Free The Alpha Choice by M.D. Hall Page B

in which George and his wife lived was, to say the least, deprived. It and several others just like it were served by a massively under resourced, and overworked hospital that had last seen better days thirty years ago. Jeannine would be patched up and sent home, and what little money they had left would be swallowed up, if George sought the help his wife needed.  
    ‘You shouldn’t be here George, go and sit with your wife.’
    As soon as he said it, Hugo knew how implausible his suggestion was. The valet was a man on minimum wage, in an era of high unemployment, if he went to be with his wife he would lose the money he needed to pay for her care, not that he could afford it anyway. George smiled sadly, and nodded his head in response.
    The lawyer turned and, this time, got into the elevator that would take him directly to the first floor of his law firm, which subsumed the top three floors of a prestigious city centre office block in Boston’s financial district. A walk through the foyer, jostling with hordes for a place in one of the communal elevators was not for him. The thickly carpeted cube, hurtled silently skyward and, like everything in his life, whispered quality and taste.
    His route to senior partner in charge of corporate law with, unusually in this day of specialism, a healthy following in patent law, was typical. A hyper successful commercial lawyer who had sacrificed everything, including his marriage, to become indispensable enough to merit junior partnership in the hugely influential firm of Mariner, Scott by the precocious age of twenty-seven.  
    Following his divorce from Kathy, an equally ambitious neurosurgeon, there followed a string of meaningless, but satisfying dalliances, he could never call them relationships. Everything else he indulged in, golf, tennis, opera and art were all meant to project him further up the greasy pole towards professional Nirvana, but he soon discovered that networking was unnecessary. It was certain unique abilities that set him apart, and two years later, full partnership was being thrust upon him, the youngest in the one hundred and two year history of the firm.  
    The more successful he became in the law, the less it appealed to him. It had all become, at the age of thirty-five, just too easy. He had often thought of a change, but succumbed to the temptation of wealth and comfort, afforded by success.
    Despite the more lurid imaginings of his contemporaries, he was not a fixer. He obtained his exceptional results, usually without recourse to litigation, because of an uncanny skill in persuading opponents, that it would be more costly to litigate than settle. Those who failed to heed the warning, invariably lost their case, and shortly afterwards their clients, to Hugo Black.
    In a few short years he had become the major rainmaker within the firm. His department acted, in a consultancy capacity, to several very large and powerful corporations. While no single person could hope to wade through the mountains of paperwork and motions that corporate litigation invariably attracted, his skill was such that from a detailed summary, he could rapidly spot strengths and weaknesses in a case and by asking the right questions of his team, who had access to the voluminous data, develop a winning strategy.  
    Even the markets responded favourably when it became known that Hugo was involved in a case.
    The consequential spillover generated by his department, had a monumental effect on the fortunes of the firm. In a little over six years, fee income increased nine fold. They now had offices in every major city in the United States, with overseas branches in each of the major European cities, as well as Russia and China.  
    Understandably, his partners were ambivalent about their situation. They were richer and more powerful than they could have imagined in the AB days, Ante-Black, but they knew if, or when he left, all their power, wealth and influence would evaporate in the