After being battered by a report that the Federal Trade Commission would block the Walgreens-Rite Aid merger, Rite Aid shares were bouncing back modestly this morning. The drug store stock was trading around $3.12 a share today, after touching a low of $2.91 on Friday, before closing at $3 -- down 15 percent on the day.

A major Rite Aid investor says the volatility in shares of the East Pennsboro, Pa., drug store chain might not end until investors know one way or the other whether the FTC will approve the long-sought deal with Walgreens.

"I know Rite Aid is praying for a deal," Florida investor Steve Krol, who owns 245,000 Rite Aid shares, said in a phone interview this morning.

Should Rite Aid's sale to Walgreens be blocked, Rite Aid shares could fall to around $2, Krol says, citing several analysts who follow the stock.

The merger would combined the No. 2 and No. 3 drug store chains, and the FTC has been weighing whether the deal would hurt competition.

Walgreens has 8,200 locations and Rite Aid has 4,600 stores, and it was always a given that as part of the deal, some of the Rite Aid stores would have to be sold off to satisfy the FTC.

The question running throughout the two-year saga has been how many?

Already, Rite Aid has lowered its sale price to Walgreens once, from $9 per share, down to $6.50 to $7 per share, depending upon how many Rite Aid stores the FTC makes Walgreens sell off in order to pass regulatory muster.

It is expected at least 1,000 Rite Aid stores will have to be jettisoned, but the final number could even be higher.

Neither the FTC nor the companies are commenting.

Krol says his biggest worry isn't the FTC blocking the merger, it is what he called weak-kneed Rite Aid management again lowering the deal price with Walgreens just to get it done.

"Rite Aid is wounded animal, and when you back a wounded animal up against the wall, who knows? They could amend the deal again," Krol said in the interview.

Even before Friday's plunge, Rite Aid shares had been trading around $3.50 per share for some time, singling to Krol that Wall Street was either betting against the Walgreens deal happening or betting that Rite Aid management will once again cave and drop its price.

"It's been low for quite a while now," Krol says of Rite Aid shares. "Wall Street doesn't think the deal is happening. If more people thought the deal would get done, it will be higher."

But the time for speculation on what the FTC will do is rapidly coming to an end. The government oversight agency, which has only two of its five members onboard, has until July 5 to render a final decision on the merger.

For his part, Krol says he still believes the Walgreens merger will get done, if only because top Rite Aid management stands to reap millions from the deal. And Rite Aid stock "would be toast," should the deal fell through, Krol adds.

The fact that Rite Aid shares appeared to recover somewhat this morning is a good sign, Krol points out.

And while Krol is still kicking himself that he didn't liquidate his entire Rite Aid holding at $8.65 a share when the merger was first approved by Rite Aid shareholders in 2015, he says he isn't done with the company.

Should the deal fall through and Rite Aid shares plunge into the $2 to $2.50 range, Krol says he would be a buyer because at that point Rite Aid, saddled by some $7 billion in debt, would be a candidate for a complete management house-cleaning, along with selling off some of its stores and other assets to pay down debt.

The net result, says Krol, could be a leaner, meaner and more profitable Rite Aid down the line. And that would ultimately lead to higher share prices in the future, he adds.

"I am down so much already, I don't care," Krol says of his paper loses on Rite Aid stock. "If an activist investor wants to make money, oh my God, I can show them how to do it. But I give absolutely no assurance that this will happen."

When it comes to the very wobbly Rite Aid-Walgreens deal, the next four weeks will finally tell the tale.