A Light In The Dark: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 1 Read online

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  A Light In The Dark

  Copyright © 2017 by Nancy Adams.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  SARAH

  I didn’t know why at the time, but as I waited in traffic to pull out onto the freeway the image of my mother came into my head and a shiver ran through me like a million scampering mice. As I put the car into gear and rolled out onto the road, the feeling that the image had produced lingered in my heart.

  “So, Sarah,” Holly said from the backseat, breaking me out of my thoughts, “you got any plans for tonight?”

  “I was out last night on patrol,” I replied, glancing up into the mirror at the mother and her two sons sitting behind me, “so I’m probably gonna have an early night tonight. Plus I’ve got church tomorrow.”

  “What’s patrol?” she asked with a slight frown.

  “Christ’s Patrol it’s called. We basically walk the streets at night helping people. We offer assistance to the homeless, people on drugs, drunk people and anyone else that needs help.”

  “You’re always helping someone or other, Sarah,” Holly remarked warmly, making me smile up at her in the mirror. “Like now for instance,” she went on. “You’ve been working all day at the food bank—helping folks in need—and now you’re taking us home because we gotta spend three hours on two buses. Always helping someone.”

  “The world needs help.”

  “You’re damn straight there,” Holly said, glancing out the window at the field of trees that dashed past at the side of the road.

  Holly was a single mother. I’d known her five years, ever since she first started coming to the food bank I volunteer at every Saturday. The boys were Kyle and Scott. The former was eleven years old and the latter seven. Their father hadn’t been around since Scott was two, and even when he was, he had been an abusive addict who would steal the last scrap of food from their mouths in order to feed his own habit. They were just one of the many desperate families that exist in America, relying on charity to feed themselves in the wealthiest country in the world.

  “How’s everything with you?” I inquired into the back of the car.

  “What can I say?” she sighed. “I’m working two part-time jobs and yet still I’m coming to the food bank every Saturday without fail, so I guess that tells you all you need to know about how I’m doing.”

  “There’s a lot of people coming to the bank these days,” I mused aloud. “It seems like there’s more and more each time.”

  “Yeah, people are real hurt these days. Folks forgetting what it was like before. They keep saying on the news that the economy is getting better, that the country’s in better shape. But I don’t see it. Folks like me don’t see it. The underbelly of the city don’t see it. We just get swept underneath with all the rest of the trash.”

  “You just gotta keep—”

  I stopped.

  As I was talking, a huge fuel truck came steaming past in the fast lane, swallowing my Prius up in its great big shadow. Large trucks always make me nervous when they come rumbling past; my heart flutters like the wings of a bee as they make my little car tremble. I looked down at the speedometer and saw that I was doing fifty. This alarmed me, because by the way the truck went past it must have been doing at least seventy. I carefully watched it roar by.

  “I was saying,” I continued once the truck had made it several car lengths ahead and was disappearing into traffic, “that you’ve gotta keep your head up. Don’t fall into the trap of being too down. You are doing everything you can for your family. Don’t feel down about that, feel proud.”

  “You’re just saying that,” Holly commented, the twinkle of a smile sliding across her lips.

  “I certainly am not. Many in your situation give up. They fall into ruin and they shrug. Their life dissolves around them and they shrug. Finally their children are taken into custody, and still all they do is shrug. You should feel proud that you haven’t allowed despair to eat away at your heart; you haven’t shrugged.”

  “Oh! It takes a bite once in a while. Despair. I just gotta stay strong for my boys. My boys keep me going.”

  At that moment I looked up into the mirror and saw the reflection of Holly squeezing her sons tenderly, an arm around each of them. It was a beautiful scene, and I was glad to be witness to it.

  A sudden bang, however, thundered through the air and took my eyes away from the mirror. I glanced back at the road and was presented with a confusing mess of screeching vehicles, the smoke from their tires hanging over the tarmac. I screamed and plunged both feet down on the brake, the red lights of a crashed car leering into view. I swerved to avoid it, coming within a few feet, and, as I passed around, I spotted another car smash into it from the side.

  All around, cars spun out of control and struck each other—spun and struck, spun and struck—an echo of crashing metal and smashing glass ringing out. As I skidded along, trying desperately not to spin out of control, I suddenly noticed the trailer of a truck stretched right across all the lanes of the freeway, several vehicles already piled into it. I steadied the car for a moment, but my whole body tensed as I realized that we were going to hit the trailer.

  A deafening crash rang out and I felt my bones fly up inside my body, a shower of glass spraying around the inside of the car, the impact of the collision ricocheting through my flesh, a great weight applied to my legs; I heard the sound of someone screaming ringing in my ears.

  It wasn’t until we were at a stop that I realized it was me doing all the screaming. With blood dripping down my face from a number of cuts, I sat in shock, breathing heavily, my heart thumping like a hammer in my chest. I went to turn my head, to see if Holly and the boys were okay, but an electric pain surged through it and I was unable.

  “Holly?” I called out in a shivering voice.

  But nothing came back and I began to despair, hearing more and more cars crashing around me, absolute chaos everywhere. I tried to move my body but screamed out when the shooting daggers of a shocking pain surged up my legs and through me.

  I started to cry out for help. While I did, I began to smell smoke. Then I saw it drift faintly past the window in gray wisps. And soon I could see the flames that were moving toward us from the other side of the trailer. The sight of fire stopped my cries dead in my throat and I couldn’t help but watch it clamber along at a steady pace, like stretching fing
ers, spreading toward us from across the sea of cars.

  “HELP!” I bellowed harder than I ever had in my life. “HELP!”

  I screamed and screamed and screamed, and just as I began to lose faith that we would ever be reached before the fire, a face presented itself at the smashed window and I felt utter salvation. The first thing I said to him was to get the others. However, when my eyes took in his handsome face, I was astounded to see standing there the man who had so viciously insulted and provoked me the previous night while I was out on patrol.

  “It’s you,” was the second thing I said to him.

  JOSH

  You wanna know about the day the great change of my heart began? The day a light swept toward it and made the first chink in the heavy armor that had grown around that decaying heart up till that point in my lonely life?

  Well then, I’ll tell you.

  I was sick that day in both my body and my mind, sitting in the back of a large black Hummer, being driven toward my destiny. In the driver’s seat sat Holman, my billionaire father’s head of security, and in the back next to me was another of my father’s men, his eyes fixed on my shivering, sorry ass.

  I was being escorted under guard to Withered Peaks Rehab Center, and I was wracked with anxiety.

  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the thought of rehab that twisted my entrails and clouded my mind. I’d already been to Withered Peaks six times up until then and it held little fear for me. In fact I looked forward to the solitude that the place offered. No, it was not the thought of rehab that filled me with angst but the recriminations of my recent actions, and my eyes had mostly remained closed for the journey as I battled away with myself.

  It was only when I began to notice that we were slowing down that I actually opened them and took a look out the windscreen. I immediately saw the plume of smoke rising high in the air up ahead, a wide river of jammed vehicles separating us from the huge fire that roared in the distance.

  Holman brought us to a stop at the back of the procession, and as he did, my eyes remained fixed on the fumes rising upward into the sky. Outside, people stood about the road, having gotten out of their vehicles. Like me, most of them were gazing up at the smoke, the source of which was a terrible multiple-car pile up some hundred yards ahead.

  “I’m gonna check it out,” Holman said, opening his door. “Stay here.”

  Holman went off toward a group of people and began talking to them, obviously asking what was up. I don’t know why, but I sensed something stirring inside of me—like a golden light waking up in my soul—and felt the need to get out of the car. The guy with me in the backseat cried for me to stay in, diving across to grab me as I opened the door. But I easily escaped his clutches and got out anyway. Only then, as I stood in the road, could I see the true extent of the flames rising up ahead, mixing with the fumes in little orange licks.

  By the time the guy was out of the other side of the Hummer and after me, I was already briskly jogging toward the crash site through a corridor of cars, no longer aware of my anxiety or the sickly pain in my head and gut. I came across people, whole families, walking quickly toward me, an exodus of them, filing in between the cars, panic on their faces.

  “There’s a tanker up ahead,” one of them shouted to me as I came past going the other way. “It’s gonna blow. You gotta get yourself back.”

  But I ignored him and continued toward the crash, something pulling me to it, a strange fascination growing inside of me. A little further on another man tried to warn me, even going so far as to grab my arm, but I nonchalantly shrugged him off.

  Once I’d made it to the first of the crashed cars, I was confronted with a pile of smashed metal wedded together so that all the vehicles were now one mass of broken shells, cars folded into trucks, trucks folded into cars, whole vehicles resembling crushed cans. While the smoke and heat stung my eyes, I wondered if anyone could have survived such a catastrophe, and it was as I held this thought in my head that I heard a woman’s scream ring out from within it all.

  Without a second’s thought I ran into the crash, the screams of help getting louder the further I meandered into the twisted metal flesh of it all. I flashed my glance around to find the source, but the smoke was wafting thick and heavy, making it almost impossible to see. For a second or two the scream didn’t sound and in that tiny moment of silence I felt angst ridden at its absence. But as my anxiety climbed to fever pitch, the scream suddenly broke out again and it was like a siren’s call. I got a fix on the direction it appeared to be coming from and, head down, I stormed through the smoke and came upon a car that was half-crushed under the trailer of a truck.

  I found four people inside, a woman and two small boys in the back, all unconscious, and another conscious woman in the driver’s seat. Giving the one in the front a quick look over I saw that she was pinned to her seat by the dashboard.

  “Get the others,” she said the moment she saw me.

  I instantly recognized her voice and an odd thing occurred in that second. There followed a brief pause between us as our gazes fused for a single second that appeared to last an eternity. The instant my eyes became locked with hers, I recalled them from somewhere, and it slowly dawned on me that it was the same girl from the night before. Gazing into her green eyes, I felt the same feeling I did then: shame.

  There was something benevolent and compassionate in them, something that made me feel uneasy in their presence. It was like she could see every dirty sin I’d ever committed, every lie I’d ever told, and she knew it all without so much as a word between us.

  Although I could never have known it then, I somehow sensed that in those eyes lay my entire destiny. Somehow, I knew that this girl meant everything and more.

  “It’s you,” she let out in alarm.

  “It appears so,” I replied blankly.

  “Get the others out of the back,” she hurriedly repeated.

  I did as I was told and made my way to the rear of the car. Luckily the door wasn’t too damaged, so I pulled it open with a couple of tugs and was able to scoop the boys out first, one on each shoulder. As quick as that, I was running back through the corridor of empty cars toward the edge. Although hungover and coming down from a large quantity of drugs, I was still an athletic guy who regularly used the gym and the track at my college, so I easily made good pace with those delicate weights on my shoulders.

  Toward the edge I came across Holman, who wore an angered expression. I ignored it, though, as well as his chastisement, and simply continued toward the clearing some three hundred meters further on from the crash. When I reached it, I laid the boys down and someone came running over and began checking them over. By the way the guy went to work, I guessed he was a doctor. The two boys caused quite a stir and more people came over as the guy informed us all that though they were both unconscious they should be safe. But I had no time to feel relief at this information and instead turned to Holman, the old man still reproaching me, and said in a mechanical way, “There’s more people in there and I can’t see the emergency services. We gotta help them.”

  “No, you fucking don’t,” Holman put back.

  But I didn't listen, turning around and heading back to the crash. The big man came after me and grabbed ahold of my arm, but I don’t think his heart was in it, because when I shrugged him off he easily let go and merely began following me into the hail of flames and fumes.

  “You’re a damn fool, kid,” he shouted as we ran toward the crushed car. “A damn fool.”

  “Then why are you following?” I put back to him.

  “Because I gotta watch after you and if you get killed playing the hero, then it’s better if I go up in flames with you, rather than have to face your father.”

  Despite his words, I knew that Holman was a better man than his job and would help me get these people out. We soon reached them and the girl in the front seat immediately turned to me with her sleepy eyes, blood dripping down her face. She wore a surprised look, as if
she hadn’t expected me to return.

  “You came back,” she exclaimed weakly. “Get Holly from the back.”

  “We need to get this door open and it’ll take two of us,” I replied. “Once we get you out, we’ll get the other woman.”

  “But there’s not enough time for both of us. Get Holly and yourselves out of here.”

  Without answering her, me and Holman went to work on the driver’s door. The top of it was crushed, making it extremely difficult to open. But with great effort we achieved the task, and once it was prized open, we saw that the girl was held tightly in place by the crushed dashboard. Not thinking, I tried to force the dash upward, but the girl screamed and I instantly stopped. Looking into the crushed footwell I saw that her legs were broken, the pinky-whites of her bones sticking up through the flesh of her thighs.

  Behind me, Holman was nervously looking around at the thick smoke closing in around us. Glancing over my shoulder at him, I said, “Her legs are broken, but we gotta get this dash off.” I then turned to the girl and added in a soft tone, “This is gonna hurt a lot.”

  Having said this, I budged over so that Holman could take a grip of the dash alongside me and we heaved. Almost immediately—and don’t ask me how—we managed to bend it up, and Holman held it there while I slid the girl out. The pain in her legs was so bad that by the time I had her over my shoulder she’d fainted.

  While Holman retrieved the other woman, I began making my way toward the clearance. Reaching the place where I’d left the boys, we found that everyone had cleared even further back, so we continued until we made it about another hundred meters further on. I was thankful when we saw the flashing lights of the newly arrived emergency services greeting us as we made it out.

  We carried the injured women to the ambulances and I carefully placed the girl on a stretcher, before being pushed to the side by a paramedic. Examining my surroundings, I couldn’t spot Holman, so I ran off again into the fire and smoke, alone this time, something driving me on, running through me and compelling me to dive into danger for the sake of others.