DEAL WITH THE DEVIL #4
“Your brother will be dead by morning. Your parents will follow him by noon.
The paper your brother already signed will make all three of those deaths lawful, in the only court that would ever hear of them, which means no one comes looking, no one asks a single question, and the three of them simply stop existing in any record anyone will ever be permitted to check.
That is what happens if you don't sign, Mr. Venn. I would like you to have asked, so that later, whatever you decide to believe about tonight, you cannot tell yourself I let you sign this without knowing exactly what the alternative cost.”
“You're a fucking monster.”
“Yes.”
“You don't even pretend otherwise.”
“I find pretending tedious, Mr. Venn. I have been doing this a very long time. Tedium, at this point in my life, is the only thing I am still genuinely afraid of, and I would rather you hate me honestly than like me under false pretenses.”
He held the look another half second, and I held it back, refusing to be the one who looked away first, even though every nerve ending in the front half of my body was actively campaigning against my staying still.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, grounding myself in the small, specific pain of it, and did not move my hips, no matter how badly they wanted otherwise.
“Bring my brother here. I want him in this room, where I can see him, before I sign anything.”
He looked at me a moment longer, his expression unreadable in a way that felt deliberate rather than accidental. Then his thumb left my jaw, and he stepped back half a pace, unhurried, and turned his head toward the door without ever fully taking his eyes off me.
“Mateo.”
The door opened, and Mateo walked in, apparently unbothered by the tension still hanging in the room.
“Boss.”
“Bring Mr. Venn's brother.”
“Yes, boss.”
He left, and I stepped away from the bookcase, my shoulder blades protesting the sudden loss of anything solid to lean against.
“You are angrier than I expected,” Draco said, watching me with an attention that felt, for the first time since I had walked into this office, almost like genuine curiosity rather than calculation.
“Are you serious right now?”
“I expected fear. Most men who walk into this room for the first time come in afraid, and I find it useful information, knowing what I am dealing with before I decide how to speak to him.”
“Well, I'm furious, actually, so you'll have to recalibrate.”
“Noted.”
I closed my eyes for a second, just to have a moment that belonged only to me.
I could still feel exactly where his thumb had been. The skin under my jaw still carried the warmth of it, a small, precise point of heat that refused to fade no matter how hard I tried, through sheer will, to make it.
The door opened again, and I opened my eyes.
Mateo stood in the doorway with a hand under Remy's elbow, and Remy looked exactly the way he had in the photograph, and somehow slightly worse in person, the way photographs always undersell the truth of a person's face. He saw me and started to cry immediately, without any preamble at all.
“Nico.”
“Hey.”
“Nico, I'm so... Nico, I am so sorry, man, I am so sorry, I...”
“Hey. Hey. Look at me.” He looked at me, eyes wet and red rimmed. “Are you hurt?”
“I... I'm...”
“Are you hurt, Remy? Yes or no.”
“No. I mean. The lip. The eye. They're not... he's not doing... they fed me. I had a sandwich.”
I almost laughed, despite everything, despite the room, despite the paper sitting behind me with my future written into it in someone else's handwriting. “Okay.”
I looked at Draco. He had not moved from where he stood, but he was watching me carefully, and I understood, without either of us saying it out loud, exactly what he was waiting for me to decide.
“Mateo,” Draco said, when I did not immediately speak. “Take Mr. Venn's brother to the small room off the kitchen. Tea, if he can manage to keep it down. Ice, if we have it, for the lip.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Wait.”
He looked at me. “Yes.”
“He stays in the house tonight,” I said.
“As long as you are signing this contract, he stays in this house, under my roof and under my protection, until I personally deliver him, on his own two feet, to a place of his own choosing.”
“And my parents?”
“Your parents will be safe. That was true before you walked into this room, and it will remain true regardless of what you decide to do next, though I would prefer, for reasons that are becoming increasingly personal to me, that you sign.”
I felt my balance tip for half a second and then right itself, and I looked at Remy.
“Go with Mateo.”
“Nico...”
“Go with him. I'll be right here. I'm not going anywhere tonight.”
“Nico, please...”
“Go.”
He went, and the door closed behind him and Mateo both.
I stood at the desk. I looked down at the contract, its cream pages waiting, and then I looked, for one more long second, at the man standing on the other side of it, who had not, through any part of the last twenty minutes, once sat down.
“Where do I sign.”
“Bottom of page three. Both copies.”
I picked up the pen, and I signed.