It was a bit of reach to say I didn't know something was seriously wrong before things got really bad.

In the back of my mind, deep down, I knew that there was no way we were just so luckily making it by every month. Not with how much my aunt loved her expensive wine and how much my uncle liked to visit the casinos. I always suspected something was up but I wasn't yet ready to cross that unforgivable line from adolesence to adulthood. If I were to get my answers, I could never act ignorant again.

So I never asked how Uncle Rin afforded that diamond ring for Aunt Kat last year. No doubt it cost more than an apartment in downtown Manhattan. I still didn't question it when the landlord stopped coming and pestering us about our rent, or when we got a flatscreen tv, or Aunt Kat bought me a pair of shoes I eyed every time we went shopping (which started to become increasingly frequent). I never questioned it. I did suspect the worst.

I honestly didn't want to know the truth but I didn't want to be incredibly stupid and just let whatever was happening go on right under my nose. What if something happened to my aunt and uncle and I had no clue what or how and then I was left orphaned (again) and possibly in danger? I was barely out of high school; I would be out of luck if I were left entirely alone.

When I turned nineteen, my uncle asked what I wanted, probably thinking I was going to ask for a designer brand handbag or something of the like. I asked for a job at the casino he visited nearly every night. The casino he said his friends ran. 

At first he refused, saying he couldn't. He didn't have those kinds of connections and I was underage. I pestered him until he finally said he would talk to a friend who oversaw the operations for the Boss. I didn't ask who the boss was. A week later, I was waitressing in the private lounges, out of sight of the common gamblers but making better tips than I would've at a pizza parlor. I kept questions to myself. My uncle never said how he got me the job but told me to be careful and do only my job there. In the end, he said he felt more at ease knowing I was in a place he was familiar with around people he knew. He had more faith in the sleaze bags than I did.

It was several months into working my job, on the night of my birthday, when really hit the fan.

I'd come to work in the evening after having cake with my aunt and uncle. Rin gave me a ride to work, like usual, and went to settle into a game of poker. I never bothered to reprimand him for blowing tons of money. He was an adult and I was making my own money. As long as he was blowing his and not mine, it was none of my business.

I clocked in and tied on my apron just like any other work day. I greeted the girls I could call friends and avoided the manager. He was a young guy, way too young, with the smile of a cat and the temper of a live volcano: dangerous and always at risk of erupting.

The usuals all asked for drinks whenever I passed by their poker tables. I always narrowly missed their attempted s. 

Everything was as normal as it could be in a casino filled to the tip top with cigar smoke and drunk men who hated their wives. So when my uncle came running to me in a frenzy and pulled me into the storage room behind the bar, it took me a moment to comprehend what he was telling me.

"I'll talk to to Jongdae for you, just go home," he insisted, pushing me to the lockers to get my things. 

I stood my ground. "Why? We've got a full house tonight; I need the tips."

Un