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But yes, it rankled.

He was fucking Prometheus.

If they could not understand it, they could at least get the fuck out of his way. They were more like Sisyphus, wondering why the rock rolled down on top of them every time, instead of reaching the top of the mountain, like he did. The old guard was a little too used to seeing themselves as kingmakers, as the men holding the puppet’s strings.

The end of their era had come, too.

Roland Rucker, his father, had been one of those. He was an impressive man, an impossible to please man, but he hadn’t attained the heights of his son. There had been a half-dozen bestsellers written about Lucian already, and books would continue to be written about Lucian long after he was dead.

His father saw money as the penultimate goal.

Roland James Rucker had been content to do that invisibly, in the shadows, pulling the levers of power while remaining faceless and unknown. He didn’t care if no one ever recognized him, if no one had heard of his name.

Lucian had no intention of living in the shadows.

He didn’t believe in it, even if it might have made him safer.

Truthfully, he loved the notoriety, too.

What was the point of manifesting extraordinary things, if no one knew you were their author? No, Lucian didn’t give two shits about being “safe.”

He liked living dangerously.

He liked being infamous, notorious, feared, even more than he liked being adored.

He checked the time inside the augmented reality view that made the empty observation room glow and blink and swirl, then shut it off.

He’d waited long enough.

It was time.

The car waited for him downstairs.

He would wait on revealing his bauble. There would be time enough for that later.

It was time to make his entrance as the king of kings.

He made his way unhurriedly down the black-metal, circular stair that led to a private elevator only he and Victor could operate via their augmented reality headsets. He stepped through the elevator doors––doors he’d spent a ridiculous amount of money to have programmed to make the sound of the originalStar Trektelevision show doors when they opened and closed––and turned his augmented reality back on.

He hit through the virtual keys.

The dragon puffed blue fire at him from over his shoulder. Lucian’s hands changed inside the virtual interface, too. He noticed he still wore the metal gloves from his last little game with his pet, where he’d been her torturer in a medieval dungeon.

The thought made his cock hard all over again.

He thought about his pet the entire ride up from the basement floors.

He thought about what he wanted for their anniversary.

The elevator reached its destination, the doors pinged, and made theStar Treknoise again as they opened. Lucian walked down a dark passageway decorated with virtual paintings, opened the thick metal door that led to the back lot of the building.

He stepped outside into the cold night wind, which gusted around the South San Francisco building in icy blasts of brine-smelling air.

He didn’t hear a thing.

He felt, somehow, something unusual was happening.

Something unprecedented.