Black List Read Online Free PDF

imagine he would need his work clothes much longer. Not if Dixon had anything to say about it.
    Aware that he was dripping water on the carpet, he retreated to the bathroom for a towel to dry himself. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.
    With light brown hair now dripping with rain water, grey eyes that betrayed not a hint of colour, regular features that were neither handsome nor ugly, and a physique that was beginning to lose its youthful vigour as years of junk food and lack of exercise took their toll, Alex’s appearance was about as average and unremarkable as they came.
    He had seen only twenty-eight years of life, yet he felt and looked ten years older at that moment. His face was drawn, his eyes ringed by dark circles of fatigue, his jaw coated by a light dusting of stubble. He’d barely slept in the three days since his meeting with Sinclair, his restless mind endlessly turning over their tense conversation, wondering what might have been.
    He’d refused his friend’s offer, of course. As much as he might have wanted to turn back time and reclaim the life that had been taken from him, this wasn’t the way to do it. One spell in prison was more than enough for this lifetime.
    So they’d parted ways without reaching an agreement, each unhappy and disappointed in the other. Sinclair’s parting words, delivered with a hint of pity that had stung Alex deeply, had been to wish him luck with the rest of his life.
    Gratefully leaving the mirror, he returned to the kitchen, opened the fridge and helped himself to a can of beer. He’d lost his appetite for the sodden mess that the pizza had become, but the alcohol would serve him better.
    Flopping down on the couch, he cracked open the beer and took a long pull on it, grimacing as the gassy mixture settled on his empty stomach. With the rain still pattering off the window and the orange glow of street lights permeating the room, he allowed his head to tilt back and let out a long, defeated sight.
    He’d refused Sinclair’s offer, done the rational thing and stepped back from something that could land him in prison for life this time. He’d made the only decision a man in his position could, as he’d told himself countless times already. So why did he feel so shitty about it? Why did he feel like he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life?
    Not for the first time, his friend’s words echoed in his mind.
    If you want to go back to selling TVs and living in some shitty flat, that’s your choice 
–
 I can’t stop you. But think about what you’re giving up. I’m offering you a chance to do what you were born to do, what we both know you want to do. Isn’t that 
worth
 risking everything for?
    Alex took another pull on the beer, wishing he had something stronger in the flat. If ever there was a time to drink himself to sleep, this was it.
    On impulse, he reached down, feeling around underneath the couch until his hand brushed against an old shoe box. Lifting it out, he flipped the lid off and set the box on his lap to inspect the contents.
    Alex could hardly call himself the sentimental type. He’d never been one for hoarding keepsakes or mementos, but even he still kept some photographs from his younger days, unsorted and faded but still usable. Forbidden as he was to own a computer, these old photographs were about the only reminders he still had of a time when his life had been very different.
    Many were childhood pictures showing him unwrapping presents at Christmas or dressed up for Halloween, and later when he was a school kid with bad hair and a worse attitude. But the one he was most interested in at that moment was sitting on top of the pile. He knew this because for the past two nights he’d gone through the same ritual.
    Taken ten years ago, not long after he’d started at university, it showed Alex seated on a worn leather couch in his student flat, bottle of beer in hand, flanked by two other young men