Richer Than God Read online

  Her last name.

  That name matters less and less to me with every hour that passes. She’s mine. Her father’s last name has no impact. There’s almost nothing about him here. I flip to the next page.

  That’s when the words tip over and slide along the document, changing places until I shake it to get them to make any sort of sense.

  Betrothed, it says. That’s a fucking strange way to describe it. I read over it again. Is this a fucking prank from the turn of the century? It’s not—there’s Xavier’s signature, right there at the bottom. Reported missing after engagement. Uncle/fiancé is John Lowell.

  Fuck.

  I know that name.

  He’s not just some lowlife off the street; he’s a fucking judge. He presided over my arraignment the night Hades sent the law to Olympus. And he, like Xavier, is a corrupt motherfucker and frequent client of Olympus.

  He’s on the invite list for the party.

  I flip the packet closed and put it back in the envelope then shove all of it into the locking cabinet in my desk. What the ever-loving fuck. I wasn’t just being paranoid about leaving her here then. I was fucking right. Men like that have people everywhere in the city. I know, because I am one.

  Betrothed. To her own uncle. Cancelling the invitation isn’t an option. Things are too tenuous in the city. He is too corrupt.

  “Reya.”

  She hasn’t gone far, because she never does. “Yes?”

  “Bring Brigit for dinner.”

  “She’ll be right down.”

  A pause. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She disappears, and I go to the dining room and use the opportunity to scan the streets below for any sign that more trouble is approaching Olympus. There’s nothing. It means nothing. It certainly doesn’t mean safety. Nothing ever does.

  Brigit’s reflection appears in the window. She stands proudly at the door, but it’s an effect that wavers; one moment, her chin is held high, and the next, she bites at her lip. A struggle. I wait for a twist of guilt for what I did to her earlier, but none comes. Looking at the ghost of her in the glass only makes me want to do it all over again. Every day, if possible.

  “You didn’t tell me about your family,” I tell her reflection.

  Instead of startling, she moves into the dining room. Someone—Reya, probably—has dressed her in blush pink and done her makeup in soft shades. Looking at her head-on, it’s obvious I was rough with her by the way she moves. She’s doing well at hiding it. “My family has nothing to do with this.” Brigit stops by her seat and looks me in the eye.

  It takes a beat to realize she’s waiting for me to pull her chair out for her. This little whore is determined to force me into being a gentleman, even now. I should bite her for it. Punish her. But I bet she’s anticipating that too. So I take my time with the chair then spread her napkin across her lap for her. The slightest pressure on the tops of her thighs makes her respond to me.

  Two can play this game.

  “Don’t be coy.” I sit down across from her and pick up the bottle of wine I chose after I made her leave my room. “They’ll be looking for you. A broken engagement? I didn’t expect that out of you.”

  “What does anyone expect out of anyone?” Brigit watches the wine hit the bottom of the glass but doesn’t reach for it until I put it in front of her.

  “It costs me more, you know.”

  She sips her wine. “What does?”

  “Putting my business at risk.”

  Brigit straightens up, her hand tightening around the base of the glass. “I didn’t leave a note, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Nobody knows I came here.”

  I laugh at her for that. “Sweetheart, everyone knows you came here. It’s only a matter of time before your uncle comes looking.” Time is short, if he shows up to the party.

  Her pulse hammers at the side of her neck, visible to me from across the table. “How?”

  “Women come and go. So do rumors. And there are rumors in the city of a brand-new plaything.”

  She swallows hard. “I hate to get everyone’s hopes up.” Brigit’s face has gone pale, setting off the pink of her dress. Genuine fear flickers through her eyes. Unlike when she’s with me, there’s no forbidden edge of desire. I couldn’t wrench it out of her if I tried.

  “There are things to be done.”

  “I know.” She meets my eyes, defiant still. “I’ll bend over the table if that’s what this is about.” A tremble in her voice gives her away. “But I thought we were here for dinner.”

  “About your uncle,” I insist, and I’m not fond of how I feel—slightly desperate. Off-balance. Like fucking her might be the only way to bring us back into alignment. “There are things to be done about him.” I keep it conversational. Fucking casual, though it’s the least causal thing I have ever discussed with Brigit. “I could take care of the situation.”

  The woman who bled for me earlier, who took the pain into herself and only cried when I took pleasure from her by force, takes another measured sip of wine. “I’m sure you could do anything, if you wanted.”

  “Make your request then.” Can she feel the wall against her back, how there’s no more give? If I don’t take matters into my own hands, then she—and my business—will be in danger as long as her family is involved.

  “Just don’t let them in.”

  I want to laugh. I thought she might propose, the brazen thing. “They’re not invited to dinner.”

  “I just don’t know if I could live through it if they came here right now,” Brigit continues. “I’m still so sore. That would be the worst part, I think.”

  “Come here.” Her eyes open wider, but she comes, bringing her wine with her. As soon as I can reach her I put my hands around her waist and lift her, putting her up on the dinner table where my plate will be as soon as I’m finished. I fold her dress back carefully, like a fucking napkin.

  “What are you doing?”

  “How will you eat if your pussy hurts?” Her panties are pretty, and then they’re nothing—ripped in two and slipped into my pocket.

  Brigit spreads her legs for me like I’ve already given her the order, her wine glass to her lips. I reward her with a kiss on the inside of her thigh, then another, an inch higher. Then another. She lets out a hiss against her glass.

  One of my staff comes in with the plates.

  She freezes, but I don’t. I keep kissing up the inside of her thigh. Brigit’s covered, barely, by her dress.

  “You can put those on the other side of the table,” I tell the man with the plates, who is completely unfazed. Not so for Brigit. “We’ll move them when we’re ready.”

  I brush my lips over her clit, then press a kiss to it. Another. Another. A lick. Brigit arches back, silent, while the plates meet the linen tablecloth. While the waiter arranges them just so. He goes back for a pitcher of water and fills our glasses while I suck her skin, soothing it with my tongue. Ice clinks in the glasses.

  Her thighs are shaking by the time the waiter leaves. “You’re horrible,” she whispers, red-faced, eyes bright.

  “But you feel so much better now, don’t you?” I close her legs and pull her dress down, then put her back on the floor. She goes back to her seat on unsteady legs. I wait for her complaint. I wait for no.

  “Yes.” Brigit finishes her wine and puts the glass delicately on the table. “So much better.”

  17

  Brigit

  I’ve been up all night. Most of the night. When I was awake, I spent all my time waiting for my uncle—and probably my father—to burst into the room and take me back to the house. Or the courtroom. They want a ring on my finger and a marriage contract signed. It’s a sick trade, and they can’t make it without me.

  When I slept, I dreamed it was happening. Over and over. More than once, Zeus sat to the side of the proceedings, watching with empty golden eyes no matter how much I pleaded and begged.

  “It’s toast,” says Alicia.

 
; We’re in the dining room, sitting at the corner table, and I’m not putting on a very good show. It occurs to me that I’ve been watching butter melt into a slice of toast for way too long. “I know.” I pick it up and take a bite, but the bread feels too dry. The stakes are too high to eat toast in a patch of sunlight. “I don’t feel very well.”

  “I can help with that.” Savannah’s voice scares the shit out of me, and my hand flies to my chest. Another outfit was delivered this morning—the same things as yesterday, only this time the shirt is wine-colored, and the leggings are black. I don’t know what to make of the outfits. He could give them to me all at once, but it’s like Zeus wants me to wonder if he’s forgotten about me every single morning.

  I haven’t forgotten about him.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I tell her. Savannah’s face swings into view, her hair making a curtain between us and the rest of the room. “Where did you even come from?”

  “I heard what you said.” She flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. “I know the perfect tea to perk you up.” Savannah pats my hand, and I jerk mine away. What the hell is she doing? “Stay here, and I’ll go get it.”

  Alicia’s been done eating for ten minutes, and she looks from the retreating Savannah back to me. “I was going to go upstairs, but now I think I’d better stay.”

  “It’s tea.” I’m not reassured by my own words, but Alicia doesn’t have to babysit me. I didn’t come here to be everyone’s problem. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I’m not. “Of course I’m sure.”

  Alicia goes reluctantly, while Savannah hovers over the marble countertop set into one wall. A teapot flashes in the light. A wisp of steam rises above her head. Her wrist rises and falls, almost like she’s conducting an orchestra. She’s steeping tea. Maybe it’s for the best. I feel so off this morning, so unsteady, and I’m going to be worthless if I don’t get myself together.

  I don’t have time to be worthless.

  It feels wrong, and terrible, to be rushing into selling myself. But if I’m ever going to get to Saint-Gaultier—to the airport, even—then I have to do it soon. At this party.

  I have to pass inspection.

  Most of me is still sore from yesterday, and the pain hasn’t only settled between my legs. I saw something yesterday, in Zeus’s eyes. I heard it in his voice when he stormed into the spa. I don’t know what it was. The memory folds itself open and closed like an origami bird, never revealing all its folds. But he is a locked door, and I’m never going to be the key.

  Lovesick. The word floats into my mind and takes root. I try to rip it out. Too absurd. I’m not falling in love with that cruel, beautiful man. It’s only the circumstances. It’s only the fact that I came here to be a whore that’s making everything seem breathless but alive.

  I’ve never been so close to death before, so close to danger.

  Don’t think about it now.

  Savannah returns, putting a teacup and saucer on the table in front of me. Oh, it’s sweet. I inhale the steam and wrap my hands around it. Tea is relaxing. Tea could make me feel better.

  “It’s good,” Savannah prompts, and I look up into her bizarrely bright eyes. She looks too excited for tea. Some instinct in the back of my mind warns that I should throw the tea on the floor and sprint for the door. My pulse heightens with it. But I’m being paranoid. It’s tea. I watched her make it. Savannah’s mean, but she’s not dangerous—at least not as dangerous as any man who comes in here, including Zeus.

  “Why are you being nice to me?”

  She narrows her eyes, expression darkening, but it’s gone in a flash, so quickly I’m not sure if it was ever really there. “You said you didn’t feel well.” Savannah folds her arms over her chest and pouts a little. “This isn’t a good place to be off your game. If you don’t want it, then….” She reaches for the saucer.

  “No.” This place is a web, and I crashed through it on the first day, disturbing the balance. Maybe if I drink this tea, it will make it easier to survive. That’s all I need to do—live long enough to make it out. I put on a big smile. “Thank you for the tea. It—it smells great.”

  It really does, and that’s probably why I overshoot it when I raise the cup to my lips. A single ice cube floats at the top, nearly melted.

  “My mom taught me that trick,” says Savannah, and her conversational tone is off. We do not share stories about our lives, me and Savannah. I think of the hate burning in her eyes when she walked into Zeus’s office. The triumph she took in swallowing his cum. The tea goes down wrong, and I cough, sputtering, until she slaps me on the back.

  “That happened fast,” she murmurs, almost to herself, and I put down the teacup. It rattles against the saucer, tea sloshing over the rim of the cup, and for reasons I can’t explain, I sweep it up with a finger and put it in my mouth. It’s too much. I can feel my expression falling into the neutral blank I use with my father. My pulse pounds under my skin. Where is everyone? Savannah and I are the only ones left in the dining room, and I am officially the woman in a horror movie who wanders around cooing at original light fixtures until she dies.

  “I feel much better.” I stand and take a step back, and my chair tips over. Savannah catches it, but it brings her in awkwardly close. The heat of her body brushes against my shirt while I slip away. A moment of hesitation makes me falter at the door—maybe I should clean up the teacup, at least—but no. Cold fear spills down from the top of my head to my wrists.

  Tea is supposed to be calming.

  I feel less and less calm on my way up the stairs. The elevator would be faster, but I don’t want to stop moving; I want to get to the bedroom and shut the door. My heart beats harder and harder with every step, painful punches on the inside of my ribcage, and my temples throb in a matching tempo. On the last landing, my shin catches the lip of the final step and both knees go out.

  It should hurt. Bruise. But I don’t feel anything on my shins, only the cool surface of the handrail I caught myself on. Gravity shifts. I tighten my grip and hug the wall. The pull toward the bottom of the stairs is so strong it’s almost irresistible. The staircase is steeper than it seemed. More blood to the head, blood to the heart. It has to be outside my body now.

  And—and. Someone’s after me. Generally, but also now, someone is creeping at the bottom of the stairs. If they catch me on their way up, I’ll die, but if I move, I might fall and die. My skin feels like it’s turning inside out. Oh, God. I can’t die here, on the stairs, after everything. Everything, nothing, nothing matters if I break my neck.

  I have never clutched anything as hard as I’m clutching the handrail. The tips of my fingers are losing feeling. Eventually, they will peel away from the handrail, and I’ll plummet the mile it is to the bottom of the stairs. I can’t get a breath, but I force the tip of my toe over the edge of the final step. My thighs burn with the effort. My arms too. Wind rushes by my ears. That can’t be right. There’s no wind in the stairwell.

  It’s an awful thing, to propel myself forward from the railing and hope for the best. A scream catches in my throat, but the wall comes up to meet me, and I plant my hands on it. Big gulps of air. That’s it. Keep breathing.

  Somehow, I get through the access door. The floor of the maid’s hallway bows outward, crushing my knees together. I’m a broken puppet. Ha, ha. What a waste of time and money. All this for nothing.

  “Brigit?” Alicia’s voice sounds distorted, like she’s talking to me through an underwater cave. She’s so far away. Really, he didn’t have to make this hallway so desperately long. “Are you okay?”

  “Okay” echoes through the cavernous hallway for a hundred years before it reaches me. I was heavy before, and now I’m very light. My head will crash on the ceiling if this keeps up.

  “My lips are numb.” I try fruitlessly to get my hand to my lips, to make sure they’re still attached to my face.

  Alicia looms in closer, suddenly enor
mous, her worried expression taking up my entire field of vision. “What’s going on?”

  I don’t get a chance to answer. The floor cracks apart, rising like a wave, and swallows me whole.

  18

  Zeus

  The knock interrupts me midstroke. It ruins a sheet of my ledger with a dark gash of ink. The pen’s broken. I broke it. Fuck. “Reya, when I said stay out, I meant keep your ass—”

  “Zeus.” One look at her and my heart is in my throat. She’s pale, one strap of her dress twisted like she was running. Running from what? No security alerts have been called in. “It’s Brigit.”

  I’m out of my seat before I can plan out an appropriate reaction, abandoning the ledger. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I brush past Reya without thinking. “Where is she?”

  “Up in her room.” If she wasn’t running before, she is now; she has to in order to keep up with me. Something hard hits the floor behind us—her shoes, I think. “She’s fainted.”

  People faint. It happens. It’s happened many times at the whorehouse, due to too much sexual exertion or because a girl gets overwhelmed or for a hundred other reasons. And I never care. It’s a problem that’s easily solved with a glass of water and a light slap to the face. Reya, I know, is underselling it. If Brigit had fainted, no one would have run to my office. “You’re not telling the truth.”

  “I’m not a liar,” Reya shoots back. The two of us tumble into the stairwell. “Her roommate said she fainted, and she won’t wake up.”

  Won’t wake up. The last time I ran for another person was a long time ago, but I take the stairs three at a time. Reya pants behind me, and her breath fills my ears. What if Brigit isn’t breathing? What. If. She’s. Not. Breathing?

  I burst into the attic hall, the space closing in. It’s too small up here, too close, and it makes the fact of her too stark—Brigit, on the floor, arms above her head. Too pale. She’s too pale. Her roommate—Alicia, her name is, a flighty thing who keeps coming back to Olympus—kneels at her side. She scrambles out of my way when she sees me coming. Explaining—her mouth is moving, but the words mean nothing. They’re useless noise.