Page 4 of Skins Game

No wonder The Shark had shown up at the stodgiest New Year’s Eve party on the planet. Gabriel Fish had been trolling for suckers, and where better to find willing victims who would get drunk and sign their lives away than a New England, old-money soiree?

Kingston Moore sure as hell wasn’t old money, though, far from it. His parents hadn’t been posh enough to be serving staff at a place like the Narragansett Country Club. Like always, he was just a hardscrabble guest of his high society friends the night before.

Jericho asked, “What the hell was the bet?”

Kingston cocked his head, listening.

Match flipped the papers in his hands and read from the document. “It says, ‘The five wagerers will each purchase a golf venture and strive to increase its value. The golf venture with the highest net percent increase of value will win the bet, and the four losers will pay the one winner one hundred million dollarseach.’”

Golf?The bet wasgolf?

Kingston knew the world of fuckin’ golf like his own neighborhood. If the bet was golf, he would damn welldecimateThe Shark.

The world brightened.

But his eyeballs still hurt.

Yeah, maybe Kingston was a little sunny-side-up when it came to his own abilities, but someone had to be. “This is a cinch. Onlyoneof us has to beat him. We can write a side contract amongst ourselves to work together. I mean,jeez,guys.We own and run a successful venture capital firm.This is what wedo.We can outplay The Shark if we work together.”

“Nope,” Match ground out through his clenched teeth as he continued to read. “The contract states that ‘No wagerers may work together, nor give aid, comfort, advice, or information to the other wagerers upon pain of forfeit.’”

Random spikes shot through Kingston’s temples again. They had well and truly fucked themselves, and they had only themselves to blame.

Themselves and the empty liquor bottles littering the coffee table, which had also been a choice.

“So, we can’t work together,” Morrissey said as he scanned the paper sheaf, “and we can’t help each other. We can’t even tell each other how we’re doing.”

Match continued reading to them, “‘The wager will end one year from this date on New Year’s Eve when the four wagerers will meet back here at the Narragansett Club with financial evaluations of the golf ventures.’ And then he specifies financial firms and accounting standards because The Shark wouldn’t leave that to chance.”

Bile soured the back of Kingston’s tongue again.

Dammit, he’d worked hisassoff, and he’dhadthe cash when the three other guys had asked him to invest and work with them.

Idiot.He was a stupid, drunken idiot, getting wasted around Gabriel Fish or, really, any of those Founding Family snakes who thought Kingston was just another poor they could fleece.

Because he was.

“And we’ve only gotone yearto do this,” Jericho repeated. “Most of our developments don’t start paying out for at least two. We’re not a pump-and-dump firm. Did he put something in the tequila? Is that why we were all so stupid as to sign this?”

Yeah, maybe they’d been roofied.Figured.

If only there were some way to replay last night.

Kingston always had his phone in his hand, taking pictures and notes, documenting.

He tugged his phone from his hip pocket and swiped through his photos, finding way too damn much from the night before.

Even without the sound, the tiny images of all four of them gathered around the coffee table, each bending to scribble on white paper, were damning. “Oh, no. I have a video.”

The others lurched over, obviously just as destroyed as he was, and they crowded around Kingston’s phone to watch.

Each moment of the video was worse than the last, all of them laughing, the people around them laughing and toasting, and each one signing their damned lives away with each stroke of their pen on five separate copies of the contract.

Above them, the windows were white with blowing snow, and a fire blazed in the enormous hearth that could burn old-growth tree trunks as logs.

Jericho said, “At least itlookslike we held our liquor pretty well.”

Morrissey nodded. “One of the benefits of going to boarding school for thirteen years is an iron liver and an impressive ability to hide how drunk you are, especially during class.”