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 couldget almost three hundred credits for a dollar. Now it’s a dollar for one measly credit.”
“Yep,” he clipped, expression hardening. “Those shithead, corporate bastards completely gutted our app—ruining everything we tried to do. Turning it into all that I fucking hate!”
His anger didn’t scare me. The opposite. It drew me closer to him. “But, then why?” Gently, I cupped his cheek. “Why did you sell?”
His jaw tensed against my touch. “Sue, believe me, you’ve never met a more dangerous enemy than a bunch of rich, soulless shitbags fighting to protect their money. GloryBoi was popular. Ten thousand times more popular than we were expecting, and it was costing all those app owners and casinos big,” he said. “Turns out, it’s not just the sons of gambling addicts that like the idea of betting big and winning big without losing their rent money. Pretty much everyone wants that.
“When the conglomerate first came at us with a buyout offer, we said no.” His eyes darkened. “And that was a mistake.”
“They came after you.” It wasn’t a question.
“They went aftereveryone. My mom, my dad, my grandparents, and my family,” he said, widening my eyes. “They went after Micah’s and Alex’s families. They went after our friends and girlfriends at the time. They sicced private investigators on us, digging up every dirty secret in our closets. And that was the stuff that was true.
“We also came under attack from a deluge of internet trolls and bots spreading nasty, sick stuff about us, and lies about the app. It was relentless,” he said. “Our girlfriends dumped us. Our parents begged us to just sell and make it stop. And then, it got even worse.”
“It got worse?” I blurted. “How could it have gotten worse?”
“Neither Micah, me, nor Alex are coders,” he said. “Creating GloryBoi itself was way beyond our capabilities, so we hired some kid from the computer engineering college. We gave him a flat fee of a quarter of a million dollars and a contract we printed off the internet, and he gave us everything we asked for.”
“The cuntglomerate targeted him next, didn’t they.”
Rhodes cracked the slightest grin. “Cuntglomerate? I like that. I’ve called them lots of choice shit over the years, and never came up with thatgem. Nice.” His smile faded fast. “But to answer your question, yes. They pounced on Dereon fast. They claimed the contract he signed was nothing—worthless. Their lawyers would shred it in court, then Dereon would be named the true owner and creator of GloryBoi. And so, we had a choice. We either sold to them right there and took theirgenerousoffer of twenty billion, or we watched them steal our app and leave us with nothing.”
I hissed, lips peeling back from my teeth. A few choice phrases for those greedy corporate bastards were going through my head right then.
“We sold.”
My eyes fluttered closed—my lids as heavy as my heart. I could picture the three of them then. Only twenty years old, and terrified. Pressure bearing down on them from all sides. Threats coming at them from everywhere. When all they wanted to do was make the world a fairer place.
