The worst day in my life over the past few years ended with me home alone, in bed in the dark, too frustrated to sleep. All the little details I’d tried to shunt out of my mind swarmed back to me, a thousand annoying gnats all vying for my attention. I closed my eyes tightly and clenched my fists, trying to force them out of my head, but the harder I pushed, the faster they came back.

Millions of dollars, gone.

Trouble with the IRS.

An audit.

Master, audibly displeased.

A mysterious punishment I couldn’t begin to anticipate.

A personal betrayal.

Goddamn Donovan Redding, laughing himself silly in a hammock in Cambodia.

What the hell was I going to do? All of my problems kept stacking, each adding more pressure than the last, until it felt impossible to knock them down. I had to do something, but I couldn’t figure out the best place to start. All I wanted to do was close my eyes, hold my phone up to my ear, and let my master take control. When he was in charge, I didn’t have to worry about the crushing issues of my day-to-day life. All I had to worry about was respecting his word and being good.

Master…

I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift back to our last correspondence. There’d been anger in Master’s voice, certainly, but I’d heard something else, too. Fear? Regret? Sympathy? Whatever it was, it was soft and vulnerable, and it made me feel worse than if Master had only been angry with me.

What good was I if I couldn’t even make the man who mattered to me happy?

I scrunched my nose, my eyes still closed, and rolled onto my side. My sheets glided against my bare skin. I was stripped down to my boxer-briefs, my suit hung to be dry cleaned tomorrow.

If Master really was upset over what I’d lost, how could I make it up to him? When the audit was over and life returned to normal, I knew I’d be turning a profit again, but the money wasn’t what mattered—not really. Master had warned me to be careful with how I did business. He’d called me inattentive and foolish to have made the choices I had, and to have structured my staff so poorly. At the time, I’d been too arrogant and sure of myself to pay attention, but now I knew better. He’d been right. I needed to change the way my business was structured if I wanted to prove to him I was truly sorry.

But how?

Minutes ticked by, bleeding into hours. I didn’t know how long exactly it had been, but I was finally falling asleep when an echoing knock sounded on my bedroom door. I jumped and sat upright, then rubbed the sleep from my eyes and reached for my bedside lamp. With a click of its switch, a halo of light engulfed my bed, nightstand, and the surrounding floor. It was enough to see by.

“Come in,” I said.

The doorknob twisted and the door opened, allowing one of my personal bodyguards—Damien—to enter. He bowed his head politely, then spoke. “Sir… we have a problem.”

Another problem? I was getting too old for this shit. With a lengthy sigh, I combed a hand through my hair and braced myself for the worst. Damien was highly capable, and the entire time he’d been under my employment, he’d never had to come to me with a problem before. If it was serious enough to warrant waking me up in the middle of the night, it had to be something important. “What kind of problem are we talking about, Damien?”

“There’s an issue at The Palisade.” Damien cut right to the chase, refusing to mince his words. Over the last few months, I’d remarked a change in him. At first, I’d been inclined to pin it on grief, as he’d just suffered the unexpected loss of a long-time friend, but grief didn’t energize a man or put the spark back in his eyes. Damien was sharper and more observant than he’d ever been before. If he kept it up, he was looking at a sizable raise. “Security has uncovered an undesirable player. He’s maxed out all the boxes on one of our blackjack tables… and he’s winning.”

“Why is this a concern of mine, and not an issue security’s already dealt with?” I asked. Undesirable players cut into profits and needed to be regularly weeded from the casino, but it was no reason to wake me up in the middle of the night. The security team should have escorted him out and banned him from the premises already. The last time I’d confronted a card counter face-to-face had been years ago—and that was because the kid had been underage and had still cleared me out of close to fifty thousand dollars over the course of two weeks. I figured I could scare him straight and stop him from heading down a destructive path. At the end of the day, gambling was gambling, and he was setting himself up to lose.

“He…” Damien paused. “He’s been there a little more than fifteen minutes, and he’s already won a hundred thousand dollars.”

I paused. Blinked. Processed.

“We’ve got the cameras on him,” Damien explained. “The pit boss is keeping an eye on things, too. We don’t see any devices. Security thinks he’s counting, but they can’t pinpoint his technique. All they can agree on is that whatever the hell he’s doing, he’s being blatantly obvious about it.” Another pause. “They think it might be Robin Mills, sir.”

“Fuck.” Robin Mills—the same kid who, three years back, I’d brought up to my office in an attempt to intimidate out of professional gambling. It looked like he hadn’t learned his lesson—time had only made him bolder.

I hopped out of bed and headed for my closet. I could have ordered Damien to get back to the casino security and tell them to kick him out or hold him until the police arrived and arrested him for trespassing, but after the day I’d had, an affront like that felt personal. I’d told the kid to his face to stay off The Palisade property, yet here he was. It was the last straw. His little stunt meant that he was going to receive the brunt of today’s particularly awful brand of horrible.

It was time for me to let off a little steam.

“Apprehend him,” I said while I shrugged on my shirt and did it up button by button. I wasn’t going to waste time. “Tell security to take him to my office.”

“To your office, sir?” Damien asked.

“That’s what I said.” I rolled up my cuffs, then pulled on my pants. “If it is Robin Mills, he’s trespassing. He was banned from The Palisade three years ago. I won’t stand by while he tries to suck me dry. If he puts up a fight, give security authorization to use force. Once he’s secured, hold him in my office until I get there. I’m heading back in.”

“I’ll make sure the car is ready out front, and that security knows what steps to take,” Damien said with a bow of his head. “Is there anything else I can do for you tonight, sir?”

I scoffed. “Do you want to give me some good news, Damien?”

There was silence for a moment, and I felt Damien study me, like he wasn’t sure if I was being facetious or not. Then, finally, he cleared his throat. “I’m getting ready to propose to my boyfriend.”

I hadn’t been expecting him to reply with something serious, so I came to a stop, my hand on my undone belt buckle, my eyes on the bodyguard occupying the space beside the door. That explained the change in his mood over the last few months.

“Congratulations,” I said, doing my best to sound sincere. While I was glad for him, I had my own struggles to overcome.

But if Damien could get over a personal loss and still find happiness, so could I—and it would start tonight, in my office, when I personally saw that burr in my side, Robin Mills, arrested for trespassing.