“I’m happy.”
She gave him a doubting look. “You should save one of those women for yourself.”
“It’s worth more if they save themselves.”
“You’re missing the point, Jack. Any one of those women would be lucky to have you. There’s no harm in saving one for yourself.”
“I’m no one’s savior.” And the tributes weren’t treasures to steal. They were people.
She pursed her lips. “Now, I’m proof that’s not true, and you know it. Drink your tea before it gets cold. The soup should be ready soon.”
“I’ll take it in my study.”
Her prickly stare told him she didn’t approve, but she knew better than to argue. Myrtle had a lot of pull with him, but even she couldn’t change his mind.
Once he found his way upstairs, he stripped off his clothes before he even entered the master bathroom. The heated black marble floors and freestanding copper tub overlooking the private gardens were a temple to controlled indulgence.
His gaze avoided the mirror as he prepared the tub, briefly checking his messages as he waited for it to fill.
His reflection moved in the peripheral of his gaze, but he ignored the scars mapping his skin. He knew those raised ridges by heart without studying the visual reminder every day.
Stepping into the warm water, he let the warmth seep into his muscles that never fully relaxed. Bathing was more than a ritual to him. It was an indulgence that anchored him to the present, a sacrament he needed, especially this time of year, when The Feast reminded him so much of his past.
He soaked until the water chilled, then dressed in loungewear and headed to the study.
Three walls of windows, the fourth lined with books. His real library, stretched over two floors, was down the hall.
The portfolio he’d given to Nick waited on his desk, beside a steaming bowl of soup with a note in Myrtle’s handwriting ordering him to eat before he got to work.
Jack ignored both and poured himself two fingers of Mad Hatter, letting the bourbon burn away the last haze of softness from the bath. Collecting the portfolio from the desk, he moved in front of the fire.
The rejections came first. Easy decisions. ‘I want to be famous.’ No. ‘I’d use the money to start an influencer brand.’ Absolutely not.
He wasn’t in the business of grooming the unfortunate toward entitlement. This was about altering the destiny of the destitute, revealing the hidden potential of the overlooked that deserved it most.
He paused over an application sent from The States. Philadelphia. Nineteen, single mother, recently fled an abusive ex. The defiance in her blunt prose made him see a survivor rather than victim.
“Trisha Carter,” he read aloud. “Approved.”
The next two were rejections, but the woman from Glasgow caring for a disabled sister on a janitor’s salary made the cut. So did the young man from Brighton, claiming not to want a handout but, rather, a chance to earn something that can’t be taken away.
One by one, Jack sorted souls into piles. The deserving. The desperate. The greedy. The hopeless. The hopeful.
He was playing God, but that was the point. God did a shitty job protecting the poor. Only a fool would trust divine intervention when so many evil men held the world in a chokehold of power. But every year, Jack loosened those strangling fingers a little more.
He savored the sweetness of dark satisfaction that flooded his chest, elating in his ability to not only change a person’s life for the better, but also dismantle the once-believed-impenetrable world of the corrupt.
“Daisy Burdan,” he read, opening the next application. He skimmed her essay and paused halfway down to go back and read it more carefully. A rawness, hidden between the lines, spoke to him. Something authentic and not at all performative.
* * *
Life has taught me to stop waiting. For rescue. For fairness. For someone to notice I was drowning. The world doesn’t pause for grief, so neither can I.
* * *
“Christ.” He knew that desperate, clawing need to escape. The urgency to get out when brutal exhaustion endlessly tried to swallow a person whole.
He withdrew her photograph—a grainy image from some government database the Volkovs found. Despite the poor resolution, arresting resolve in her eyes. Not beauty, though beauty was there, it was her eyes that gave him pause.
