Lover Avenged(40)

All told, and after personnel costs, he had roughly two hundred thousand a night to pay the cost of the drugs and alcohol that he sold, cover heat and electricity and capital improvements, and take care of the cleaning crew of seven that came in at five a.m.

Every year he cleared about fifty million from his businesses-which sounded obscene, and it was, especially considering he paid taxes on only a fraction of it. The thing was, drugs and sex were risky businesses, but the profit potential was enormous. And he needed money. Badly. Keeping his mother in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed and well deserving of was a multimillion-dollar proposition. Then he had his own homes, and every year he traded his Bentley in as soon as the new models were available.

By far, however, the single highest personal expense he had came in small black velvet bags.

Rehv reached out over his spreadsheets and picked up the one that had been couriered up from the Big Apple’s diamond district. The deliveries arrived on Mondays now-used to be the last Friday of the month, but with the Iron Mask opening up, ZeroSum’s closed day had switched to Sundays.

He pulled the satin cord loose and opened the bag’s throat, dumping out a glittering palmful of rubies. Quarter of a million dollars in blood stones. He poured them back into the pouch, tied the cording in a tight knot, and looked at his watch. About sixteen hours before he had to go up north.

First Tuesday of the month was ransom time, and he paid the princess off in two ways. One was gemstones. The other was his body.

He made it cost her, though.

The thought of where he was going and what he was going to have to do made the back of his neck tingle, and he wasn’t surprised when his vision began to change, dark pinks and bloodreds replacing the blacks and whites of his office, his visual field bulldozing out into a flat plane.

Popping open a drawer, he took out one of his lovely new boxes of dopamine and grabbed the syringe he’d used the last couple of times he’d shot up in the office. Rolling up the sleeve of his left arm, he tourniqueted the middle of his biceps out of habit, not necessity. His veins were so swollen it was as if moles had burrowed under his skin, and he felt a stab of satisfaction at the mess they were in.

There was no cap on the needle’s head to take off, and he filled the syringe’s belly with the practice of a habitual user. It took him a while to find a vein that was viable, pushing the tiny steel shaft into himself again and again without feeling a thing. He knew he finally hit the right spot when he drew back on the plunger and saw blood mix with the clear solution of the drug.

As he freed the tourni and started to push his thumb home, he stared at the rot in his arm and thought of Ehlena. Even though she didn’t trust him and didn’t want to be attracted to him and would clearly move heaven and earth not to go out with him, she still wanted to be a savior. She still wanted what was best for him and his health.

That was what you called a female of worth.

He was halfway through the injection when his cell phone went off. A quick glance at the screen showed that the number wasn’t one he recognized, so he let the call go. The only people who had his digits were ones he wanted to talk with, and that was a damn short list: his sister, his mother, Xhex, Trez, and iAm. And the Brother Zsadist, his sister’s hellren.

That was it.

As he pulled the needle out of his vascular cesspool, he cursed as a beep indicated that voice mail had been left. He got those every once in a while, people leaving bits and pieces of their lives in his little corner of technospace, thinking it was someone else’s. He never called them back, never texted them with a, This is not who you think it is. They’d figure it out when whoever they thought they were calling didn’t return the favor.

Closing his eyes and easing back in his chair, he tossed the syringe onto the spreadsheets and couldn’t care less if the drug worked.

Sitting alone in his den of iniquity, in the quiet hour after everyone had left and before the cleaning staff came in, he just didn’t give a shit whether the flat plane of his vision returned to three dimensions. Didn’t care if the full-color spectrum reappeared. Didn’t wonder with each passing second whether or not he was going to get back to “normal.”

This was a change, he realized. Up until now he’d always been desperate for the drug to work.

What had turned the tide?

He let the question hang as he picked up his cell phone and palmed his cane. With a groan, he stood up carefully and walked into his private bedroom. The numbness was coming back fast in his feet and legs, quicker than during the ride in from Connecticut, but then, that was par for the course. The less his symphath urges were triggered, the better the drug worked. And gee, funny, getting tapped to cap the king had riled him up.