AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Mason
I turned off my laptop and sat there in the silence of my office for several seconds. It was getting late, but I had no real motivation to move or to leave. I had some work I could still be finishing up, but I knew I had to get home fairly soon to relieve the nanny of her duties with Jack, my four-year-old son. He would be in bed by now, but that was how it went most week days. I wished I had more time to spend with him, but the business never slept so I didn’t either. I had to stay on top of things or else it might all fall apart. I was sure that I was being overly dramatic on this, but the control freak in me would not handle relinquishing the power to anyone else. That was too much discomfort.
Besides I love working. I always have. That feeling of accomplishment, the feeling that I am doing what most won’t, I’m beating them and I am rising above in the world has never left me. It’s a fire that’s been burning within me since I was a child and I’m not exactly sure where it comes from.
I sighed and stood up to leave the office for the day. It had been a rather productive day. I started LunarTech about ten years ago when I was still a college student. It had happened so fast, been such a wild ride that it stunned me to think that I was now thirty-two years old and it had become such a huge company. I was really riding the wave of success. It was everything I’d ever dreamt of.
“Well, maybe not everything,” I muttered to myself. I sipped a glass of whiskey and stood there in my office looking out the window of the skyrise office building. The town below looked so small, but I wondered what all those people were doing tonight. I figured most of them were in the pursuit of fun and pleasure. And they wondered why the real pleasure of life eluded them. I knew why. I was fortunate to discover it at an early age. There appeared to be hundreds of cars driving to and fro taking people to different destinations, different life paths, and I had to wonder what they were aiming for.
I knew that there were other people out there working hard and trying to make a real difference in the world. But at what cost?
I hated to admit this, but I was lonely a lot of the time. It really hit me late at night when everyone else had gone home and it was just me working by myself in the office. I enjoyed the peace and serenity, but sometimes I wished I had someone else to work with, or to work for, a partner, a woman.
I hadn’t dated for the past year or so, at least not very much. And most of the “dates” had really just been working through sexual frustrations with women I didn’t really connect with. It usually left me feeling a bit depressed. I wanted that connection, that love in my life, but it wasn’t happening right now. I suppose I could have worked harder on it, but I was too busy with the business and with trying to be the best father I could be.
I finished the whiskey and left the office for the night. The elevator took me down to the ground floor parking garage and I walked to my car enjoying the way my footsteps echoed in the fairly empty parking garage. The parking garage was only for employees, and at first glance it would appear that there were still people in the building working. I supposed there might have been a few, but I knew that many people liked to carpool to bars and clubs after work, no matter what day of the week it was.
Even still, the parking garage could be a bit eerie. It didn’t frighten me since I was more than fully capable of taking care of myself. I’d developed an interest in martial arts at an early age and I had become a lifelong practitioner of it. I’d only had to use my skills a few times, but it was enough to give me that confidence.
I slid into my car and fired up the engine. I drove out of the parking garage and into the busy street in downtown Los Angeles. It was a typical evening full of traffic congestion. I often thought about moving out of that city. It was too congested, too busy, and it was a place I’d spent my whole life in. I’d travelled the world extensively in my life and discovered many other places I enjoyed more. I had a house in Tampa, Florida, I had a house in Seattle, and I had another house in Phoenix. I had lived in each of these houses for a bit working on various things over the years, but I always came home to Salt Lake City for some reason.
