“You didn’t cover your state on the top of your driver’s license, and I recognized that zip code. There’s a club in Tempe that I think you might like. I want you to meet me there Saturday night.”
Colleen couldn’t afford the cover charge of any club that a certified blue-check whale stock trader might think was fun. A guy like that would probably want to go to Martini’s at the Scottsdale Princess Resort that charged fifty bucks to get into, even for girls. “It’s after two in the morning here. I saw sunlight behind you earlier, and you mentioned you’d had a Bloody Mary with breakfast a little while ago. You’re not anywhere near me. We can’t meet.”
Some shuffling of papers whispered through the computer’s speakers. “I’ll be arriving in the States for business tomorrow for a few weeks. I can drop by where you are for a few days. I’ll text you the address and put you on the VIP List to get in. See you at the Devilhouse.”
Her screen went dark.
After a few moments of stunned breathing about all that had actually happened, Colleen shut down her computer for the night and dragged herself into the studio apartment’s tiny bathroom—just a sink, a toilet, and a minuscule shower stall in the corner with a cheap plastic shower curtain—to wash her hands and brush her teeth.
For three years, a metaphorical charcoal-gray fog had shrouded her. Peering through it to talk to other people took so much effort, and it drained the color from everything around her. Talking to people over the computer was easier. The glaring screen cut through it, at least a little, and the notification pings seemed like a bright flash in the otherwise dull drone of her gray life.
Colleen poured herself a glass of water in the corner of her room that was outfitted as a kitchenette, which consisted of a half-size fridge, two-burner stove, a sink, and a microwave. She dry-swallowed two melatonin tablets before she laid down on the twin-size mattress on the floor in the other corner of the room.
She pulled her comforter over her and wished for a cat as she rigorously forced her mind to be quiet and relaxed her face until she slipped into a fitful sleep.
Colleen didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried for three years.
3
How It Started
Tristan
The slim jet flew thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean, ripples glittering far below the belly of the private plane, while Tristan Fortunato King stared at spreadsheets on his computer screen.
A tumbler of rare scotch with melting ice cubes sat at his elbow as he scanned the blinking columns of numbers and cross-referenced graphs running on another computer.
It wasn’t going to work.
Tristan held his head in his hands.
A young man appeared at Tristan’s elbow. His black suit was cut close to his slim form, his perfectly knotted blue tie the only hint of color about him. In a low, deferential tone, he asked, “Mr. King, if I may interrupt?”
Tristan looked up, blinking at the interruption. “Jian, I said you don’t have to do that. When I’m in business meetings, you can call me Mr. King if you want to, but I look around for my grandfather when you do that.”
The man’s expression didn’t move a whisker of the knife-sharp edges of his short beard or ruffle even one strand of his glossy hair tied into a short ponytail on the back of his head. He said, “The arrangements for the hotels in New York, Chicago, Phoenix, and Los Angeles have been finalized, in addition to transportation.”
“And the hotels are?” Tristan asked, going back to scanning his spreadsheets.
A pause. “The Plaza, the Four Seasons, the Boulders, and the Nobu Ryokan Malibu respectively, and BMWs appropriate for your stature, sir.”
He had stature? Tristan hadn’t known he had stature. “And about the ‘sir’ thing—”
“Sir, as your Personal Assistant, I will take care of such minutiae as hotel accommodations and private jet rentals.” Jian waved his hands like the Queen’s spiral flick-wave. “And I can do it without your energy or your input. It’s a PA’s job to ensure his clients don’t have to think about such trivia so they can concentrate on their work and private life. As we become more accustomed to each other, I’ll know your tastes better. I value your feedback after the fact.”
“Okay, but I just want to make sure everything is taken—”
“It is.”
Just a few months before, Tristan had stolen Jian from a boarding school frenemy, Ikenna Kalu, by offering him more money. With Jian at the helm, Ikenna’s life had run without a hitch. He’d dressed like an Italian model and was always invited to exclusive events. And yet, maybe there was a reason that Ikenna had let Jian go without too much of a fight. “I just want to check them off, for the time being.”
“Very good, Mr. King.”
The name Mr. King creeped Tristan right out. When Jian called Tristan that, he mentally scanned the room, or the short tube of the airplane in this instance, for his grandfather. Tristan’s grandfather had been a mean old codger who’d whipped his grandchildren with a switch when they’d misbehaved and when they hadn’t, lest they turn to the Devil. None of Tristan’s cousins had spoken to their grandfather during the last decade of his life. Tristan had sent money to his grandmother to bury the cruel old man decently.
Tristan had to get Jian on a first-name basis and quickly, or else he’d have to change his last name.
Which wasn’t a bad idea, come to think of it. Attending an elite Swiss boarding school while sporting the surname of King and being surrounded by actual royal princes had been a weird four years in Tristan’s life, not to mention what they’d done with the combination of his middle initial and his last name.
