Two floors up, Benjamin Merchant, personal assistant to the casino’s president and CEO, sucks deeply on a pacifier bong as he watches the scene play out on his wrist monitor. Merchant’s piggish eyes, squirrel gray, remain half-closed behind rose-colored designer spectacles. A thin line of spittle drools from the pacifier and down his lower lip onto the ruffles of his ivory white embroidered dress shirt.

Ben Merchant has never met Danny and Sylvia Diaz, but he knows the couple well. Over the last three days he has been both their good luck charm and dark cloud. Seducing them with each roll of the roulette wheel, he has baited them with lingering tastes of success while encouraging them to reach deeper into their depleted savings. He has played the banker, personally signing off on their arrangements at the hotel’s pawn shop. He has played the ‘chef,’ lacing their meals with a potent form of Ecstasy.

Now he plays his favorite role of all—the Devil’s advocate—as he guides them deeper into bankruptcy.

In Merchant’s manicured hand is a small remote device linked to the casino’s roulette wheels. He dials up the table number, presses a button, then sucks in another hit from his bong.

‘Six black.’

Sia’s forehead collides with her husband’s shoulder. ‘ Fubishit! Where’s my goddam drink? Can we get something to drink here?’

A nubile waitress with salmon skin approaches, her gold nipple rings glittering beneath an overhead light. In drug-induced English, dripping with a Jersey accent, she manages, ‘Caligula wit’ a twist, right honey?’

Sia downs the cream-colored liquid, barely registering the flame in the pit of her empty stomach. Sylvia Cabella-Diaz has not eaten or slept in thirty-one hours.

‘Sia?’

‘Red again, Danny. Everything we’ve got.’

‘You sure?’

‘Just do it.’

Danny pushes the pile of chips across the emerald green felt.

Two floors up, Ben Merchant fingers the BLACK key again on his palm-sized remote.

Sia’s heart pounds like a timpani drum. She watches the steel ball jump across the wheel’s plastic spokes, slowing on the red, stopping on—

‘Nineteen, black.’

‘Fubishole!’ The twenty-six year-old’s forehead strikes the padded cushion in front of her.

Danny slides off the chair, the room spinning in his head as if he’s on a merry-go-round. ‘Oh, God, Sia, what are we gonna do? I’m dead. I’ll lose my job for sure. I could go into exile—’

Across the table, a pit boss listens intently as Ben Merchant’s commands are whispered through his ear piece.

‘I hate this place, Danny. I told you Friday we should have checked out.’

‘Excuse me? You’re the one who—’

‘Mr. and Mrs. Diaz?’

Sia looks up at the pit boss through bloodshot eyes. ‘What the hell do you want? Haven’t you vampires sucked enough of our blood for one night?’

‘My manager would like a word with the two of you. In private.’

‘What for?’