“No, it’s really not. And while I do well enough at my businesses, I’m by no means one of the wealthier men in the city.”
“Says you, who can buy an entire apartment complex, tear it down, and turn it into what?”
“A skyscraper,” he confessed. “The building of the skyscraper will make my financial situation interesting for the next few years.”
I stared at my apartment, wondering how the building could possibly become a skyscraper. “The building is too small to be a skyscraper, isn’t it?”
“I own the entire block except for your unit,” Wayne confessed.
Wow. “I’m costing you millions, aren’t I?”
“The project will cost more than a billion dollars to complete. Fortunately, I am wise and anticipated your stubborn pride. Construction on the skyscraper isn’t scheduled to begin for another six months, as I figured it would take that long to get you to leave that apartment. When it’s done, I’ll be offering a mix of luxury and standard commercial stores and offices. The first five floors will be a mall complex for retailers. The rest will be offices.”
“A five-story mall? Here?” I demanded.
“Yes, there. There’s a strong market for it. I have tenants for half of the building already.”
“I’m expecting you to add at least one extra incentive as a reward for successfully disrupting your plans to take over the world for as long as I have.”
Wayne chuckled. “I will do so, and I will flag it so you know what prize you have earned. So, you’ll deal?”
“I’m still going to make you wait a week unless you offer me a really excellent incentive tomorrow.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with. It would be excellent if I could move my construction plans forward.”
I bet. Hopefully, a three-day vacation wouldn’t screw up too many of his plans. “Expect my call sometime after noon tomorrow.”
“I shall. Any idea where we’ll meet?”
“It depends on where my second job takes me,” I admitted. “Send me the base contract as soon as you can. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Hanging up on the man made my night. Then, as I’d need a lot of energy to deal with taming a single male wolf, I rampaged on my salads.
I could afford it for a rare change.
The contractfrom Wayne counted as both heaven and hell, and it amazed me how seriously he’d taken my financial situation. He’d gone from a questionable year of survival to five years of luxury, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out the catch beyond not being able to see my new living accommodations before signing.
In good news, the favorable nature of the contract gave me a lot of wiggle room in terms of questions, which took me an hour to write into a notebook to help my cause—and create the illusion I meant to meet with him about the contract rather than kidnap him.
After seeing the contract, I’d get my hands dirty, sign before kidnapping him, and enjoy the ride.
I had issues.
Having a good home for five years with an angry landlord would be one of those issues, and I’d love gloating over Wayne for being kidnapped by a woman he believed to be a regular human. My virus would love me forever, as she wanted nothing more than to spend a great deal of time with the wolf, and she’d take anything she could get.
As my bounty authorized me to make use of two potent and rather illegal substances, I had to head to the main Manhattan headquarters to receive final authorization for the job and take a two-hour course on how to administer both drugs. The influencer, which I would deliver through either a needle, a dart, or a powder added to his food or drink, would ensure his obedience and turn him into the equivalent of my slave. As the job required me to take him out of New York for three days, they gave me enough to last for four days. Then, because life could go my way sometimes, I was given top-grade pixie dust so he’d be happy about his stay with me.
The instructor had a sense of humor and could do math as well as I could; he gave me a few extra doses on a prescription under my name, told me to have fun with my new male, and had me sign off on the drugs and confirm I would be beginning my work as soon as possible.
Then, as a sign that somebody truly loved me and wanted me to be happy, he gave me an exemption card stating my ban on pixie dust was waived for a period of two weeks and issued a prescription so I could acquire pixie dust at any authorized vendor.
The CDC wanted me to have Wayne in my possession and onto the mainland by nightfall. They didn’t even mind if I kept him in the state as long as I removed him from Manhattan and Long Island for three days starting at midnight.
If it took unleashing the cuddle bug menace to accomplish my job, they’d look the other way. As long as I kept my cuddling activities limited to other lycanthropes, specifically Wayne Barnes, I could enjoy pixie dust without consequence.
While Wayne would get the top-grade stuff, my vials were a far lower grade, not that I needed the good stuff to become a snuggling fiend.
Grinning over my good fortune, I used the CDC’s phone to call my boss, as he would have a hard time refusing my request to take some time off when calling from a CDC number.
