by Matt Rogers
His three-piece suit fit like a glove, and his tanned skin and curly blonde locks gave him the aura of a California surfer. Which really worked in here, where half the patrons were tense and awkward, and the other half seemed subconsciously embarrassed by their fortunes, almost ashamed.
Aaron Wayne embraced every aspect of it.
Ruby could see how he’d come so far before his fortieth birthday.
It also made a certain cohort of Wayne’s guests stand out like there were flashing beacons above their heads. They were unaccustomed to such hedonistic opulence. They were from a more barren, more primal part of the world. And they thrived there, which had afforded them the opportunity to visit Monaco. But they were here for business, not pleasure.
Maybe they’d indulge a little, if they ever let their guard down.
It wasn’t their priority.
There were four of them — three guards, and the man of the hour.
Zafir.
She knew little about him. Few did. She soaked in his dead eyes, the greasy black hair pulled back in a ponytail, the jagged scar running horizontally across his forehead like a grotesque headband.
She knew how he’d got it.
In his teens, he and his family were ambushed by rebel militants. His brother, sister and father were slaughtered in front of him. They’d cut across his forehead to the bone, planning on peeling the skin off his face. In a blinding rage, he’d killed the militants with his bare hands.
There and then, a monster had been forged.
There was no trace of that ferociousness now. He was serious, but many rich men were. There was no way to tell what he was truly here for. Ruby alone knew the extent of his depravity, knew what he’d done to hundreds of Houthi rebels in Yemen. She knew the sheer scale of the torture and murder he’d dished out with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
He was, without question, a modern warlord.
So what does real estate tycoon Aaron Wayne want with him?
Enter Ruby Nazarian, and the Lynx program.
Young girls from bad homes, raised to be ruthless, to infiltrate and assess and execute both orders and targets. An off-the-books government initiative founded on one principle: nothing disarms like a beautiful woman.
She ordered an expensive glass of champagne so she had something to hold. No one offered to buy her a drink — the night was young, and the false confidence brought about by mountains of alcohol hadn’t seized hold of the men on the bottom tier yet.
She’d have to be proactive.
No problem.
A guy in his early thirties with a receding hairline floated past. He had a handsome face, and a wiry athletic build, but he clearly didn’t know how to use any of it. He was pinpoint focused on the space ahead, refusing to meet the gaze of anyone he didn’t know. Societal pressure was too chaotic to face, especially sober.
But he had a drink in his hand, so he was on the right track.
Ruby said, ‘Hey.’
4
He looked over.
She actually saw the thud of realisation in his chest, working its way up to his throat and his jaw. The subtle tension that fell over him. He was terrified to screw it up — who was this vision in front of him, and why the hell was she talking to him?
She said, ‘Relax. I don’t bite.’
He smiled at that. It was halfway to a genuine smile, and she realised she actually liked the guy. He was awkward, but he knew it. There was something endearing about that. Confronting the chaos of the world willingly. Too many people shied away from it, especially if they knew they had trouble in social settings.
It took bravery to go toward stress.
She’d taken that concept to its absolute extreme for all her teenage years, both physically and mentally.
Hopefully, it paid off.
He said, ‘What’s your name?’
Australian, she thought.
‘There we go,’ she said, flashing a wink. ‘I’m Ruby.’
‘I’m Reece.’
‘Reece,’ she said, rolling the name off her tongue. ‘I like it. What do you do, Reece?’
She took a step closer.
He tried his best to suppress a gulp, but she saw the faintest pulsation in his throat. No one else would have noticed. She’d been conditioned to recognise the slightest twitch.
Reece said, ‘Um, it’s a long story. When I was twenty, I scaled a digital marketing—’
She stopped listening, but made it seem like she was engrossed. She focused all her attention on her peripheral vision, to the outline of Aaron Wayne in the upper hemisphere of Sapphire. She adjusted the angle of her body, narrowing her waist, sticking out her rear, bending coyly toward Reece and sweeping her flowing brown hair to one side.
Tantalising.
It didn’t take long for him to notice.
There were hundreds of people in the club, but none of them were Ruby Nazarian. She knew she was surrounded by dozens of supermodels. She knew they were all vying for the same thing — the attention of the wealthy — for very different reasons. But she’d mastered every subtle square inch of her poise and posture, and the others seemed desperate in comparison.
No one could pinpoint exactly why. It was just the case.
All it took was one glance.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Wayne turn to face the ground floor, staring down the tiers, and she immediately looked up and locked eyes with him. She filled her amber irises with lust and desire and a million other things encapsulated into one gaze, and then she looked away. Returning her attention to the pasty guy in front of her, which would no doubt pump Wayne full of machismo.
A bombastic confidence boost when he compared himself to Ruby’s current companion.
She didn’t meet his gaze again. She didn’t have to. It’d seem desperate, and she preferred to set the tone. She laughed at Reece’s bad jokes, kept him talking, made sure he sipped from his drink so he didn’t lose confidence and melt away.
A couple of minutes later a large hand touched her on the shoulder.
That was quick, she thought.
She looked behind her, and there was Aaron Wayne.
The man flashed the tiniest of smirks and said, ‘I need your help with something.’
‘Do you?’ she said.
She blinked her long lashes.
Reece stood there, fumbling with his drink, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Wayne said, ‘It’ll only take a moment.’
She turned to Reece and said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.’
A sentiment the whole trio knew was certifiably false.
Reece just nodded awkwardly.
Ruby would feel bad, if she could feel anything at all. There simply wasn’t room for it on an operation. The infiltration of Aaron Wayne’s private circle would do more good for the world than the downside of a young rich kid’s hurt feelings.
So when she stepped away from Reece she draped her hand over Wayne’s shoulder, giving him everything she knew he wanted so desperately to validate.
I own her now. She’s mine.
I can simply reach out and take whatever I want.
She let him. He weaved his way across Sapphire’s bottom tier, brushing shoulders with the budding socialites this far down the ladder. He didn’t mind being forceful. The man considered himself a step above everyone — not just the wannabes down here. The intelligence briefing had made that much clear.
It was a character trait ripe for exploitation.
They made it to the side of the oversized staircase monument, where a real staircase ran all the way up to the fourth tier. Wayne stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture with an open palm, his chivalry laughably forced.
But it would work here, Ruby knew.
Here, everyone was surface level.
She was not.
He said, ‘After you.’
She smiled at him. ‘Why, thank you.’
�
��I figured you needed rescuing.’
She reached out and touched his arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. ‘You have no idea.’
Then she winked at him and floated up the stairs to the third tier.
To Wayne’s private booths, cordoned off from the rest of the club.
To her target.
5
Despite a decade of rigorous training, she didn’t immediately register what was going on around her.
She first had to tear her attention away from what she recognised as a Midas bottle of Armand de Brignac — Ace of Spades — champagne. Eight gallons of the stuff in a hand crafted gold bottle with an enormous logo, sporting a club value of over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Sitting there on the table, surrounded by dozens of half-filled crystal glasses, as if it wasn’t important in the slightest.
This was obscene.
The guests took turns siphoning from the bottle. It took three people just to lift it. Wayne watched the proceedings unfold with a reserved pride, even as he led Ruby into the collection of booths. Five enclosures surrounded the central space in a broad semi-circle, leaving it open for the patrons to float around and observe the hedonism unfolding in the tiers below them. They needed that view, of course — everyone had to understand their place in the hierarchy. It kept the cogs turning. It kept the competition fierce. Ruby understood it like the back of her hand.
She didn’t belong in this world, but she sure could pretend she did.
Zafir noticed her immediately. The warlord was surrounded by a cohort of women, most of them Eastern European, all of them stunning, but he locked his focus on Ruby the moment she came into his field of view. It was like he could see into her soul. She forced herself not to shiver, not to blanch, even though every instinct was screaming…
…He knows.
The two syllables ricocheted around her skull, searing in their intensity. She’d never felt so scrutinised in the field. Like every secret was laid bare, laughably apparent on her face. She forced herself to keep composed, ignored the urge to turn and run, to get as far away from that dead black gaze as she could.
Zafir only studied her for a few moments, but it seemed like an eternity. Then his attention floated back to something trivial, and she felt the tendrils of his embrace recede. She allowed the slightest hint of a shiver to escape, dissipating the tension, and then she returned to the façade like there’d been no disturbance at all.
Wayne was saying something.
She turned to him with lustful eyes. ‘What was that?’
‘I said, how about a taste of the Ace of Spades?’
She glanced at the eight-gallon monstrosity. ‘I don’t know… is there enough to go around?’
He laughed, and she knew she’d ensnared him — hook, line, and sinker.
He moved to the table and, with the help of his two bodyguards, hoisted the gargantuan bottle horizontally and filled an empty glass. His hired help were spec-ops washouts — they palpably stood out from the rest of Sapphire’s patrons. Ruby had read their files, and knew all their military history, including a pair of dishonourable discharges, but instead of recalling all the finer details and clouding her focus she labelled them “Large” and “Small” in her head. One was six-five, at least a few inches taller than the rest of Wayne’s entourage, and the other was somewhere around five-eight. In unsurprising macho fashion, Small had overcompensated for his stature by becoming a literal cube of muscle. He was already thick and squat and hairy, but now his proportions looked ridiculous in the slate grey suit, with dense corded muscle forged from years of powerlifting.
She didn’t underestimate him.
She knew he could break every bone in her torso with a crushing bear hug.
Her training hadn’t made her superhuman.
But it had made her tactical.
Wayne came back with the glass and handed it over. She feigned taking a long swig, but only let a few drops of the champagne pass between her teeth. A practiced, calculated motion that she’d perfected before she was sixteen.
Whatever the man in front of her was focusing on, it sure wasn’t the level of liquid in the glass.
Wayne steeled himself against the rush of motion as a particularly bass-heavy track thundered over the speakers, and a dozen girls around him began to gyrate to the beat.
The whole time, he didn’t take his eyes off Ruby.
She noticed.
She stared back.
Unsure how to play it. Whether to attempt to sneak him off to a bathroom and initiate the interrogation there, or wait until…
Wayne took her by the hand.
She steeled herself, a thousand possibilities running through her head. A thousand ways this could go. Ninety percent of them didn’t have a fairytale ending.
He guided her toward a massive arched window facing Port Hercules. There was a similarly giant window on each tier of Sapphire. This one seemed to sport the best view of the lot. Perhaps that’s why Wayne had chosen it. He could certainly afford the fourth tier — he’d deliberately opted for the third.
She pretended she was drunk, and stopped by the window, and let out a fake sigh of giddiness when Wayne put his hand on the small of her back. Palm to skin, all thanks to the backless dress.
She could practically feel his excitement.
He pointed over her shoulder, out the window, and said, ‘You see that?’
She followed the trajectory.
His finger like a laser pointer, highlighting a massive superyacht, well over two hundred feet long, white and spotless and shiny, four tiered decks just like Sapphire’s oversized staircase. A helipad on the top, and what appeared to be an outdoor gymnasium on the deck underneath it. All the equipment was covered in weatherproof sleeves, even though the night was warm and balmy.
More obscene wealth.
Where does it end?
Wayne said, ‘That’s my boat.’
She turned into him and said, ‘I figured.’
He smiled. ‘Want to see it later?’
‘I want to see it now.’
6
He stood there, chewing his lower lip, wrapped up in all the emotions men face when they compare what they could do with what they should do.
But Aaron Wayne was a billionaire for a reason, and Ruby watched cold prioritisation fill his eyes, forcing down the more primal thoughts.
Ruthless, through and through.
He said, ‘I’d love to. But I have guests.’
‘Bring them.’
‘They wanted to come here,’ Wayne said. ‘If I had it my way, I never would have stepped foot off the boat. It’s that good. This—’ he waved his hand around, ‘—is a farce.’
She knew he was saying what he thought she wanted to hear. He could tell there was more to her than meets the eye, but he hadn’t deciphered her. So he was throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck.
She batted her lashes and said, ‘You know me too well.’
‘Do I?’ he said with a smirk.
Took her by the hand again, and led her back to his private booths.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Mingle. Make small talk with my friends. We’ve got all the time in the world later.’
‘Do we?’ she purred.
One last lust-drenched attempt to change his mind.
He turned and said, ‘I hope so.’
She realised Wayne never changed his mind.
She nodded.
What seemed like a harmless conversation signified her first failure of the night. There was no longer a quick end to the operation in sight, but she’d been prepared for that. Wayne wandered off to speak to Zafir, and both sets of bodyguards discreetly bled into a makeshift perimeter. The girls probably didn’t even notice. They drank Ace of Spades and talked loudly amongst each other and gave shrill over-the-top laughs in attempts to get Wayne’s attention.
Ruby counted eight of them in total.
Seven were ordinary.
One wasn’t.
T
he stand-out was reserved, but it was deliberate. Not shy, just graceful. Her skin was as bronze as Ruby’s. She had piercing green eyes and straight black hair that fell forward in bangs, stopping a hair shy of her eyelashes. Her lips were thin, and she dripped with seduction. She was drunk or high — her eyes had a milkiness to them, and her gaze didn’t linger anywhere for very long — but she wasn’t letting it affect her composure.
Ruby liked that.
Then the woman’s gaze did linger. She saw Ruby and stopped in her tracks, suddenly registering that there was a fresh face. She fetched a full glass of champagne off the table, waltzed across the space, and offered it with a raised eyebrow. She still hadn’t said a word.
Ruby took it.
Thought about trying the same sip-through-the-teeth trick, but the woman had no interest in her physically. She wasn’t distracted. She’d notice if the level didn’t change.
Ruby lifted the glass to her lips and drank half its contents. It went down smooth, like liquid velvet. She couldn’t help but admit it was damn good.
She hoped it didn’t cloud her judgment.
The woman smiled.
She said, ‘You’re new.’
Her accent was exotic, maybe African.
Morocco, perhaps?
Ruby said, ‘I know.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Ruby.’
‘That’s not what I meant, darling.’
Ruby paused. ‘Who are you?’
‘Nadia.’
‘That’s not what I meant, either.’
Nadia leant in, so she was inches from Ruby’s ear. Ruby felt her warm breathiness. She didn’t personally swing both ways, but she knew Nadia would be able to tempt anyone on the fence.
Nadia said softly, ‘What do you want with Aaron?’
Ruby shrugged, injecting her eyes with the haze of booze. ‘I don’t know yet.’
