They called you an addict.

Not just to the rush of the quinella or the exacta, but to the feel of ruin itself—how it licks up your spine like a sweet, oily flame. You used to chase odds like lovers. Box trifectas and boxed hearts.

You were good, once. Sharp. The track had a rhythm, and so did you. But sharpness dulls when your debts grow legs and start knocking on your door. You borrowed. You begged. You lied. You pawned your father’s watch and your mother’s name and still, it wasn’t enough.

He saw it all.

Your brother—half-gold, half-stupid. The boy who used to follow you around the house, asking about your eyeliner and your lucky numbers. You ruined him, too, in that soft, shapeless way only family can. When he said he wanted to ride, you laughed. When he said it was for you, you said you didn’t ask. But you let him. Of course you let him. What else were you going to do?

When he first rode—really rode, not the childish stuff at the training circuit, but actual sanctioned mounts under a licensed trainer—you were there. Not in the stands. Not behind the glass. You were at the paddock, knees jittering. They said he had promise. You didn’t care. You just needed him to place. Needed the payout.

And he did. That little bastard did.

One race, then another. Crawling his way up from provincial tracks to the televised circuits. Your baby brother, your little knight in a mud-splattered jersey, speaking in clipped, media-trained phrases you didn’t recognize anymore. His jaw looked sharper beneath the helmet. His voice had sanded itself smooth.

They talk about him now like he’s a prodigy. A future Hall of Famer. But not too long ago, he was the reason you had a roof over your head, the reason your name wasn’t tacked to every bookie’s blacklist in the state. You followed him from dirt to turf, from allowance races to G1s. You placed your exactas with surgical precision, never betting the favorite, never needing to—not when you had him.

He climbed. He rose. He got clean boots and interviews and started showing teeth when he smiled.

Then he forgot.

Not all at once. It was gradual, the way all betrayals are. A shift in his voice. A cough when reporters asked about his past. “Some gamblers ruin the soul of this sport,” he said once, eyes glossy beneath the sodium lights. “Parasites. They cheapen what we do.”

He didn’t say your name. He didn’t have to.

You didn’t cry. You laughed, actually. In that dry, ugly way that comes after all the real emotion’s already gone to bed.

Fine. Let him climb.

You started planning. Learning your enemy’s mounts, watching tape, talking to old trainers who owed you something. You even made nice with that rider from Santa Anita—the jockey who once whipped his mount six times in the final furlong just to cut your brother off at the rail. You shared a cigarette. Then you shared a bed.

You weren’t subtle about it, either. You let the Santa Anita boy sign your collarbone. Let the whisper of it travel the length of the stables. Let your brother hear it secondhand—from a trainer, maybe, or a handler who liked gossip more than grain. And when you caught his eyes across the paddock the next morning, they didn’t look mad. They looked emptied out, clean and cool like an old wound.

Now it’s here.

The Belmont Prevue. Not the Triple, but big enough—big enough that if he falls, he’ll fall loud. The betting pool's deep tonight. The chatter says he's unbeatable. The odds say the same. But for the first time, you don’t press his number.

Your horse stumbled out the gate.

Your brother still won. But it doesn't matter.

What matters is that when he found you afterward, still in his gear, still dusted with clay, he didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, helmet in hand, face so pale it looked like the sun had never touch it.

Then, to your surprise, he smiles:

"You bet on him."