Carrying Hope Read Free

dearly. Still, I didn’t take kindly to my Nana butting into my business. I’d made tens of thousands of dollars in only a couple of months. I was sure that I had control over everything.
    In another six months I was broke. Even worse than that, I’d racked up a debt of over forty thousand dollars and my creditors were coming to collect. I pleaded with my Nana to loan me some money. Just enough to buy in. I swore I could win enough to cover my debts. Eventually, she caved and gave me five thousand dollars from her savings, making me promise that I would never gamble again after that.
    I would have agreed to anything she asked at that point. All I wanted was my next fix. I managed to scrape together the money I needed to pay off my loan shark and my Nana. I realized afterward that there was no way I could ever go back. I couldn’t control myself when I was at a table. The heady feeling of power was too much for me. Nana was right.
    Reliving those events always helped me remember why I couldn’t go back to the way I was. I made a promise to my Nana that I couldn’t break. I made it home with the forty dollars still in my pocket and braced myself for an awkward conversation with Kevin.

Chapter 2
    Letters, maps, and yellowed government documents littered the desk in front of me. Over the last year I poured millions into gathering all of these disparate items and I still wasn’t any closer to my goal than when I’d started.
    I had to be missing something. The clues were in here if I looked hard enough. I poured myself another glass of scotch, leaning back in my leather chair with a sigh. My study was a mess: books, newspaper clippings, and photographs were scattered in every corner of the lavishly decorated room.
    The furnishings hadn’t been my choice, but I had to admit that they made the room more comfortable. When I first bought this house it was for the 100 acre vineyard that was on the property. The six-bedroom mansion was only an added bonus. I hired a decorator, having no patience for furniture shopping. She’d done a remarkable job of making this house look like someone lived in it full time. The reality was that I’d only recently taken to spending time here because of my search.
    I downed the rest of my drink, welcoming the caustic burn as it traveled down my esophagus. My eyes were bleary from a lack of sleep and I thought it was probably wise for me to go to bed. Wisdom wasn’t a virtue of mine.
    I rifled through the stack of papers in front of me again. My best friend and accomplice, Tanner, put this packet together last week, hoping that I would find something of use in it. So far, all I’d found was frustration.
    My eyes fell on my birth certificate. Bryson Ferris Dorian, born to Carol Marie Dorian and… blank. My father wasn’t there when I was born. He didn’t want his name on my birth certificate and my mother never told me who he was before she died. I asked her about him all the time. I tried to bring him up casually to see if I could make her slip. I tried to weasel answers out of her when I was having a bad day. I even tried reading her diary once, but there was nothing useful in it. All traces of my father’s existence had been erased from my mother’s life; except me.
    All my mother told me was that my father was an important man and that he had another family. She never said a bad word about him, but I’d come up with enough for the both of us. I didn’t understand how a man could love and dote on one family and completely ignore another. I knew if I ever had a family that I would stop at nothing to protect them and love them as much as I possibly could.
    Apparently, my father wanted nothing to do with a bastard son and went to great lengths to make sure that nothing ever connected the two of us. My mother raised me on her own, scraping together every cent she had just to keep me clothed and fed, forsaking her own health in the process.
    When she became ill one winter, she was so