J. Ward - Lover Avenged

So the guy who cared about very little was in charge of a hell of a lot.

John turned toward the velvet rope, not even bothering to be smooth about it. Surely this meant Xhex had to be…

She appeared at the head of the VIP section, looking like a billion bucks, as far as he was concerned: As she leaned into one of her bouncers so the guy could whisper in her ear, her body was so tight her stomach muscles showed through the second skin of her muscle shirt.

Talk about shifting in the seat. Now he was the one with the rearrangement issues.

As she marched through to Rehv’s private office, though, his libido went on ice. She was never the type who smiled much, but as she went by, she was grim. Just as Rehv had been.

Clearly, something was doing, and John couldn’t help the knight-in-shining-armor impulse that lit up in his chest. But come on, Xhex didn’t need a savior. If anything, she was the type who would be on the horse, fighting the dragon.

“You look a little tight there,” Qhuinn said quietly as Xhex went into the office. “Keep my offer in mind, John. I’m not the only one hurting, am I.”

“Will you excuse me,” Blay said, getting to his feet and taking out his red Dunhills and his gold lighter. “I need some fresh air.”

The male had started smoking recently, a habit Qhuinn despised in spite of the fact that vampires didn’t get cancer. John understood it, though. Frustration had to be worked out, and there was only so much you could do alone in your bedroom or with your boys in the weight room.

Hell, they’d all gained muscle weight over the last three months, their shoulders and arms and thighs outpacing their clothes. Made a guy think fighters had a point about no sex before matches. They kept adding hard pounds like this, they were going to look like a pack of pro wrestlers.

Qhuinn stared down into his Corona. “You want to get out of here? Please tell me you want to get out of here.”

John glanced at the door to Rehv’s office.

“Stay it is,” Qhuinn muttered as he signaled to a waitress, who came right over. “I’m going to need another of these. Or maybe a case.”

Rehvenge shut the door to his office and smiled tightly, to keep his fangs from making an appearance. Even without the show of canines, though, the bookie hanging between Trez and iAm was smart enough to know he was in deep shit.

“Reverend, what’s this all about? Why you calling me in like this?” the guy said in a staccato rush. “I was just working my business for you and suddenly these two-”

“I heard something interesting about you,” Rehv said, going around behind his desk.

As he sat down, Xhex came into the office, her gray eyes sharp. After she closed the door, she leaned back against it, better than any Master Lock when it came to keeping cheating sports bookies inside and prying eyes outside.

“It was a lie, a total lie-”

“You don’t like to sing?” Rehv leaned back in his chair, his numbed-out body finding a familiar position behind his black desk. “That wasn’t you popping a little Tony B for the crowd at Sal’s the other night?”

The bookie frowned. “Well, yeah…I got me some pipes.”

Rehv nodded at iAm, who was, as always, stone-faced. Guy never showed emotion, except when it came to a perfect cappuccino. Then you got a little bit of the bliss out of him. “My partner over here…he said you sang real well. Real crowd-pleaser. What did he sing, iAm.” iAm’s voice was all James Earl Jones, low and gorgeous. “‘Three Coins in the Fountain.’”

The bookie did a well-you-know jack-up of his slacks. “I got range. I got rhythm.”

“So you’re a tenor like good ol’ Mr. Bennett, huh?” Rehv shrugged out of his sable. “Tenors are my favorite.”

“Yeah.” The bookie glanced at the Moors. “Look, you mind telling me what this is about?”

“I want you to sing for me.”

“You mean, like, for a party? ’Cuz I’d do anything for you, you know that, boss. All you had to do was ask…I mean, this weren’t necessary.”

“Not for a party, although all four of us will enjoy hearing the performance. It’s to repay me for what you skinned off last month.”

The bookie’s face drooped. “I didn’t skin-”

“Yeah, you did. See, iAm is a fantastic accountant. Every week, you give him your reports. How much in on what teams and which spreads. Do you think no one does the math? Based on the games last month, you should have paid in-what was the figure, iAm?”

“One hundred seventy-eight thousand four hundred eighty-two.”

“What he said.” Rehv nodded a quick thanks to iAm. “But instead you came in at…What was it?”

“One hundred thirty thousand nine eighty-two,” iAm shot back.

The bookie started in immediately. “He’s wrong. He’s added-”

Rehv shook his head. “Guess what the difference is-not that you don’t already know. iAm?”

“Forty-seven thousand five hundred.”

“Which happens to be twenty-five grand on a ninety percent vig. Isn’t that right, iAm?” As the Moor nodded once, Rehv punched his cane into the floor and got to his feet. “Which in turn is the courtesy rate charged by the Caldie mob. Trez then went and did a little digging, and what did you find?”

“My boy Mike says he loaned twenty-five large to this guy right before the Rose Bowl.”

Rehv left his cane on the chair and came around the desk, keeping one hand on the surface to steady himself. The Moors stepped back into position, crowding the bookie, holding his upper arms again.

Rehv stopped right in front of the guy. “And so I ask you once more, did you think no one was going to double-check the math?”

“Reverend, boss…please, I was going to pay you back-”

“Yeah, you are going to make good on it. And you’re paying my vig for fucktards who try to play me. One hundred and fifty percent due at the end of this month or your wife’s going to see you mailed back to her in pieces. Oh, and you’re fired.”

The guy burst into tears, and they weren’t the crocodile kind. These were real, the sort that made the man’s nose run and his eyes puff up. “Please…they were going to hurt me-”

Rehv snapped his hand out and clamped on between the guy’s legs. The poodle yelp told him that even though he couldn’t feel anything, the bookie could, and the pressure was in the right spot.

“I don’t like being stolen from,” Rehv said into the man’s ear. “Cranks my shit right out. And if you think what the mob was going to do to you was bad, I will guarantee you that I am capable of worse. Now…I want you to sing for me, motherfucker.”

Rehv twisted hard and the guy screamed for all he was worth, the sound loud and high, echoing in the low-ceilinged room. When the shriek began to trail off because the bookie had exhausted his air supply, Rehv relented and gave him a chance to refresh those pipes with some gasping. And then it was-

The second scream was louder and higher than the first, proving that vocalists did do better after a little warm-up.

The bookie jerked and jangled in the hold of the Moors, and Rehv kept at it, his symphath side watching raptly, like this was the best show on television.

It took about nine minutes until the guy lost consciousness.

After it was lights-out, Rehv let go and returned to his chair. One nod and Trez and iAm took the human through the back way, into the alley, where the cold would revive him eventually.

As they left, Rehv had a sudden image of Ehlena balancing all those boxes of dopamine in her arms as she came into the exam room. What would she think of him if she knew what he did to keep his business running? What would she say if she knew that, when he told a bookie he either paid up or his wife got FedEx packages that leaked blood on her doorstep, it wasn’t a threat? What would she do if she knew that he was fully prepared to do the slice-and-dice himself or order Xhex, Trez, or iAm to do it for him?