I chuckled wryly to myself. While it had only taken a minute for my life to be reduced to ash, the process had surely been anything but sudden for my father. How many years had he spent in gambling halls and card rooms, exchanging the future of his family for the pleasure of his present? How could he so sternly dictate the terms of my life to me from behind his great mahogany desk, knowing full well that my efforts were to be for nothing?
