Читать книгу Life of Crime: The gripping, epic new thriller from the No 1 bestseller - Kimberley Chambers - Страница 7

I was thirteen the first time I ever got arrested and can remember it as though it were yesterday. I was driving a stolen Ford Escort MK 2, my feet barely able to touch the pedals, yet I’d still been able to handle that car like a man.

Cigarettes, I’d been caught with. Illegal ones that’d been brought into the country from Belgium via France. Yet no matter how hard the Old Bill interrogated me, I never admitted to where I’d really got those fags from.

‘One of life’s losers, that’s what you are. You’ll never amount to nothing, you stupid little bastard,’ my mother bellowed when the Old Bill brought me home.

‘Only fools break the law. You’re an idiot, boy,’ my schoolteacher hissed in my ear the following Monday morning.

Well, I’ve got news for them. I ain’t no loser, neither am I a fool. A bastard perhaps, thanks to my embarrassment of a mother having no idea who my father is. But I’m a winner, and ever since that day I’ve been determined to prove all the doubters wrong.

I was gifted with charm, good looks, the gift of the gab and intelligence – all the tools a man needs to make it to the very top. And if I need to trample on a few people’s lives and feelings to get there, then so be it.

Well, that’s what I used to think, anyway. But I’ve since learned different.

Sometimes in life – especially when it’s a life of crime you’re involved in – things don’t go to plan.

My name is Jason Rampling and this is my story …