The Cost of Living — David Dorsey

Richard Cahill is working more insane hours than ever - and getting less and less in return. His e-mail grows in geometric proportion to the amount of time he spends answering it. He's days away from the big client presentation for the account that will get him a promotion and buy his dream house - talisman of the upper-middle-class life he and his wife have slaved for. The stress is ripping holes in the fabric of his family.
Then everything changes. Rich and his son stumble into a holdup at McDonald's and into the unflinching peripheral vision of a black drug lord, one Eugene Price. Price sees Cahill as an easy pawn in his last big deal - his springboard to a new legitimate life. And its clear that, to Price, using Cahill is just the cost of doing business.
Through Price, Rich also meets a powerful temptation - whose name is Paulette. Paulette is a veritable force of nature who knows full well the effect she has on Rich even as she's drawn to him in ways she can't quite control. Together, Price and Paulette provide Rich with a ruthless initiation into just how the world uses well-intentioned people like him. Yet though the world may in fact be just as harsh as Rich always feared, he's about to learn that the real cost of being tough enough to get what you want is that, sometimes, you get it.