Vice by Rosanna Leo Read Free Book Online Page B

funds into her bill-paying account, printed the applicable receipts, and stared at them.
    Old guilt tightened its stranglehold on her. She took out her mom’s old bank card, inserted it and checked the account her parents had shared. She printed the list of recent activity, all of which were debit transactions from the local casinos. Fifty dollars at Caesar’s. Fifty at the Bellagio. Fifty at the Flamingo. Oh, and to make things even better, one hundred dollars at Vegas’s newest attraction, Vice.
    The list went on and on. The last deposit had been hers, two weeks back. She’d transferred over two thousand dollars, hoping he would use it for food or rent, and not poker chips.
    Well, she’d always been a dreamer.
    “Just take out the card and walk away,” she urged herself. “Don’t give him any more. He has to hit rock bottom.”
    A memory from her teen years flashed before her eyes. Her dad, coming home from work, pale and shocked. She’d run to him to ask what was wrong.
    “Oh, Katie-bug,” he’d cried. “Someone stole my wallet on the bus!”
    “Oh, Dad, no. Are you sure?”
    “Yeah. My credit cards, everything. I had it in my pocket. Someone must have reached in when I wasn’t looking.” He’d blanched. “Katie, my pay was in there. Five hundred cash, gone.”
    Her dad, a mechanic, worked for an old-timer who still paid his employees with cash—a major temptation for someone who gambled.
    “I can’t tell your mother. She’ll be so disappointed in me. I was supposed to pay the bills this month.” He’d looked at her, as if seized by a wonderful idea. “Katie, you have a bit of money saved up from your job, right?”
    She did. She ran the local church choir and was given a small amount for her troubles. Not much, but it felt like untold riches to a kid.
    “Loan me the money, sweetheart. I’ll pay it back, I swear. Then we don’t have to bother your mom with this business.”
    He’d walked her right to the nearest bank and watched as his child withdrew her own money for him. Before handing it over, she’d asked, “Dad, are you going to gamble with this?”
    He’d had the gall to look affronted. “I can’t believe my own daughter would ask me that. Didn’t I raise you better?”
    She’d handed it over and waited for the thanks that never came. And despite his many assurances, she’d never seen the money again.
    She’d been enabling him, in one way or another, ever since. After her mom died, she worried about her dad’s ability to take care of himself. For the past few years, she regularly put money in his account, convinced he was starving somewhere. Every time she checked the balance, the money was gone, used for bets.
    And every week she spouted garbage to her New Horizons friends about cutting gamblers off, letting them hit rock bottom for their own good, and she hadn’t let her father do the same yet.
    She felt sure the word coward or hypocrite was tattooed over her face. How could she allow this pattern to continue? He’d disappointed her so many times, yet a small part of her waited for him to prove her wrong, to show her he was worthy of her love and trust.
    Would it ever come?
    She played with her finances a bit more, shaving off a bit more from her piddly savings. A lump formed in her throat as she deposited one hundred dollars into her father’s account. It wasn’t much. Maybe this time he’d put it to good use. Maybe. Her eyes stung as she yanked the bank card out of the machine.
    Clutching her purse, and blinking back tears, she fled the bank.
    Liam passed Kate on the way to his car the next morning. Headed to a meeting at City Hall, he was already in a bad mood, expecting push back from the city building department about his permit and worrying about his meeting with Bridget after that. Having to see Kate Callender’s new sign, Don’t Let Liam Doyle Control Your Pocketbook! just put the icing on an unpalatable cake.
    She made a big show of curtseying like a simpering