Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) by Jo Robertson Page B

he’d given her meant, or why he’d given it to her, was an admission of defeat. He considered himself in danger. Had he involved her in the same danger just by passing her the indecipherable note?
    And what in hell did it all mean?

 
     
    Chapter 24
     
    Feet propped on the coffee table in front of him, a whiskey shot glass in his right hand, he tried to remember how he’d gotten himself in so deep. If he’d known it would come to this when he started, he’d have – have what? Not started? He didn’t think so.
    Didn’t every man gamble a little here and there? Golf rounds, football pools.
    Give it up completely? Maybe. He sipped at the whiskey and stared at the muted television screen. That wouldn’t help the dilemma he was in now, though.
    The Moktu Indian Gaming Casino, he decided. That’s where the real trouble had begun.
    It was fun and games at first, playing the dollar machines, swilling booze, getting a little high. Then he’d moved up to the five-dollar slots. Roulette and poker next.
    He’d worked his way into the private poker games in a flash. The buy-in was a thousand bucks. He remembered thinking vaguely what a big chunk of change that was for a man in his profession, but he’d gotten this primo condominium from his parents. He’d shrugged off caution and taken out a large mortgage on the property.
    The condo paid off, he figured he could handle a second mortgage.
    Later, he cashed out his 401K.
    Most of the time he’d won big at gambling, and the temptation sucked him in like an industrial vacuum. The casino opened a line of credit for him, long before he’d needed to use it. A temptation he couldn’t resist. Five thousand, then twenty, then a hundred grand. By the time his head had cleared, he owed Moktu Casino nearly two-hundred fifty thousand dollars.
    Even then he hadn’t panicked. Not until the reality of owing over a quarter million G’s to a bunch of Indians, probably backed by mobsters, hit him like a ton of bricks.
    Holy fuck!
    Another mortgage on the condo, now almost under water, 401K depleted, his finances a ruin. No way he could afford to live in this neighborhood on his salary. He was in debt to the casino so deep he didn’t know how to get out, and he knew it would only get worse. The only solution was to run, a sure way to get killed.
    So what had he done instead?
    He’d laid low, making piddly-ass payments once in a while, just enough to keep the bone-breakers away from the door. All the time knowing a huge day of reckoning was just around the corner.
    Like a little kid, he pretended that if he ignored them long enough, his problems or debts would go away. They hadn’t, of course. The long arm of retribution had finally reached out.
    They came to him brutally – three of them, although the ugly giant would’ve been threat enough – and the knowledge of his vulnerability washed over him like a summer monsoon – without warning and very lethal. A drenching flood of dread that could only end in him dead and lying at the bottom of the ocean.
    Not to worry, though, they had a proposition for him.
    “A mutually beneficial proposition,” the ham-fisted brute with the broken nose and squinty eyes explained happily. The thug was a walking cliché, but it fit him like a glove, a brass-knuckles-encased glove.
    After the debt-ridden man had sworn off gambling forever, explained he’d never enter the doors of Moktu again – cajoled, begged, almost cried – the giant continued calmly, “You want to make this right.”
    You need to make this right, the brute had emphasized, unnerstand? He jabbed a thick finger in the air.
    “My Boss is the debtor, you’re the debtee.” He leaned close and grinned as if he’d said something clever.
    The man was pretty sure those weren’t the right words, but he had no intention of arguing with a six-foot-six gargantuan with a nasty face and even nastier breath. Plus, the giant had explained, the debtee was in a unique position to give them