Cervena by Louise Lyons Page B

saying he’d quit and that he didn’t like the ‘changes’ you’d made. I looked at the website and there’s a picture of Tomáš naked, inviting all the sleazy guys in Europe to have a taste, and while they’re at it, go fuck some nameless rent boy upstairs? And then I checked the bank and what did I find? What the hell did you do with ten million korunas, Karel?” I stopped, breathless, aware that I’d been yelling. I unclenched my fists and winced at the sting in my palms where my nails had cut into my flesh. “On top of everything else, you stole from our business. From me. Why?”
    Karel sighed heavily and indicated his sofa. “Sit down, Joel.”
    “I’d rather stand.”
    “Please.” He looked defeated, and as inclined as I was to resist, I moved to the sofa and sat. My leg ached and I stretched it out. Karel sidled to one of the armchairs opposite and sank into it.
    “Go on. I can’t wait to hear your explanation.”
    “Everything else was incidental,” he began.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean the pros and the security leaving—”
    “You mean your firing the security.”
    “Yes. I….” He hung his head and twisted his hands together between his knees. “I’m in trouble, Joel. I didn’t want you to find out. I thought I could put it right before you noticed. I didn’t think you’d come back yet.”
    “I’ve been gone two months. I think that was long enough to bury my mother,” I muttered bitterly.
    “I’m sorry. Look, you’ve every right to hate me for this. I hate myself. I just… I got in trouble—”
    “You said. What kind of trouble? Drugs?”
    “No!” He looked at me at last. “Gambling.”
    There was a long silence while he waited for me to respond, and I tried to understand how he could lose ten million gambling. I’d never bet on anything. No, that was a lie. When I’d lived in England, I’d always put a ten-pound bet on the Grand National. It had been a tradition in our household. Dad had put a few pounds on the horse of my choice and Rosalyn’s when we were kids, just for the fun of it. Occasionally one of us had won something, but more often than not we didn’t. I’d carried on doing it myself after he was gone.
    “Gambling on what?” I managed eventually.
    “Cards mainly.”
    “You went to a casino?”
    “At first. I met a few guys there who run their own card games.”
    “And what? You thought it was okay to play with the club’s money? To lose the club’s money?”
    “I didn’t at first. I used my own. I was on a winning streak.” His eyes lit up with excitement, and I frowned in disbelief. “I couldn’t seem to do anything wrong. And then things changed and I lost it all. I lost more than what I had.”
    “How is that even possible?” I wasn’t stupid. I knew well enough how gamblers got into trouble, but I’d never imagined Karel would be one of them. I barely listened as he explained how he’d continued to make bets with money he didn’t have in the hopes that his luck would turn and he’d win it all back.
    “…And suddenly I owed them two hundred thousand and I thought I’d just pay it back out of the club’s account and then stop. We make a hundred thousand or more a night on the weekends. I could just put it back out of my next salary.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “Yes, I did, but… what does it matter? I fucked up. I’ve been trying to put it right ever since you left.”
    “You mean this was going on before I went away?”
    “Yeah. But it was only October. It was easy to make the books add up. But then it got worse and I… I was relieved when you went away. I thought I’d have time to fix it.”
    “So my mother dying was convenient?” I demanded incredulously.
    “No! Damn it, Joel, I didn’t mean that. I meant… hell. When you turned up here, I knew from your face you’d found out. I was going to lie but—”
    “Lie how? Try to make out I was seeing things when I looked at the bank balance? That I dreamed