Overview: Do you believe in karma?
Chad Miller, owner and CEO of the sportswear brand DOSTME International, did not.
Until the day it came for him.
He was brash, egotistical, and very wealthy.
His company share price and material possessions were the measure of his success.
That all changed the moment he opened his eyes to find he had become a poor teenager living in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Samsarana Wellness Resort is one of Bali’s oldest retreats, found nestled in the lush rainforest of picturesque Ubud.
Some guests—those who take life and luck for granted—soon learn a hard truth in ways they had never contemplated.
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| The Karma Retreat by Grant Finnegan Book |
The Karma Retreat by Grant Finnegan Book Read Online Chapter One
Chad
Boston, Massachusetts, USA. February 2025.
‘You know how much I’ve been looking forward to this, right?’
Standing at the bathroom sink, Chad Miller glanced at his wife of fifteen years, who was waiting for a response.
‘Yes, you’ve been telling me every day for the last two weeks.’
‘But you don’t want to go, do you?’
She stood in the doorway with stony eyes.
It was 11.05 pm and the CEO of DOSTME Sportswear International had just arrived home. Conversation after a seventeen-hour workday never came easy; it was rare for him to come home before 9.00 pm these days. He turned to the mirror and took a long, deep breath. His blue eyes were lifeless, the lines below more pronounced by the day. A head of thick blonde hair was doing that middle-aged thing, receding into the netherworld, much to his chagrin. A strong square jaw, almost robot-like and thin lips below a nondescript pointy nose. Back in university, he had been the strapping, good-looking athletic type, but it had all slipped away due to neglect by the time he hit forty. His once lean and muscular body was no longer a priority to Chad. The company share price had taken its place.
It began about fifteen years ago, when his fortune broke through the $500-million mark. It was at this point that he started to believe the misguided notion that the money and status that he now had would make up for the lack of sex appeal. But what was he thinking? His wife was very attractive and far too intelligent to fall for that.
He shifted his eyes to his wife in the reflection, but Crystal’s eyes had glossed over. He knew she was miles away, and Chad begun to wonder how much longer she would have a hyphen and the word Miller stapled to the end of her name. He returned his gaze to his ageing face. Had the last fifteen years of her life really been a complete waste of time? And yet, deep down, he knew that money wouldn’t be enough to make her stay. Even with a long-winded prenup, she would walk away with more than enough money to live happily ever-after on her own. And anyway, no amount of money could give her back the last decade and a half of her life.
He pictured her with a microphone in her hand. She had recently retired from her job as a CNN sports reporter, and Chad reminisced about how stunning she was on camera. A long mane of blonde hair pulled into a shoulder-length ponytail bobbed from side to side, revealing a small set of almost elfish ears. Chad sighed.
About a month before, he’d come across one of her women’s magazines that Crystal had left open and had given the article a cursory glance. Something about a cheater’s guide to avoid being caught, from a woman’s perspective. Apparently if you were a man planning to have an affair, it said, then you should make sure your lover uses the same perfume as your wife’s favourite. He’d blanched when he read it. He’d made that mistake more than once. He’d wondered at the time if she knew, but then shook his head. Of course, she knew. It’s why she’d left the page open to begin with. Real subtle.
Chad watched as Crystal’s lips twisted into a smirk and for a moment, he believed that she was smiling at him. He smiled back, but his thoughts drifted to the amazing sex he’d had less than ninety minutes ago with a 23-year-old hooker. Okay, so her perfume was a bit overpowering, but wow, what she did with her legs was beyond impossible. He blinked, and his mind returned to the bathroom and recalled what he had agreed to do with Crystal and sighed again. Despite everything, he needed this vacation, even if it involved all this new age mumbo-jumbo she was into these days. Personally, he thought meditation was for idiots, nonetheless a tropical holiday did mean he would escape the dreary grey skies of Boston for a short time. And seeing her hips move beneath her silk dressing gown, had made him remember how magnificent she was, wearing next to nothing.
‘You got me,’ he said. ‘I would happily spend twenty-four hours in a plane, darling, if only to see you in a bikini.’
Angela
Bray, Berkshire, United Kingdom.
‘I met him once,’ Angela said, sipping on her white wine. ‘Heston.’
Suddenly, her face contorted with disgust.
‘This wine—,’ she met eyes with the man sitting across the table from her, ‘is lukewarm. For heaven’s sake, you’d think for the price of a set of diamond earrings at Harrods, they could serve it at the correct temperature. Waiter!’
Her son had already threatened that if she mentioned one more time that she’d met one of UK’s most revered chefs, Heston Blumenthal, that it would be the last time he ever brought her to the Fat Duck. But, since it was her birthday, it meant he had to swallow his annoyance at her perpetual, pompous behaviour, and she knew it. As she set the glass down and began waving her arms as though she were drowning, he caught sight of a woman at the main counter, who smiled at Jack, and Angela sensed his mood improve in a heartbeat. His girlfriend of five years had been the maître d’ at this restaurant for close to nine months now. She shook her head from side to side and smiled at him, before the woman locked eyes with her.
Angela Jones was one of England’s most well-known oncologists. Her reputation in the field was legendary. So were two other things, the latter known to only but a few: the size of her ego and her unbridled, explosive temper. Thankfully, a waiter appeared, apologising, and swiftly swapped out her glass of wine for a new one. Angela sipped on the new glass of wine and sighed deeply. Crisis averted. Fifty-seven years of age. She sighed.
A solid woman, standing tall at about five foot eight, she had the sort of build more aligned to a rugby player. Angela’s hair was dark brown and always worn in a tight bun. She couldn’t recall ever wearing it any other way. A skincare regime had never been on her radar, and although she had been quite pretty in her youth, the process of ageing had not been kind to her. That morning, as she looked into the mirror, she saw thin, almost invisible lips and small grey eyes. But, she knew her stuff and had new patients lining up to be seen by her, so surely that was worth a few cosmetic sacrifices.
Jack, on the other hand, looked nothing like his mother, rather, he was the spitting image of his father. Six feet one, with a decent build, dark brown hair and big gentle brown eyes. The guy was a good-looking English lad.
Angela knew Jack had been making eye contact with Sophie from across the room. A smile crept across her face and Jack looked at her with curiosity, as if his girlfriend had spiked her wine with some sort of untraceable liquid amphetamine.
Sophie made an unannounced visit to the table after seeing the look of desperation on Jack’s face that he thought he had hidden from his mother.
‘Everything alright here?’ she smiled, standing closer to Jack than Angela.
‘The first wine was room-temperature-warm, but now it’s been rectified, my dear,’ Angela spoke in a condescending tone.
Sophie smiled.
‘How many hours until we get on the plane?’ she whispered to Jack with a tight jaw.
Angela pretended that she hadn’t heard her.
‘Darling,’ Angela handed the glass to Sophie with a nod, indicating that she’d like another.
Before Sophie could even register the look of disdain that Angela knew she reserved just for her, Angela cleared her throat.
‘I know I’ve not spent any time with you lately,’ she said to Jack. ‘So, I’ve made a decision which will change that.’
Sophie’s face dropped.
‘What would that be, mother?’ Jack said, his words tainted with fear.
Angela grinned at them both this time.
‘I’m going to come on the tropical holiday with you. We can finally spend some quality time together!’
Sophie made eye contact with Jack, in a look that Angela knew could only mean, kill me now. She wondered if Jack was thinking the same thing.
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