Under the Billionaire's Shelter - Jamie Knight Page 0,71

being transferred into my bank account. Faced with a similar day tomorrow and many more besides, I did what I knew I wanted to do underneath all my layers of self-doubt and inhibitions.

The page was easy to find. The producers of course made sure to maximize the search engine optimization. Some people likely ended up with it on their list when looking for something else, like its classic namesake Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or a list of living billionaires.

The very image of more multiple-choice questions should have sent me screaming and running away from the application. Ordinarily it might have. But by focusing my will and remembering the million-dollar prize, I had the entire thing completed in ten minutes flat. I didn’t mention that I had a kid, but they also didn’t ask about that, either.

I told myself it didn’t really matter, because there was no way they were going to pick me, anyway.

Chapter Two - Adam

The view from the health club was beautiful. The white capped mountains were still visible in the pale blue glow of the light pollution against a background of the starry black sky. There were many views like it in Seattle, but that one was mine. At least at that moment.

It was never overcrowded, but a $200,000 per year membership fee ensured that. The private health club had become appointment only ever since COVID-19 had struck. Every member got their own run of the cutting-edge equipment. And an army of staff was deployed with masks, gloves and spray bottles of specially formulated cleaner to wipe everything down for the next user.

I always tried to leave them something. Such as a clip of bills under the treadmill that I must have ‘forgotten.’ Occasionally, I would be surprised by the reappearance of the cash the next time I checked in. The custom made, monogrammed shamrock money clips clearly marked them as mine.

Slowly, I got into the zone. The thump of my feet on the treadmill matched almost exactly the drums beats on my earbuds and the thumping of my heart. Things can really fall into sync when you’re focused enough, especially if you are willing to take the risk of not being ‘normal.’

The greatest accomplishment of my life, in my own tally of things, was that I was never in the strictest sense normal. Even my mother described me as an ‘odd duck’ by the time I was ten. Even the circumstances of my arrival, the only child of a nominally Catholic single mother, fit clearly in the abnormal column. Nurture had very little to do with it, anyway.

Ours was the kind of happy town where people would sit out on the front porch with frosty lemonade on a hot day and converse with passersby. Everybody knew everybody else, and their business, for generations running. Skeletons were displayed out on the yard as opposed to hidden in the closet. No one was safe from an entertainment’s worth of judgement.

Instead of becoming embittered about this fact of life, or oppressed by it, I decided to give them all something worth talking about. Rather than running with the herds of kids seen about the town, playing football or roving on their bikes in search of the perfect flavor of ice cream, I was more of a loner. It was a point of pride rather than shame.

My conspicuous absence at Sunday Mass was the first point of conflict between myself and traditional society. As it would be a scandal to have gentlemen turn up at my mother’s door, a deputation of the parish’s most upstanding lady members came to redress the issue.

“Adam wasn’t at church today,” I had heard Mrs. Walpole say, as though announcing a tragic death.

“That’s true,” my mother answered. “He preferred to stay home and read.”

“And you approve of this?” Mrs. Brown injected.

“It makes little difference to me either way. Though he does seem to know the Bible better than even Father Drone.”

I was known locally as ‘the little heathen’ as long as I remained in the town, a moniker that took some years to top.

I never thought much about my proclivities. They seemed as natural to me as my height or hair color. Most people think that BDSM is about violence or at least pain, and that could well be true for some. There were a lot of fetishes that required significant amounts of pain, which was perfectly fine if that was what both parties wanted.

It was about getting pleasure from hurting someone. It