The Storm: Australian Crime Mystery (A Nick Vada Thriller Book 3) by Jason Summers

Author:Jason Summers [Summers, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Paul Allard held the barbell over his head, mentally preparing himself for his last two reps. He pushed them out quickly and rested the bar back on the weight rack. Sitting up on the bench, his personal trainer, Flynn, praised him on a job well done.

He was stronger and fitter than he had ever been before in his life and looked at himself in the big glass mirrors he had installed in his gym the month before. His arms were big. Bigger than they’d ever been and tanned a dark brown thanks to his morning runs on the beach. He looked up at the television screen and watched the horse racing from Dubai and told Flynn his next set will have to wait, one of the horses he owned was about to run.

He was conflicted. Phoebe’s death had affected him harder than he ever thought it would have. It had been a messy divorce, which he knew was always going to be the case due to the fact that Phoebe was the most stubborn person on the planet. He was the people pleaser. Happy to oblige anyone’s request. Maybe that’s why Phoebe's father, James, had taken such a liking to him with his eagerness to please. He was a nobody before he met Phoebe on that fateful day in a Sydney pub twenty years earlier. A young bartender struggling his way through business school and getting nowhere. She had launched him to the stratosphere, and after years of middling jobs given to him more out of pity than need, James had finally stepped him up into a meaningful role as Australian operations manager of the family business, just before his divorce.

As he thought more about the breakup with Phoebe, he realised his mind had been on a complete 100 percent focus on the business, and how it could continue to be the market leader during difficult days ahead. His marriage had become second fiddle, and he even found himself wondering whether he was a good father, as his daughter Charlotte was giving him less and less time of day back then.

When it had finally come to a head, it was messy. And after months spent in court viciously fighting over custody, he was shocked when it was Charlotte who made the decision for them by telling Phoebe that she wanted to stay with him. He had felt terrible about it all back then, but also during that time, he really needed to know where he was going to fit into the family business when the dust settled. He had to be ruthless, he knew, because no one in this world was going to help him. He needed to be a little selfish.

That ruthlessness seemed to help to his advantage in the eyes of his father-in-law, and soon once the divorce was finalised, he found himself in the inner sanctum of the Allardcorp business, privy to information beyond its wildest dreams. And a key member of James’ inner circle.

When talks

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