A thump happened on Dmitri’s side of the call, and Dmitri lowered his voice. An office door shutting? “When I say ‘don’t start,’ it means ‘don’t be a jackass.’”
“You are in a mood,” Roger said. “What’s happened?”
“I’m an idiot, that’s what.”
“It’s taken you three centuries to realize that?”
“Roger.”
“All right, I’m behaving,” Roger replied. “Are you going to explain?”
Another thump. Not a door. What was Dmitri shifting around? “Candide made a comment, and of course, she’s right. I should have thought of it, but I’ve been running from meeting to meeting and preoccupied with sorting Quinn’s disastrous finances.”
“What sort of comment?” Roger asked.
“She remarked that your back dues would make a nice investment in a new club.”
The implication of those words was a wind in the wrong direction. Roger stalked over to the far side of the room, though Nell would still hear both sides of the conversation. He needed the illusion of privacy before he lost his temper. “I was in a coma!”
“I know that, but that’s not the story we’re telling everyone else,” Dmitri replied. “We’re going with the lie that you chose to walk away.”
That lie was the best story Roger had come up with. He wasn’t sure who had betrayed him, and he didn’t know how Seamus would react if he learned Roger had been thrown into an enchanted coffin by an unknown Unseelie for a mysterious reason. “Yes. And because I was gone without any indication of who or what might have killed me, the coven confiscated my wealth of nearly a billion dollars. How on earth could I owemore?”
“I’m preparing the argument that since your accounts reverted to us, you don’t.” Dmitri hesitated. “However, there’s a consequence to that course of action.”
“What?”
“If we consider your accounts forfeit, then even if I could track down your former fortune, I couldn’t hand over a single cent.”
“That’s ridiculous. I can’t possibly owe more than a few hundred thousand,” Roger grumbled.
“Your outstanding coven dues come to around four million dollars.”
“Excuse me?”
“You haven’t been paying them,” Dmitri said dryly. “We’ve done a price increase three times since you disappeared, and there are penalties for late payments.”
That was ridiculous! Absolutely criminal! The amount would have been drops in the bucket over time, and if Roger had access to his accounts, he wouldn’t have balked. Currently, he only had the money Nell had loaned him, a little less than five million after he outfitted Kit, Zack, and himself. There had also been a sizable deposit on their upcoming hotel suite and a few travel arrangements. The five million was supposed to keep him on his feet until he regained his fortune, inherited Quinn’s money that was owed to him, or took control of the GLC and inherited Seamus’s accounts. In the end, it would be nothing.
If eighty percent of the money had to go to paying his coven dues, then he would have to start watching every penny. But if he forfeited his claim to his old accounts, he’d lose far, far more.
Money was supposed to be the least of his problems.
And does the money matter now? If we win, I’ll be filthy rich, and if we don’t, we’ll be dead.Roger hated gambling, but he didn’t have a lot of choice. “Argue that I’ve more than paid my debt, and work on giving me Quinn’s accounts.”
“How will we explain your arrival in style?” Dmitri asked.
“Started investing in the dot-com buzz to begin my slow acclimation to the modern age,” Roger replied.
“I like it, but we’ll say clean energy. I have a company we can work with, though I’ll need a few funds from you to make it work.”
“You have how much money? Why do you need it from me?” Roger demanded.
“Because I am doing thisforyou, and nothing comes for free,” Dmitri snapped.
“Fine. When I get to the city, we can set it up.” Roger ended the call.
“Dmitri provides more bad news,” Nell said.
