The Favor

By Jonathan Dunsky

Jealousy is dangerous.

And so is greed.

Paul and Mickey have been friends since childhood, but life has not treated them equally.

Paul is a rich software developer. Mickey is a broke ex-con. Paul drives a Lexus. Mickey's car is a dented Ford pickup. Paul is married to the delectable Lisa. Mickey is all alone.

Despite everything, Paul is unhappy. He suspects that Lisa has a lover and tells Mickey he'd kill the guy if he ever finds out who he is.

Mickey sees a golden opportunity to get some of Paul's money for himself...and all for just doing one little favor.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Cub Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9789657795361

Book preview

1

If I catch her sleeping with someone else, Mickey, I'll kill the guy. I swear to God I will.

Paul and I are sitting in the Moonshine Saloon, a Western-style bar that opened a year ago but is made to look like it's a century old. Hanging on the walls are wagon wheels, coiled whips and lassos, pictures of galloping horses, and wanted posters of men with drooping mustaches and flat eyes. The atmosphere is ruined by the business-suit-clad men and women from the finance and high-tech industrial park where Paul works. He is on his third beer and showing it; I am on my fourth and not.

You think Lisa is two-timing you? I ask.

It's a feeling I get, you know?

I know. Paul has always been the jealous type, ever since he got his first girlfriend (for five whole weeks) when he was eighteen. I used to rib him about his jealousy, but it only made it worse. Truth is, none of the girls he's ever dated had any reason to cheat on him. If they wanted someone else, they could just dump Paul and go for the other guy. He was never what you might consider a catch. Until recently, that is.

A year ago, at age thirty, Paul's geekiness finally paid off. He sold his start-up to some software behemoth from California. His startup makes some sort of Internet software—don't ask me what the software does, something to do with website security, said the articles I read—and apparently it does it better than anyone else, because the software behemoth gladly handed Paul a check for thirty million dollars just so they could have his software for themselves.

All of a sudden, my friend, whom I have known