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А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Э Ю Я


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PROLOGUE

At ten years old, over a breakfast of tepid oatmeal, I read my first newspaper article, a story designed to grab you, a squib on page two, where they put the sensational stuff. My aunt ripped it out and thrust it in my face. A guy on his way home from the movies fought with a mugger, shot him dead, and died of stab wounds.

All for sixty dollars.

So two fools died for sixty bucks, and two fools killed for it. Sad, wasn’t it? My aunt sure thought so. So did I. I knew one of the dead men.

There was a lesson in it for an impressionable ten-year-old, just like there is for you when you read the same story a couple of times a year. Look at that! you say. He’s dead, and for what?

Sixty dollars!

Why, that’s not even enough to buy a decent meal in a restaurant these days. Not enough to pay rent on a cardboard box. Not enough to die for!

That morning, while my aunt preached in the background, I read the story again and felt like someone in a tree house watching ants marching up the trunk. Young as I was, listening with half an ear to her interpretation, I realized the meaning of what had happened better than she did.

Now I understand it even better.

That mugger didn’t take time to question the wisdom of his actions. He was too busy trying to quiet the nerve-wracking din of his body needing things. Like Billie Holiday once said, “You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.”

Sixty was enough for him. Enough to feed him and the family for a couple of days. Enough for a fix. Enough to get somebody else off his back. Enough to make any risk worth it. Enough to strike out at another miserable soul and take his precious life away.

Now that I’m an adult, I see the brief struggle between two ants for a crumb even more clearly. And, like you, I’m everlastingly surprised at the meanness of people’s aspirations. I wouldn’t risk my life for sixty dollars; I’ve been sophisticated by my culture. Plus, I have what I need.

Unfortunately, there’s a vast, arid wasteland between what I need and what I want. And I’ve discovered something else.

I have to have what I want.

Now, you’re thinking you’re above all that. Well, maybe so. But try something for me. Take a moment one dark night. Imagine yourself lying at the center of a mattress stuffed with big bills, how soft that would feel, how secure, how sensual, how gratifying… how pleasurable! How cosmopolitan to lie there on money touched by so many hands, that has fallen from the sky to feather your nest at last. All of a sudden, you’d be the luckiest person alive. No more kissing ass for you! Get your own licked for a change.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it.

And indulge yourself in one more sick and twisted daydream. You can have all the money you ever wanted. You don’t have to steal it. No, the money is yours for the taking if you’ll do this one thing…

You’d grab the chance. Of course you would.

But you wouldn’t sell your soul cheap. You’d demand enough to quiet once and for all the silent roaring of your desires. Your number might not be the same as mine, but there is a number.

Admit it. You’d kill for it.

Just like me.

Better to ride in a limo than walk on a street these days. You never know who you’ll meet out there. Maybe someone like my father, holding a knife tight in his fist, needing your money. Maybe someone like me. Deadly as I have to be.

Life’s hard lessons. You want to be the one who walks away alive… and rich.

Rest in peace, Dad.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | Breach Of Promise | BOOK ONE. PARTIES