Redemption (The Bet) by Francette Phal

ring encircling her finger and her grip on the phone tightened.
    "Hello," Dina answered after four rings.
    "Hi Mom!" Ellie greeted a little too cheerfully.
    "Good morning, Honey, how are you? How are the kids?"
    "I'm fine...the kids are fine..." Oh very nice Elli e, way to avoid sounding suspicious. She rolled her eyes and settled back against the headboard.
    " Is everything alright, dear, you don’t sound yourself.”
    "Everything’s great, in fact I think it’s about to get better ." Ellie bit her bottom lip trying not to fidget.
    "Well out with it, Ellie. "
    "Dev came over last night and…and he proposed. Mom, I’m getting married!" She announced then frowned seconds later when she heard something shatter. "Mom, are you okay?"
    "It's just a glass," was Dina’s nonchalant reply . "Married? Devlin proposed?"
    "Yeah, last night he…" Ellie stopped when she caught sight of Sophie and her crestfallen expression.
    "Oh Mom, you can’t marry him! You just can’t!” she took off then, tears in her eyes.
    "Sophie!" but she was gone even before Ellie opened her mouth to scream. "Mom, I'll call you back later." She hurried her moth er off the phone and hurried after Sophie.

Chapter 4
    Mergers and Acquisitions was all his life consisted of these days. He saw the inside of his bombardier jet far more than the interior of his Penthouses. Home was in the air, presidential suites, or the often purchased condos he would use if business provided him to do so. Lovers he had by the dozen and like the adult version of a Pez dispenser they always came when he beckoned. Enemies were perfectly disguised friendships lying in wait for him to slip up and reveal his Achilles heel. So he didn’t do friends and those he considered as much were kept on his payroll to maintain his happiness.
    It was an arduous task pleasing a man who had everything in the world and still demanded more. The problem with wanting more was that eventually one could gorge himself to an early death if not cautious. Nicholas Grayson could use some lessons in exercising caution.
    But then again his life had never been anything if not calamitous, so why start playing it safe now? It wasn ’t as though he had much to lose. It wasn’t as though life would cease to exist if his very existence was snuffed out from the world. People would go on living, never knowing the afflictions that had plagued Nicholas the man or the regrets that were never too far from his conscience.
    The guilt, the agony, the utter weight of his loneliness took a portion of his soul as the days passed, leaving him emptier than the day before. He owned the world but had no one to share it with. He had no one to mourn his departure if he ever passed away. There would no one to whisper endearments in his last moments of life. No one would be by his side except the vultures that would circle the skies in anticipation of his death ready to tear apart the empire he’d worked so hard to amass. They would peck at it and his fortune until there was nothing left but a legacy of bad memories and dried bones.
    Morbid, yes, but Nicholas always took these moments, when the city died down to a droning, tolerable hum to contemplate the train wreck his life had become. Here, seemingly above the world, standing in front of the floor to ceiling windows of his skyscraper, he looked down to the city at his feet. This expanse was only a portion of what Tokyo had to offer, with it gleaming lights, bustling streets full of citizens and tourists from all walks of life. Here, Nicolas allowed himself to become lost in morbidly sentimental memories that were otherwise locked out of his daily routines.
    The hardened man that was Charles’s heir was taken off the clock and locked in the closet until dawn breached the sky and he was let out to wreak havoc once more on the unsuspecting fools who dared to underestimate him. But between the hours of midnight and five forty-five, when insomnia permitted him to do nothing else but