Chapter fifty three

We headed straight for the boards where they kept information on the upcoming races. I browsed the board looking for the right horse, I wasn't looking at the names because I didn't care what the horse was called , all I cared for was the column that said odds. I searched the board until I found the perfect horse , a horse named 'old gramps thirteen' who was a last minute replacement for the next race and his odds were a thousand to one.

I told Delilah to go to the counter and place five thousand euros on old gramps thirteen, I couldn't do it myself because technically I wasn't old enough to see R rated movies let alone gamble, after everything I had done and everything I had gone through I felt a hundred years old but I was still seventeen so all I could do was just stand there and watch as Delilah made the bet and received the ticket from a bookie who seemed to be laughing very hard.

We went to the stands just in time to see the previous race finish and the crowd getting up and going crazy, equal parts cheering in happiness and booing in disapproval. We squeezed our way to seats in the front and sat down waiting for the next race to begin. A slightly overweight balding man in a large Hawaiian shirt was sitting next to Delilah and staring at her ticket before he exclaimed loudly,

"That's an insane bet! You are just throwing money down the drain, gramps isn't even a real racing horse anymore. He was retired last week , the only reason that they even put him in the race is to complete the lineup so that the race wouldn't get canceled!"

We just smiled politely at the man and told him that we were beginners who didn't really mind losing money. He sniffed and mumbled something about stupid little girls wasting time and money for no reason.

The horses were all finally ready and lined up in their small compartments at the start of the race. There was a countdown and the gates opened signalling the beginning of the race. Immediately strange things started to happen , reigns slipping from jockey's hands,insects getting into horse's eyes, sudden muscle cramps , basically everything that could go wrong happened to all the horses except for gramps. In the end gramps won by a large margin.

Unlike the last race the track wasn't noisy, instead it was completely silent. Even the commentator had gone silent. The man next to us turned towards us and looked at the ticket in Delilah's hands. I could almost see the gears in his mind start to turn and he calculated that that small piece of paper was now worth five million euros.

He was still staring at the ticket as we walked calmly towards the counter where the bookies were also just staring at the screens that were broadcasting the results. Most were rubbing their eyes and pinching themselves unable to comprehend what had just happened.

When we showed our ticket to one of the bookies he took us to another man who opened a large safe and with tears in his eyes filled two duffle bags full of money before handing them out to us. We didn't even bother counting the amount, we just hoisted the heavy bags onto our backs and left the place walking towards the parking lot where the driver was still waiting for us. When he saw us holding the bags the gracious man offered to carry them for us and we happily agreed and handed them to him,

"*oomph* ...this bags are heavy, if you don't mind me asking ,what's inside?"

"Our winnings."

"Wait , you mean..."

"Yup, both filled with rolls of bills that amount to a total of five million euros."

I could see that the man didn't really believe me but was too polite to say so. We were halfway to the parking lot when the slightly overweight balding man from the stands suddenly appeared from behind a wall were he was hiding with a gun pointed in our direction,

"Give me the bags or I'll shoot you, hand them over right now!"

I really didn't have time for this so I decided to handle this as quickly as possible, "You don't want to do this dude."

"Why? By the time you can call the police I will be long gone with the money."

"No, because there is something stuck in your gun barrel and if you shoot it would probably backfire."

And in an act of absolute idiocy the moron took the gun and started to look down the barrel of his gun trying to find what I was talking about. The gun 'accidentally' discharged and blew a hole through his head, killing him instantly.

In the end we had to wait for the police and give a statement but we weren't even taken to the station after several witnesses confirmed our story. The nice police men were even kind enough to escort us to our hotel so that nothing similar could happen to us again.

Once we got to our room Delilah and I did the only thing that was logical when you have that amount of money. We opened the bags , removed the bands around the bundles of cash and started throwing fists of money at each other shouting "Money fight."