Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“The truth?” Sighing, his hands fell from my shoulders. “It’s been a rough... decade. After GloryBoi, everyone kept after us about our next big thing. We were geniuses. Wunderkinds! The college boys who became billionaires at twenty couldn’t possibly be one-hit wonders.” He fell back, leaning against a vibrant red maple. “What a joke.”
“What happened?” I asked, voice soft.
He scoffed under his breath. “I guess we never did tell you the full story.” He flicked up, his obsidian eyes piercing. “I guess you never asked.”
“I’m asking now.”
Rhodes nodded, his gaze trailing up and getting lost in the leaves. He didn’t speak for so long, I turned to go.
“We weren’t geniuses.” Rhodes’s voice stopped me in my tracks. “I wasn’t a genius. I was just the son of a gambling addict whose mother handed him over to his grandmother. She let Nana raise me because anything was better than being woken up in the night from the shouting and banging of the bookie’s goons chasing down my father for what he owes. Anything was better than having to hide my birthday and Christmas money, because they’d end up on a poker table faster than I could cry, ‘Daddy, give it back.’”
“Oh, Rhodes...” I laid my hand over his, my heart breaking like it could hear that little boy’s cries. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he ground out. “I don’t have anything to complain about. I told you, my mother got me out of that environment. Because of her, I grew up in a safe and stable home with grandparents who loved me, and a mother who spent time with me every day. But for most children of addicts, it’s a very different story, and a different outcome.” He folded his arms, breaking free of my touch. “And that’s what I told Micah and Alex that day in our dorm.
“For other addictions, they’re not easier battles, but at least there are more tools to fight. There are people and programs that want to help you fight. But when it comes to gambling addiction? This country just feeds on it. It preys on gambling addicts,” he said. “Did you know in Vegas, you’re allowed to smoke in the casinos? Everywhere else it’s banned because—fucking hello, smoking kills—but it’s not banned in Vegas because they don’t want you to leave the tables for any reason. Not even to go outside and smoke.”
I rocked back. “Wow. I never thought of it like that but, yeah, that makes a grim amount of sense.”
“It is grim. It’s dark as fuck, Sue. From Vegas to Atlantic City to game night with the boys to the millions of poker and betting apps on our phones, why wouldn’t it be hard for a gambling addict to say no, when society makes it so easy for them to place just one more bet.”
“Rhodes, I understand what you’re saying, and I agree with you, but if you’ve always felt that way, why did you sign on to GloryBoi? Why make your own betting app?”
He tossed his head, groaning. “It’s going to sound so stupid now, but I was going off all those new theories of harm reduction. You know what that is?”
I nodded. “It’s like with drug addiction. They say if they’re going to use anyway, then we as a society have a duty to make sure they have access to clean needles, safe injection sites, and medical staff present to stop an overdose. If we can’t stop the harm, at least we can reduce it.”
Rhodes nodded along with every word. “And that’s where my mind went. My parents were from wealthy families, and there were still months we didn’t eat or couldn’t pay the rent because Dad pissed away everything in our bank account on a sure hand,” he said. “That night, drunk on beers, I got to blathering about how that wouldn’t have happened if my dad could’ve placed those bets without losing any money. All the high without the cost.”
Understanding knocked me over the head. “And so you came up with GloryBoi,” I cried. “An app that lets people place bets, make real money, but only lose seven dollars a month.”
“Exactly. That was by design, Sue,” he said. “Seven dollars, and seven dollars only. That was the most a sub could ever spend in a month. We didn’t allow early re-subs to get more credits, and we banned subscribers from signing up through multiple accounts. A safe gambling site. The first safe gambling site.” His eyes grew unfocused, gazing at the brilliant cardinal leaves. “Because if you can get your fix for only seven dollars, then you can afford to get your son that Transformer you’ve been promising him for two birthdays in a row.”
History tumbled through my mind. “But it went wrong,” I whispered. “You were bought out, and GloryBoi is nothing like that now. I know for a fact they allow early re-subs and multiple accounts. Plus, before you could get almost three hundred credits for a dollar. Now it’s a dollar for one measly credit.”