stood like a pillar, watching her leave. With effort, he roused himself. He had no time to stand here like some pubescent adolescent, watching her hurry away, he silently chastised. He had a reputation to uphold. That reputation included never being late, especially not for a procedure.
How the hell had things gotten so damn out of control?
The question echoed over and over again in Derek’s brain, haunting him.
Taunting him.
It had all started out so innocently. So harmlessly. A simple weekend trip to Atlantic City. He was going to be staying at one of the more luxurious casinos and, if time permitted, he figured that he’d indulge in a little gambling.
How was he to know that things would mushroom into this—an obsession that would threaten to completely ruin his life?
He’d never seen it coming.
In his defense, he’d never even felt the inclination to gamble before. But that had been before the first incredible rush had found him.
There was no other way to describe the feeling that exploded in his veins when turn after turn of the card rendered him the big winner at the table. It was an exhilarating, overwhelming rush. The closest he had ever come to a religious experience.
By the end of that first evening, he was staring at more money than he ever had before. And it was his money. Not his father’s, not his family’s or the institute’s, but his. Exclusively.
He wasn’t just one of Gerald Armstrong’s sons, or the CFO of the Armstrong Fertility Institute, an empty title awarded him because of who his father was. At that specific moment in time, he was Derek Armstrong. Winner.
And then, when he returned to the table the next night, as mysteriously as it had found him, his winning streak abandoned him. Hand after hand, he lost. Desperate to recapture that magical feeling, to see that life-affirming envy in the other players’ eyes, he kept betting.
And he kept losing.
At the end of the weekend, he’d not only lost all the money he’d won, but he lost twice as much as he’d brought to Atlantic City.
He began signing notes, barking that he was good for it. His luck remained bad. He only won enough to remind him that it was possible. Just not probable.
Eventually, the house stopped accepting his markers. That was when someone else did. And his life took a turn for the worse.
Addled by his desire to recoup his losses and to prove that his groundless certainty that he could win it all back if he just kept at it long enough was right, he went on to accept the loan for a large sum of money. The loan had come from a well-dressed, older man with the flattest eyes he’d ever seen.
And now, now he was in so far over his head that he despaired he would ever break through the surface again. Lying on top of the rumpled bed in the shabby Atlantic City hotel room, he dragged both hands over his face in abject despair.
What was he going to do?
The demands for payments were relentless. And the threats, the threats frightened him most of all. Not just against his life, but against his parents and the institute, as well.
The threats hadn’t been in so many words, but when he was late with his third payment, a payment that had become swollen out of proportion because the interest that had been slapped on it grew at a prodigious rate, his “benefactor”—as the man had referred to himself at first—quietly slipped him a news clipping. The clipping was from a West Coast newspaper from approximately six months ago. The photograph that was at the top of the article showed a once-famous hotel going up in flames.
“The owner of that piece of property didn’t think he had to pay on time, either,” was all the man said to him in that raspy voice that came across like a poor imitation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
Derek never asked who the benefactor was referring to. He didn’t want to know. The lesson was crystal clear. If he didn’t continue to pay off his loan on time, the institute would be burned to the ground.
He sold everything he owned and still, it wasn’t enough. Having nothing left, immersed in maintaining a facade, Derek was left with only one source of money to tap. He handled the institute’s finances. So he set aside his conscience and did what he had to do.
It was either that or watch the institute burn.
He refused to think of the consequences of his actions, but he knew they were coming.
And soon.
In the meantime, he would continue to burn the candle at both ends, trying to stay alive one more day. Hoping that, at the end of the day, there would be some kind of miracle that could save him. It was the only way he could go on. Searching for a miracle. And praying that his luck had changed.
Chapter Eight
Paul had to admit that the press release looked even better in newsprint than it had on the antiseptic white pages that Ramona had handed him to read several days ago.
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