Page 1 of His Gamble

Prologue

Adam

I’m running hard on the track, but Lucas is pushing me every step of the way of our morning training.

And I know that him needling me is a part of it.

“Adam, you know you’re crazy, right?”

I’m close to a personal best, but I need a faster time and more consistency if I’m going to beat Ram in the charity triathlon. And I intend to beat him. Other billionaires and some bona-fide Olympic athletes will compete. I mean to beat them all. But beating Ram is what matters to me, and that’s why I’ve persuaded Lucas to help me train. He’s the fastest, the strongest and the fittest of us all.

Deep down, I know Lucas can’t stand knowing that I’m richer than him. He takes all that way more seriously than I do. And that makes him my perfect training partner.

I lengthen my stride. Just an inch. Some laps I have the stamina to speed up, others I can take longer steps. All the way, I control my breathing and make myself cover the ground a little faster.

“Going up against the mob, and in this town…” He’s trying to get under my skin now. “Do that, Adam, and you won’t live long enough to compete in the triathlon.”

I’m leaving him behind nearly three paces. I know that means he’s holding back for a rush on the last lap.

We jump hurdles at the start, and the end, so I have to keep something in reserve.

I’m ahead on the last curve, but he catches me up on the hurdles. Eight jumps.

As we clear the last one, I put everything into the jump. I power off the back foot, lunge and stretch, lengthening forward. Reaching. Lucas’ front foot is out level with mine. Our toes cut the air together like a ballet.

You couldn’t put a film of sweat between us as we land on the line.

In the locker room after the showers, Lucas returns to his regular theme. I need to wake up, smell the flowers. I need love in my life.

Toweling my hair, I tell him, “Women are all either gold-diggers or they’re self-obsessed and as shallow as their so-called beauty regimes.”

“Ouch.” He grins sideways as he rakes mousse through his hair. “You have definitely been meeting the wrong women.” He shakes his head. “I guess it’s hard for you to find someone to measure up to your mom.” He’s serious now. “Nobody could do that. She was one in a million. Smart, tough, serious, and she was totally devoted to your father.” Pulling on his shirt, he says, “She was beautiful, too. It’s not something I would usually say that about a friend’s mom, but it’s undeniable.”

I’m not going to let him get to me. “I don’t want to marry my mother.”

“No, of course you don’t, Adam. But maybe you still want to rescue her.”

We agree a time for training tomorrow, and we part in the parking lot.

Getting into the limo, I tell Carson, “The office first, but keep the car outside. We have calls to make this morning.”

“Very good, sir.”

I probably would probably have hired him for his clipped Brit vowels and his old-fashioned British Army-style mustache, even without his SAS and security background. He’s new, but I have no complaints so far.

The irony is, I would have been one of the Pinnacle team if I had stayed on and completed training. As it was, all I got was some weapons and unarmed combat training, and a lot of painful drills before it happened. I would have taken the two, maybe three, tours of duty like I had planned. But my father picked the worst possible moment for an idiotic mountaineering accident to get himself killed in. Even then, maybe if Mother hadn’t taken it so hard, I could have carried on.

Any time up to then, she would have been able to step straight into his shoes and take over running the corporation. She helped him build it out of nothing. She would have done a better job of holding it together than I ever could.

It would probably have saved her. If she had thrown herself into the business and focused on it for three, maybe six months, she would have been in better shape, and so would the firm.

But she went to pieces. I couldn’t leave her to deal with it all alone, but I couldn’t save her either. I would have let the corporation go if I thought it meant I could save her. But I couldn’t. Nothing could.

I understood. I loved Father, too. Maybe almost as much as she did.

So he scrambled up one more impossible rocky crag, and I lost them both.

Lucas and the others went on to join the most secretive and lethal Special Ops team in the US military, and I stayed home to mind the store.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com