Winter Street Read Online Free PDF

probably picking out his cuff links right this second. In a little while, the Bristol Lounge will hold 150 Everlast employees, who will all be talking about one thing and one thing only.
    Patrick Quinn, fingered by Compliance.
    Patrick goes to the freezer and pulls out a frosted bottle of Triple 8 vodka; then he walks down the hallway, to the master suite. He has a prescription bottle containing thirteen Vicodin, left over from when he tweaked his back playing tackle football in the front yard of the Theta Chi houseat his fifteen-year Colgate reunion, which was where the conversation with Bucky Larimer got going in the first place.
    He goes back out into the living room and turns off all the lights except for those on the tree. The tree is beyond beautiful; it’s artwork. Jen likes glass balls set all the way back, nearly to the trunk of the tree, and then a second ornament placed midway on the bough, and then the best ornaments—the Christopher Radkos, and Jen’s favorites, a fancy fur-clad shopper and a dapper doorman by Soffieria De Carlini—on the ends of the branches, where everyone can appreciate them. In this way, the tree looks full and rich; the glass balls catch the light and the tree seems to glow from within.
    Jennifer has serious talent as an interior designer. Their impeccably restored five-story townhouse on Beacon Street, with a roof garden from which they can view the Esplanade and the fireworks every Fourth of July, was just featured on the Beacon Hill Holiday House Tour, and won first place. Jennifer and her assistant, Penelope, garnered three new commissions—one of them a soup-to-nuts job on Mount Vernon Street, and one a renovation of a seven-thousand-square-foot house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Julia Childs’s old neighborhood. Jennifer was swooning with her success, and Patrick, trying to be supportive of her burgeoning career, popped a bottle of Billecart-Salmon, then called the sitter and took her to dinner at Clio.
    That, a mere ten days ago.
    Today, the third-shortest day of the year, it is fully dark at four o’clock.
    One shot of vodka, two Vikes. Patrick is still in his suit, but he takes his shoes off and reclines on the sofa.
    He has left himself exposed. He is such an IDIOT!
    He can’t stand to think about it, but he can’t think about anything else. If the stuff about MDP comes to light, he will be written about in the
Globe
and possibly the
Wall Street Journal
. Jennifer will lose her clients, and the boys will have to go to public school. Patrick will never get hired anywhere else in Boston. He isn’t the kind of person who has a “second act” in him; he is the kind of person who sets a path and then follows it. Except he deviated from the path, and now he will pay. They will have to sell the house and move… where? To Kansas City, where Patrick will manage the branch of a local bank? Would a local bank in Kansas even be able to hire him? The inside information and the subsequent investing might qualify as a felony. Possibly. He should get a lawyer, but that’s an admission of defeat, right?
    Patrick doesn’t know who he’s kidding. Public humiliation isn’t the worst thing. Going to jail is the worst thing.
    His mother’s name will be dragged through the mud. He hasn’t considered this until now. Oh God. Margaret Quinn’s son: cheat, liar, crooked good-for-nothing scoundrel. Playboy models, insider trading, placing bets on a drug for sick children.
    Another shot of vodka.
    His phone lights up with a text message, and then immediately a second and third text message.
It’s Jen,
he thinks. She got to Logan but couldn’t bring herself to board the plane. They’ve been together fourteen years and have never spent a Christmas apart. If she comes back, he might survive.
    But the text messages aren’t from Jen. There’s one from his father, one from his sister, and one from his brother Kevin.
    Dad:
Mitzi left.
    Ava:
At Bar with Kev. Mitzi left Daddy. We need you to