"This is Rome. Everybody bets."

In the home city of the world's first entertainment industry, the life-or-death games that are hundreds of thousands' citizens greatest passion are beginning one more day of cutthroat business as usual.

The under-the-stands concessions are opening. The sports bars are heating up their grills and putting the drinks on ice. Superstar fighters are suiting up. Up-and-coming gladiators are getting rubbed down. The earliest spectators are already lining up for the choicest seats. The bookies and touts are chalking up the day's odds and taking early wagers on the hottest races and fights.

And none of them suspect that, down in the darkness beneath the world's biggest, shiniest arena, a penniless slave boy is about to change everybody's odds for good. 

Lucius doesn't care that he's at the very bottom of an unforgiving social ladder. His heart is set on something (for him) unattainable. But—in that place where life and death walk daily side by side—when without warning Lucius's personal odds change, unhesitatingly he grabs his slim chance in both hands and stakes everything on his own bet. 

Over a single day, between dawn and dusk, beggars and nobles and even gods find themselves drawn into Lucius's go-for-broke gamble with the greatest powers in his world. He, and they, soon find that no system can withstand someone who understands how to game it—especially when it's a sports fan who knows all the stats, not just out of a desire to win... but out of love. 

Reader advisory: Please note that everything in this story was once real, except for the magic. 

(Though maybe that too....)

This 14,000 word novelette has previously been available on Ebooks Direct as part of a collection of short works, and is now for the first time available as a standalone volume.