laughter, dealers calling bets in practiced tones.


She walked to the poker room and asked for a seat.


“Do you have a player’s card?” the floor manager asked.


Ramona shook her head.


“Alright, we’ll need some ID to register you.”


She slid her altered driver’s license across the counter: Elizabeth Ramona. The name she’d worn like armor for years. The manager glanced at it, nodded, and typed her details into the system.

“Would you like us to issue a player’s card? Easier for comps and buy-ins.”


“Sure,” she said evenly. A moment later, a card was printed and handed over.


At the cashier’s cage, she produced a credit card and signed for her chips. A clean stack of red and green clinked against the counter as they slid toward her.


At the table, the felt beneath her palms felt familiar, grounding. But tonight her mind wasn’t sharp.


The dealer shuffled. Cards slid across the table. Opponents twitched and fidgeted. Normally, Ramona would read every tell — the flicker of nerves, the greedy inhale. But her focus kept slipping back to the same thought:


Janet knows my name.


She pushed too hard on one hand and lost half her stack. Another slipped away because she missed the tell entirely. Her pile shrank with every round.


Would she have to move again? Pack up, vanish from Lacombe, scrub herself clean like she had before? Another reinvention. Another life in the shadows. Could she stomach it?


The dealer raked another pot away. Ramona folded, jaw tight, temples throbbing.


No, she thought. I won’t run this time. I’ll fight.


The path forward sharpened as the chips drained from her hands. If Janet had found her real name, then Janet herself would have to be hollowed out.


Not just her money. Not just her phone. Her entire identity.


If she could get Janet’s Social Insurance Number, she could take everything — tax records, credit history, government accounts. She could be Janet Brown, while the real one drowned in paperwork, suspicion, and ruin.


The thought filled her with grim satisfaction.


By the time she left the casino, a migraine throbbed behind her eyes. She drove home in silence, parked in the underground garage, and climbed the stairs to her condo.


She collapsed into bed, hands pressed to her temples, the plan looping in her mind.


The game wasn’t about clever scams anymore.

It was about survival.

And revenge.



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