Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(35)

The Scribe Virgin came forward, moving slowly past the jars. Back in the old days—or, hell, as recently as the year before—she would have assumed control of the conversation. Now she just floated along.

V made a disgusted noise, like he’d waited long enough for his Mommie Dearest to no-more-wire-hanger his king, and wasn’t impressed that she hadn’t manned up. “Wrath, you didn’t let me finish.”

“And you think I will now?” He reached up and fingered the lip of one of the three jars he’d added to the collection.

“You will let him finish,” the Scribe Virgin said, her tone disinterested.

Vishous strode forward, his shitkickers solid against the floor he himself had helped lay. “My point was, if you’re going to go out, do it with backup. And tell Beth. Otherwise you’re a liar…and you have a better chance of leaving her a widow. Damn it to hell, ignore my vision, fine. But at least be practical.”

Wrath paced up and back, thinking that the setting for this convo was too f*cking perfect: He was surrounded by evidence of the war.

Eventually, he stopped in front of the three jars he’d gotten tonight. “Beth thinks that I’m going upstate to meet with Phury. You know, to work with the Chosen. The lying sucks. But the idea we only have four Brothers in the field? Worse.”

There was a long silence, during which the chattering flicker of the torch flames was the only sound.

V broke the quiet. “I think you need to have a meeting with the Brother hood, and come clean with Beth. Like I said, if you’re going to fight, fight. But do it with full disclosure, true? That way you’re not out alone. And neither are any of us. Right now when rotation hits, someone ends up fighting without a partner. Your coming in legit would solve that.”

Wrath had to smile. “Christ, if I’d thought you would agree with me, I might have said something sooner.” He looked over at the Scribe Virgin. “But what about the laws. Tradition.”

The mother of the race turned to face him and in a distant voice said, “So much has changed. What is one more. Be well, Wrath, son of Wrath, and Vishous of mine womb.”

The Scribe Virgin disappeared like breath in the cold night, dissipating into the ether as if she’d never been.

Wrath leaned back against the shelving, and as his head started to pound, he popped up his sunglasses and rubbed his useless eyes. When he stopped, he shut his lids and grew as still as the stone that surrounded him.

“You look beat,” V murmured.

Yes, he was, wasn’t he. And how sad was that.





Drug dealing was a very lucrative business.

In his private office at ZeroSum, Rehvenge went over the night’s receipts at his desk, meticulously checking off the amounts to the penny. iAm was doing the same over at Sal’s Restaurant, and the first order of business at each nightfall was to meet here and compare results.

Most of the time they came up with the same total. When they didn’t, he defered to iAm.

Between the alcohol, drugs, and sex, gross receipts were over two hundred and ninety thousand for ZeroSum alone. Twenty-two people worked at the club on salary, including ten bouncers, three bartenders, six prostitutes, Trez, iAm, and Xhex; costs for them all ran about seventy-five grand a night. Bookies and authorized floor dealers, meaning those drug pushers he allowed to sell on his premises, were on commission, and whatever was left after they’d taken their cut was his. Also, every week or so, he or Xhex and the Moors executed major product deals with a select number of distributors who had their own drug networks either in Caldwell or in Manhattan.

All told, and after personnel costs, he had roughly two hundred thousand a night to pay the cost of the drugs and alcohol that he sold, cover heat and electricity and capital improvements, and take care of the cleaning crew of seven that came in at five a.m.

Every year he cleared about fifty million from his businesses—which sounded obscene, and it was, especially considering he paid taxes on only a fraction of it. The thing was, drugs and sex were risky businesses, but the profit potential was enormous. And he needed money. Badly. Keeping his mother in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed and well deserving of was a multimillion-dollar proposition. Then he had his own homes, and every year he traded his Bentley in as soon as the new models were available.

By far, however, the single highest personal expense he had came in small black velvet bags.

Rehv reached out over his spreadsheets and picked up the one that had been couriered up from the Big Apple’s diamond district. The deliveries arrived on Mondays now—used to be the last Friday of the month, but with the Iron Mask opening up, ZeroSum’s closed day had switched to Sundays.

He pulled the satin cord loose and opened the bag’s throat, dumping out a glittering palmful of rubies. Quarter of a million dollars in blood stones. He poured them back into the pouch, tied the cording in a tight knot, and looked at his watch. About sixteen hours before he had to go up north.

First Tuesday of the month was ransom time, and he paid the princess off in two ways. One was gemstones. The other was his body.

He made it cost her, though.

The thought of where he was going and what he was going to have to do made the back of his neck tingle, and he wasn’t surprised when his vision began to change, dark pinks and bloodreds replacing the blacks and whites of his office, his visual field bulldozing out into a flat plane.