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

  JOSH

  To explain the events leading up to my uncharacteristic heroics we need to go back exactly twenty-four hours before the crash. Back then, I was still in bed sleeping off the remnants of the night before, and, like so many nights, I’d dreamt of Heather and my mother, their faces haunting me in the shadows of nightmarish realms.

  “Do you love me?” Heather’s voice whispered from the darkness. “If you did you’d—”

  I awoke suddenly.

  Opening my groggy eyes, I immediately saw the breathing, naked back of a girl, the golden threads of her blonde hair fanned out across her lily-white skin, the vertebrae of her spine showing and her rippled ribcage going in and out. Watching the skinny chick sleep, the movement of her pulsating ribs began to make me nauseous, so I closed my eyes.

  Once my stomach was back in order, I reopened my lids and carefully got up out of bed, removing myself as delicately as I could from the sleeping girl. Prizing my arm from underneath her, she stirred a little and my heart stopped for a second. But as I watched her with genuine terror, she merely moaned a little and went back to her snooze, allowing me to remove the rest of my limb without further alarm. Performing this act of extraction, I took a good look at her sleeping face and tried to recognize her. No matter how hard I pressed my brain, nothing but aching stirred in my delicate head and I only got a vague impression that we’d spent the night having sex.

  Once free of the girl, I got dressed in absolute silence, my hawkish eyes watching her for movement the whole time, and soon I was out of there, the dusty corridor of her apartment block smelling of sweet freedom, even if my stomach and head didn’t agree. When I began dismounting the stairs, the elevator broken, images and memories of the previous night came flooding to my mind, the flashbulb scenes hitting my swollen brain like lightning strikes going off in my head.

  I saw one bar followed by another. I saw neon beer signs and smelled the stench of booze and vomit. I saw toilet seats covered in neat little lines of white powder. I saw dancing women wearing barely a stitch on their bodies. I saw their big old asses in my crotch as we swung about the club to some bassy track. I tasted their cigarette tongues inside my mouth. I saw men talking shit, continual shit pouring from them like burst sewage pipes. And then I saw it pour from myself and an inner cringe erupted down my back.

  Reaching the parking lot, I was glad to see my car there. It was haphazardly parked at an odd angle across several bays and there was a huge dent in the fender that I didn’t recognize. But its sight still pleased me.

  “Must’ve driven here,” I remarked to myself with a shrug, happy that that meant I could also drive home.

  Seated in the car, I gave a quick look about the lot, and, seeing there were no eyes around, I took out my little powder pot—an old silver saltshaker that I’d stolen off my grandma years ago—and poured a little coke onto the edge of my hand. I then sniffed it up real quick, having another look around when I’d finished, wiping my nose and glancing up in the mirror to see if any flecks of white were hugging the nostrils.

  Having cleaned myself up, I drove out of there, roaring the engine of my Ferrari Testarossa as I wheel-span it away from the apartment block, and—more importantly—away from another senseless fuck.

  Ambling the Ferrari through the mid-afternoon traffic, I switched my phone on and called my bro Terry.

  “Hey, Terry!” I cried out the moment he answered.

  “Hey, bro. You only just woken up or something?”

  “Yes, I have, buddy.”

  “You go home with that brunette chick last night?”

  I had to think. I was sure that the girl in the bed had had blonde hair. Yes, it was definitely blonde.

  “No, she was blonde,” I informed him.

  “Ah! You walked outta the club with a brunette and ended up in bed with a blonde! You’re a true fucking player!”

  “Oh, yes I am, Terry.”

  Another cringe tingled inside of me, which I pushed back, the thought of my mother’s eyes flooding me.

  “We still on for tonight?” he snapped in.

  “Of course we are. You think I’m gonna let those fucking white-trash-mafia-wannabes walk away with our money after the shit they pulled last month?”

  “I know you’re game, motherfucker. But can you get Charlie all the way onside and not have him blow this?”

  “Terry! Terry! Terry. Charlie Hodge does anything I tell him to. I told you: he’s my dog. I got the kid on a leash. I got it held in my hand right now. I’m telling you, it’s right in my hand now as I steer my car through the streets, one end in my hand and the other around Charlie’s skinny fucking neck!”

  “You’re a dark motherfucker, Josh.”

  “I’m only the truth, bro. I’m only the truth.”

  “Well, I hate to mess with your truth, but Kane went round to Charlie’s room today and your dog says he’s having second thoughts. So if I were you I’d go see the mutt and pull hard on that leash.”

  I felt an instant surge of anger trickle up my spine like a thousand tiny spiders all biting into it at once.

  “What do you mean?” I snapped.

  “Like I say: Kane went round Charlie’s earlier to make sure he hadn’t skipped town—to make sure he was still on—and he was real nervous. Kane reckons there’d be no point taking him along with you, he’s so nervous he’ll give it away.”

  “No! He’ll do it,” I announced loudly to Terry, bringing my fist down angrily onto the dashboard. “He just needs to be persuaded that he’s a man is all.”

  “But he ain’t,” my friend quickly put back to me.

  “Being a man is naught but a state of mind, Terry,” I remarked. “Bravery is nothing more than perception. I just gotta adjust Charlie’s perception for one night. What did Kane say to him?”

  “He treated him like you said; wasn’t mean or nothing. Just said that you’d be real upset and left it at that. Apparently Charlie’s roommate told Kane that all night Charlie’s been pacing the room unable to sleep. He’s real anxious.”

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture: he’s shitting his pants. I’ll head back to my place and freshen up and then I’ll go hit up the dog and put some fire in the gutless bastard’s belly.”

  “That’d be good, dude. Give me a call when you’re finished.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  “Peace out.”

  “Peace out.”

  I put the phone down and sighed. My master plan—well, my latest anyway—was only hours away from fruition and that little prick Charlie Hodge was about to ruin it.

  Charlie was nineteen and a fellow student at my college. I never took any classes with him and only knew him through coincidence. He was at a party one time on campus and I happened to come by him. He was sitting all on his own in some dark corner of the garden and I almost tripped over him when I went there to take a leak. Because I was wasted and he was sitting there all by himself, I stopped by him to have a smoke and a talk—you know, be social. I got talking to him over trivial shit, but he took a real shine to me and ever since he’s followed me around like a lost lamb in need of a wolf.

  Anyway, he was just a novelty until last month when me and Terry lost forty grand playing poker with some real mean bastards. After that Charlie became more than a mere novelty; he became our revenge.

  You see, Charlie Hodge, as well as being a super nerd, was a mathematics savant with a photographic memory. We got him playing poker one night and realized that he could count cards. Some fucking novelty, aye?

  So that brings me to the next part. For the past four months, me, Kane and Terry had been visiting a real heavy underground card game we learned about from some card players we knew. They’d always howl on about this real high-stakes game involving some of the dirtiest sons of the city. I guess they told us rich college kids in order to scare us, some old bastard ghost story. But it made me wet! And I just had to find it.

  Six months ago, we did.

  It was twenty thou
sand dollars stake money and only happened once a month. We went there and showed them the color of our money, so they invited us in—easy pickings is what I guess they thought. The players were these really crass guys that tried hard to scare us the whole time, giving us the eye and growling when they talked. They gave Terry and Kane the shits, but I found being in their presence exhilarating. Since then, we’ve been going every month.

  Anyway, last month they must’ve got bored with us, because they cleaned us out. I didn’t give a shit about the money, it wouldn’t be missed. What really got to me was that toward the end of the game I realized that those sons of bitches were working us. They were in it together and playing me and Terry like fools.

  At the time, I just took it all on the chin and grinned at their fat scowling mugs as they counted my money. But afterward I swore to Terry that next month we would return. Only this time we would clean those fuckers out.

  And that, you see, was where young Charlie Hodge comes into things. Because, like my billionaire father always says, if at first you don’t succeed: cheat!

  SARAH

  When I was only ten, I held my mother’s hand as she died. I thought I was old for my years at that young stage of my life, but I was harshly wrong. And while she lay in that hospital bed, the life drifting out of her, I watched my mother’s beautiful green eyes go dull, their lustrous light fade, her expression soften, and I knew her soul was rushing upward toward heaven.

  That experience made me feel every bit the little girl that I was. It was the great catastrophe and subsequent rebirth of my family, and if you were to ask me to place my finger upon the moment I was truly born, it would be then. Everything changed afterward. My mother may have passed but she left a legacy in the hearts of myself, my two younger sisters Kay and Lucy, and in my father, Roy Dillinger. As a matter of fact, it was so strong in him that he turned his back on his whole life and changed it for the better.

  My name is Sarah Dillinger, and I am twenty-five years old now. I stand at only five feet and four inches tall, but I can be as fierce as a seven-foot giant when I need to be. I have red hair, which comes from my Irish roots, my mother’s maiden name being Quinn, and green eyes like my mother’s that shine like emeralds. Or so my father tells me. I have an awareness that I’m naturally attractive. However, I prefer not to fall into the traps of vanity. Regarding my employment, I work at my father’s law firm as a lawyer, representing the very poorest in need of help. We deal with everything from families being evicted by treacherous landlords—or even more treacherous banks—to defending employees against illegal employment practices. Basically, we stand up for the little guy.

  The day before the crash, I was sitting in my office on the telephone with the single mother of a family of four children who lived in a terribly dilapidated project building in the heart of the city.

  “I’m telling you,” the mother, Theresa, was saying down the phone, “Troy’s gettin’ worse all the time. He’s coughing like an old man with tobacco for lungs.”

  Troy was her youngest son. He was five years old and suffered from chronic asthma and bronchitis as a result of the terrible conditions the family lived in. The walls of their apartment glistened like the slimy skin of a demon, great shadowy patches of black mold camping in the corners of the rooms, spreading and growing. The damp and the spores were slowly suffocating them, and we were fighting the family’s court case tooth and nail, claw and fang.

  “Today he can hardly breathe,” she went on, an air of desperation in her voice.

  “What about the walls, Theresa?”

  “They’re worse than ever. Every time Mr. Watts upstairs takes a shower, we get a leak come through and it’s like it’s raining inside.”

  “Have you recorded it like we said?”

  “I was away at work when it happened. It was Lacey, my babysitter, what told me and she never took no video.”

  “Okay, that’s understandable. You gotta work, you can’t be there all the time. I tell you what I’ll come round in a half hour with the doctor again to make a report.”

  “But the last one never worked,” she said despondently. “They beat it away in court.”

  “Because they said it was weak, because it was only a month’s worth of hospital and doctor’s reports and that it didn’t prove a sustained worsening of Troy’s condition while living at the apartment. All we need is more evidence, more reports to show that he’s getting worse as a result of the building.”

  “But I ain’t sure he’ll hold on much longer. He’s so bad, Sarah. You gotta come see him, it’s like the place is strangling him or something.”

  I felt a heavy pang in my heart at the thought of this poor family.

  “Okay, give me half an hour,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “But what’re you gonna do?”

  “I’ll be there, okay. Just wait for me.”

  I guess she was reassured by the resolute firmness of my voice, because she calmed down. We said goodbye for the moment and I got up from the desk, leaving my office. Outside, I entered the collection of cubicles that make up the main part of our office space. It’s where the rest of the team work, all eight of them. The only other rooms are the small kitchen at the side, the bathroom next to it, my father’s office and my office, which I often share with other people. The whole place is constantly busy, the phones always ringing, people always dodging around each other, an almost constant stream of people turning up at our doors with their tales of injustice. I have to admit that it’s chaos. But isn’t that the world? Fighting for order within chaos?

  I called across to our reception runner:

  “Casey, get Doc Taylor and ask him to meet me at the Miller Building.”

  Casey nodded in my general direction to tell me that she understood. Then I walked over to Karl Leonard’s desk, where I found him busy on the phone. He flashed me the glimmer of a cordial smile the moment I neared his desk and I flashed one back.

  Placing his hand over the receiver of the phone, he said, “I’ll be done in a second or two, Sarah.”

  “That’s fine.”

  I’ve known Karl for seven years, ever since he first walked through my father’s doors straight out of law school and asked for a job. He was the clever son of a family of poor blue collar workers, who had made it through law school on the back of scholarships, handouts and what little money his poverty-stricken parents could afford to send. When he emerged out the other side, the gifted student was offered the hand of any number of top law practices. But he walked straight past every single one of those hands on his way to my father’s little practice operating out of a converted garage, where only hard work, countless court losses and poor wages awaited. “No glory except that which burns inside,” he said to me once, and I thought that that summed all of us up at Dillinger and Associates.

  Karl was handsome—green eyes, chiseled face, tall and broad shouldered, chestnut hair neatly arranged to the side in a swish—I don’t know what else to say really. I guess I’d say he’s attractive. In fact he is, and, if truth be told, there’s history between us. I would go into it here, but I feel it’s perhaps too soon. That’s not to say we were sleeping together. I’m still…Well…I’m still a virgin. Let’s just say it didn’t work out and that for the past six months we’ve been solely professional.

  In under half a minute Karl was off the phone and looking up at me. No sooner had our eyes met, however, than he quickly averted them and a new fidgetiness took ahold of his movements, his knee bouncing gently up and down. It was always the same these days when our gazes clashed and I felt within me a pang of guilt at having been the cause of his agitation.

  “Okay, what’s happening?” he asked, clearly wanting to ease his tension by getting to the point.

  “I need you to come out with me to the Cody place.”

  “It’s funny you should say that,” he replied with a knowing look, becoming more confident now that talk had turned to business.

  “Why?” I
inquired.

  “Because I just got off the phone with Paul Holcher of Holcher and Sons and he was offering to join up with us on a class action against the landlord, Langley Holdings. You see, Paul’s got five clients in the building and we’re representing six. If we get at least twenty clients between us, we can file a class action suit and have much more of a chance of winning.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed, able to look at me when he did. “We’ve just gotta get another nine clients between us and we’re there.”

  “Well, talking of clients, we need to get out to the Codys’ straight away. Theresa’s youngest, Troy, is very sick and I wanna get Doc Taylor to have a look at him again, document the latest state of the boy’s health and get a library of evidence. Plus I wanna take some more pictures and video of the place.”

  “Good idea, I’ll get my coat and the camera.”

  Karl stood up and, while he got ready, I dashed over to Casey’s reception station. She’d only just gotten off the phone. The instant my shadow cast itself over her, she glanced up and, with a tired look, told me that Doc Taylor would meet us at the Miller building in twenty minutes. I thanked her and, when I turned, I found Karl was already behind me, wearing a slightly dark expression that quickly brightened up when our eyes met.

  “I got the video camera,” he said.

  “Then in that case: let’s go,” I replied. “Taylor will meet us there.”

  “After you,” he said, holding the door open for me.

  I gently smiled and walked out.

  JOSH

  Having showered and dressed at my place, I ran over to the other side of campus where Charlie’s block resided. I strolled through the place like I’d lived there my whole life, all the guys saying hello and the girls smiling mischievously at the sight of Josh Kelly in their block. When I got to Charlie’s room, I knocked hard, the sound echoing through the corridor. I immediately heard the kid shuffling around inside, and it wasn’t long before the weedy little guy was standing—or cowering more precisely—in front of me at his open door.