Betting on Bailey

I take a long gulp of my drink, and the rum warms my throat. “Then there was Vinny.” A collective groan greets that. In an ocean of shitty guys, Vinny had still managed to rise to the top. Not only had I found him fucking some bimbo on my bed, on my birthday, but he’d also ended up stealing money from me.

“You really do have terrible luck with men,” Wendy says.

“No,” I correct her. “It’s me. I’m cursed. Normal guys turn to jerks when they start dating me.”

Every single one of them open their mouths to contradict me, but my glare stops them cold. “Not dating is easier.”

I’ve told none of them that I can’t stop thinking about Carter and Dominic. I don’t know why I’ve kept it secret. I sometimes find it difficult to talk about personal stuff. Maybe that’s my British, reserved, stiff-upper-lip side coming through.

I’ve also told none of them about my secret nights in underground poker halls, and I’m absolutely not going to mention the debt that’s hovering like a Sword of Damocles over my head. If they knew, Bailey would insist on emptying out her savings for me. As will Piper and Wendy and Katie.

I keep silent for the same reason I kept silent when I talked to my mom and my dad. This is my problem. I got into this crazy situation without any help. Now, I need to figure out how to get out on my own.

* * *

Chapter 2

Carter:

It’s been seven hours since my nephew, Noah, was kidnapped by his biological father.

I’ve spent most of those last seven hours here, in my office, on the penthouse floor of the Grand River Casino, where I work as the head of security, pacing the plush grey carpet till I’m convinced my shoes are going to wear the pile out. Monitors on the wall flicker with images of the casino floors and elevators, but I’m not watching.

I fight the urge to smash my fist into one of them. To scream and yell, to do anything to dampen my fear for my nephew. Sweet Noah, who is obsessed with Legos, who has just started to learn to swim. I promised him I’d teach him to ride a bike this weekend, I remember absently. The shiny cobalt blue bike still sits in the corner of my suite. Blue is Noah’s favorite color. He’s only five.

Dominic Crawford, my best friend and owner of the Grand River is hunched next to me, his ear pressed to his phone, his eyes unseeing as he looks out of the window onto the bright lights of Atlantic City. “When was he released?” I hear him ask whoever he’s talking to. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

Ed Wagner, Noah’s biological father, was released from prison yesterday. We should have been informed. I had protocols in place when Ed got out, plans to protect Noah from his father. The father that hasn’t set eyes on his son since Chloe’s death. The father who was never any kind of parent at all, but is still listed on the birth certificate because my sister, Chloe, was stupid and sentimental that way.

Chloe’s gone now. Noah’s the only member of my family left alive.

Somewhere, a link has failed. I fight the sneaking suspicion that I’m to blame for this. Ed Wagner had parental rights that I should have terminated, but I hadn’t acted, secure in the knowledge that Wagner was too busy surviving his jail sentence to pay attention to his son. I had warned the daycare never to release Noah to anyone other than Dominic or me, but I hadn’t accounted for temporary summer care workers who hadn’t known what to do. I should have hardened my heart when Noah asked me where his daddy was, and I should have never shown my nephew photos of his father.

“Noah called him daddy,” Olivia, the woman who runs the daycare explained earlier, almost in tears. “He ran towards this man to hug him. Patty didn’t know…”

What can I say to that? Can I tell Olivia that my drug-addicted sister had no sense of judgment, and she’d been convinced that her boyfriend Ed was father material? Can I tell her that I’m terrified that the courts will rule in favor of the biological parent over the uncle who has always been there for Noah?

At my side, Dominic has finished his conversation. Judging from the way the phone is flung onto the couch, I’m assuming his attempts to locate Ed Wagner have gone no better than mine.