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RHAIM

“ Y ou do realize you’re human, right?” Sable asked, her voice coming in over my other phone. “Earth-to-Rhaim?” she continued, when I didn’t immediately respond.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, blowing her off.

“Food is a thing, Rhaim. For most of humanity. So is sleep.”

“And yet coffee exists,” I muttered, and she snorted.

Sable’d given me her idea for bugging one of the St. Clair twins not long after I’d left Isabelle’s apartment—I got the impression she’d stayed up the rest of the night working on it—and what she’d come up with was a luxury vape pen.

I was intrigued—and I knew it’d definitely make it in the door.

As to whether or not one of St. Clair’s boys would be stupid enough to use it, or one of their maids dispose of it, however, who could say.

I’d sent it as part of a massive “congratulations on your engagement!” floral arrangement and gift basket, anonymously, only they didn’t know that.

His people would just assume the tag got lost, and surely considering how many lobbyists had their hands in St. Clair’s pockets, it wouldn’t be worth worrying about.

What I hadn’t counted on was the sheer volume of gifts he would receive.

I could see several other large flower arrangements through the windows—was this what socially adjusted rich people did?

Have their secretaries send increasingly obnoxious amounts of flowers back and forth?

Had I missed that day, in mafia cotillion?

I sipped on my Vietnamese coffee and prepared to wait all night.

“Anything?” Sable asked.

“Not yet.”

She groaned. “I put a lot of work into that, Rhaim.”

“I know. You billed me for it,” I muttered, then decided to toss her a bone. “Lia’s going to see him tomorrow with Trevia—they’re going to sign the pre-nup.”

I heard her suck in air through her teeth on the far side of the phone. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Like sticking my thumbs in his eyesockets and spinning them around. Which is why I’m not invited. You dig up any other dirt on him?”

Sable made an unhappy sound. We’d already gone through his list forty times, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to hear it again, and we had to do something to kill the time.

“A DUI, a groping—just one reported, but you know how sexual harassment is, if one’s been reported, there’s surely more—and the embezzlement bullet that he seemed to dodge. ”

My fingers tightened around the coffee I held. If Senator St. Clair groped Lia, I would cut off his hand and feed him his fingers.

“And his twins?”

I knew from tailing them casually that they were the type to stay out late at clubs and clock into Daddy’s offices after one o’clock. Zane was the wild one, and Wes seemed intent on taking care of him, for some unknown reason.

“His sons are twats. And I’m saying that as a lesbian, Rhaim, so you know it’s bad.”

I chuckled, loud enough for her to hear. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Just your standard upper echelon entitlement. A few rumors about nasty goings on at a frat party—some girl and a forced DP?—”

“Wait, what?” I said, blinking down at the screen. “With the both of them?”

“Yeah—but I can tell from their Instagram posts they were both saying ‘no homo’ when it happened. And in any case—the frat, and their father’s money, swept the entire thing under the rug.

There’s not enough juice there for me to bring it out to squeeze—not without hurting the girl involved, either, who appears to have been gifted quite a large sum of money and no doubt signed a brick of an NDA. ”

“Hmm.”

“You get anything out of Nick yet?”

“Yeah. He whispered sweet nothings into my ear this morning.”

“Who?” she pressed.

“No one you’d recognize.”

Nick had given me two names—one was his daughter’s dealer, the other was his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.

At the time, I’d been relieved that I wasn’t going to have murder anyone I might know—I meant to keep my word, and even if Nick had wanted a C-suite executive at his own firm offed, I would’ve had to step up.

But now, as amped up as I was, killing nobodies felt beneath me.

Entirely unchallenging.

Unless… “Have either of Marcus’s kids ever had to pee in a cup?”

“Gimme a sec,” Sable muttered on the far side of the line. “Ah-ha! Zane—the blonde one—got chlamydia six months ago.”

I grunted. “They run a tox screen too?” There was no way the St. Clair twins partied all night without ever bumping up.

I heard Sable typing for quite some time. “Positive for coke and methamphetamines!” she cackled. “But then again—at their age, who isn’t? And—why’d you ask?”

“Ehh. Sometimes the less you know, the better.” While I trusted Sable implicitly, it wasn’t fair to bring her on board for murder unless I absolutely had to.

“Are you—are you cheating on me?” she protested, in a not-so-mocking tone.

“Only with Google.”

“Oh my God, Rhaim. If you’re going to replace me—at least use fucking ChatGPT.”

And then a gold Porsche Panamera came up, and both of the men in question came stumbling out of it. They were laughing, and they walked in through the front door—and started rifling through the assorted gift-baskets like human sized racoons.

“Come on…come on,” I whispered without sound, like a man watching the bobber on his fishing line start to twitch.

Then they got to mine—and totally ignored the flowers and tossing a tin of fancy caviar aside as they dove deep, emerging with an Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Gold Brut—and Sable’s altered Blood Orange Diesel vape pen, cradled in a black velvet box.

“You’re in,” I told her.

“Which one?”

“The blonde.”

“Fantastic!” she said, and I heard her clap her hands.

I turned my truck on again, while keeping the headlights off.

I was done here for the night, it was time to go back to my place, jerk off to thoughts of Lia, and pass out till dawn.

“You got the cameras?” I asked Sable—the neighborhood I was in was too nice not to have any, and I didn’t want to show up anywhere… yet.

It was clear she was already distracted, working on getting into Zane’s phone on her end—he’d tucked the vape pen into its same pocket.

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask your new girlfriend, Gemini, that?” she asked.

“That sounds like a stripper name. Is she hot?” I teased.

“You cad!” Sable laughed—and then hung up.