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Had there been any way out of this despair, any lever to pull, he would have done it. Every night he prayed and begged for forgiveness. Every day he imagined a miraculous, last-minute reprieve from his suffering, from the burden of his debt. He pictured this absolution as a lightning bolt from the sky, as divine intervention, but his prayers went unanswered. Seth was down to his last chip. He’d placed it on the table.

And now he waited, terrified, for the dealer to collect his bet.

* * *

Over the years Seth had become an expert at masking the electronic trail of his gambling exploits. After Natalie climbed into bed, he pretended to pay bills and review their investment portfolio, but his real business was to research players and coaches and stadiums, to manage bets and record final scores. He tracked the family’s actual revenues and expenditures in a secret clone of their Quicken account, and at the end of every research session he surgically erased all evidence of these maneuvers from his Internet browsing history. Despite this vigilance, Seth lived in fear of being exposed, and when it finally happened the scene was worse than he ever imagined.

Was it already five days? Almost a week since Natalie sent the boys to bed and sat down with a bottle of wine to watch The Hunger Games? In predictable fashion, Seth had misinterpreted her intentions, especially when she opened a second bottle and disappeared in the direction of the bedroom. Eventually he followed her, expecting Natalie to be waiting for him under the covers, but the only visible light in that end of the house was shining in their office. He found her half-empty bottle of wine standing next to the glowing white rectangle of the computer, and whether she had forgotten to close her email or intentionally left it for him to find, Seth didn’t know. The important thing was life as he understood it was over.

Natalie,

You’ve got to tell him what happened. I know this isn’t easy but the longer you let it fester the worse you’re going to feel. By now I’m sure he can tell something is bothering you.

Let me know how it goes.

-T

For a moment Seth stood there, unmoving, as if the reality of this message had sewn him to the floor. The idea of Natalie cheating on him after all the sacrifices he’d made for her and the boys was impossible to accept. Still, You’ve got to confront him and Just tell him what happened left little room for doubt about her behavior. Possibly worse than those damning phrases was the way her lover had signed his message. A single initial conveyed familiarity. Confidence. Intimacy.

Seth ground his teeth with such force he could hear them screeching. His pulse throbbed in his eyes. How could Natalie do this to him? He loved every atom in that woman’s body! He loved her hiccuppy laugh and her cobalt blue eyes and the way she cried in front of the closet when she couldn’t find anything to wear. He had sacrificed everything for her. Everything!

According to the message header, the sender was some jerk named Thomas Phillips. And it was obvious Natalie had attempted to hide her correspondence with him, because there were no other messages from Thomas in her inbox. Eventually Seth reopened the offending email and scrolled farther down, where he discovered a note from Natalie that had prompted Thomas’ response. Sent two days earlier, it read:

Thomas,

Seth is “away on business” again, so I drank a bottle of white wine and finally got the nerve to call JJ. Figured Seth would be there with her, but no one answered, and there wasn’t even a greeting on her voicemail. I just can’t believe he would hide money from me to spend on her! It makes me so angry I can’t see straight!

Nat

Seth read this message three times before he finally accepted what the text seemed to imply: Natalie believed he was cheating, that he’d been with a woman named JJ two days prior. But two days before this he’d been in New Orleans, trying desperately to assemble a winning streak at the craps table. He’d gotten so drunk that night he couldn’t remember how he made it back to his suite.

And JJ wasn’t a woman. He was a bookie, and Seth owed him more than two hundred thousand dollars.

The automatic response was to lash out at Natalie, to accuse her of retaliating against infidelity that had never happened. But just because he wasn’t sleeping with someone else didn’t mean she was wrong about him. Only instead of falling into the arms of another woman, Seth had betrayed his wife by gambling away an inconceivable amount of money. Any day now Seth was going to open his door and find one of Jimmy’s strong-armed friends standing there, or else the bank would show up and lock the doors to their house. He’d gambled away his family’s security like so many poker chips and there was nothing more he could do to get it back.

Even if he confessed his shameful addiction, and even if Natalie somehow forgave him, the next step would be to extricate the family from financial ruin. But how? Austerity wouldn’t help, not when much of the debt was owed was to a man unburdened by collection laws, so Natalie would suggest they borrow money from his father. The elder Black had retired a millionaire three times over, incurred few expenditures, and carried no liens of any kind.

But even this live-saving option was unavailable. Partly because his father was a stingy bastard, but mainly because Seth had already taken what he should have asked for long ago.

The first time he borrowed from his father’s retirement account, Seth swore he would put the money back. The old man kept his passwords handy on a sticky note glued to the monitor, and one afternoon last summer, while his father napped in front of the television, Seth crept into his office and logged into the computer. In minutes he had liquidated enough stock to replenish the twins’ college savings accounts and stake himself for another run. With that money he planned to win enough to pay back his father’s unknowing investment and quit gambling forever.

But that’s not what happened. What happened was he lost the borrowed money and was forced to take more. By now the evidence was impossible to hide, and eventually his father would discover he had unwittingly loaned his second son $704,525. Combined with his debt to Jimmy and the various credit cards that were maxed to their limits, Seth’s total burden had grown to more than a million dollars.

He understood how impossible his actions would seem to someone who wasn’t him. There was no possible way to convey the darkness he’d carried for as long as he could remember, or that the only way he knew to neutralize his pain was to risk the love and security of those he loved most in all the world.

He was a broken human being. Worthless. He didn’t deserve Natalie’s forgiveness, and anyway she didn’t deserve to be asked for it.

* * *

It seemed obvious insurance wouldn’t pay if you took your own life, but in the fine print of his policy he discovered a surprise: the suicide clause. As long as Seth didn’t kill himself during the first two years of coverage, the policy paid no matter how he died. By now he was well past the time limit, and the benefit would be nearly $600,000. Even if this wasn’t enough to cover all his debts, it was enough to pay Jimmy and satisfy their mortgage. And he didn’t think his father would come after Natalie once Seth was gone. The old man could be a real jerk, but he was a lot friendlier if you weren’t his middle child.

Still, what if some hotshot adjuster trying to make bonus found a way to deny Seth’s claim? If he wanted to truly insulate his wife, Seth required insurance against his insurance, and that’s where Thomas Phillips entered the picture. Surely a jackass brazen enough to fuck another man’s wife would be compelled by guilt to shield her from the claws of a small-time mobster.