Chapter 4
Some people thrived on holding grudges.
August, unsurprisingly, was one of them.
It wasn’t a stretch for most people to believe; not given how strong his petty bitch vibes were, but his public persona didn’t even come close to the deep, downright unfathomable depths at which August held his dearest grudges. They practically had their own relationships at this point.
Ricardo wasn’t that sort of person. He knew how to be dispassionate both on and off the job; it was a necessity if he wanted to be a successful soldier.
He’d had to learn how to set his personal feelings aside and do the work in front of him, whether that was shooting someone a kilometer away or shaking hands with a person whose throat he’d happily slit under other circumstances.
That was why Ricardo had been the best assassin on RateYourHit—he was utterly professional and detached, whereas August…
Well. It was complicated. He’d been excellent, obviously, but that excellence came with a cost.
August could and would hold his hurts close to his chest for all eternity, from his loathing for the boy he’d gotten into a fistfight with when he was eight after the little shit called his sister, Elodie, a slut because she wore lipstick to school to anyone who ever tried to cross him on a job, as several of them had found out before their very timely deaths.
He could obsess with the best of them, and that trait had served him so well when it came to hunting down the people who murdered his brother that he’d never looked back, even when it drove him to make poor decisions down the line.
But he’d gotten a lot better over the years, especially after getting together with Ricardo.
A crack leading to the capacity for genuine forgiveness had opened in the wall around his heart.
He’d forgiven his parents for years of neglect and forgiven his brother-in-law for being a complete fucking moron behind his “I’m a super clever surgeon” facade. Forgiving people he loved came quickly.
Accepting Ricardo’s apologies—both the one he gave on the roof and the one that played out in bed—made it easy for August to be outright cheerful as he packed his bags—all seven of them—and made arrangements for one of Elodie’s private jets to take them from Valletta to Chicago.
This might just end up being more than a diversion to give Ricardo some enrichment so he didn’t sharpen his claws on the carpets. It might be fun.
The dossier Heidi had sent them certainly made it seem that way.
“Wow,” August remarked as he flipped through page after page of information on Jaxon Bremmer, the CEO and “leading mind” behind a new AI startup guaranteed to—“Apparently we’re going to revolutionize the future by evolutionizing the past in order to better acclimate to a present of great expectations, audacious hopes, and inchoate dreams that set us on a path to our best AI-accentuated lives. ”
Ricardo looked up from the spec manual he was skimming for his latest sniper rifle. “He didn’t actually say that.”
“He absolutely did,” August smugly informed his spouse.
“Look, he did a TED talk. It’s all there.
” He pulled up the video, and together they watched the techbro douchebag walk across the stage, taking extra-long strides as if to make up for the height he lacked.
He had the kind of hairline that wealthy men came back with after sojourns in discreet Turkish clinics and looked like he was trying to merge casual office attire—he’d trademarked that particular shade of blue in Chino, August had read—with black tie.
The cummerbund under his maroon tuxedo jacket was doing some heavy lifting.
They listened to the young-old-hard-to-say tech founder blather on for a few minutes about how his company was going to change everything about the way work was done in this country, how it was going to enhance the flow of creativity and the speed of scientific research, and how his specially branded “AI-ntrepreneurs” were soon going to be as indispensable to the average American as their cell phones were.
Ricardo snorted. “What an asshole. I knew he was already, but…”
“Yeah, listening to him speak really sells it,” August agreed. And he was going to get to meet with this odious specimen of a human being face to face, tell him exactly what he thought about him, and then watch with pleasure as he “evolutionized” from solid to slurry.
God, it was going to be amazing.
Even amazing things required setup, though.
Ricardo was the one taking the shot, so August happily recused himself from the planning for that aspect of things.
It wasn’t like he’d kept up on the latest and greatest technology in mobile, long-distance death machines, after all.
No, August’s responsibility was the approach itself.
He gave himself a full night to recover in their hotel in Chicago, a gorgeous old high-rise on the Magnificent Mile that was a monument to Art Deco sensibilities, then spent the next morning planning his attack.
“Easier said than done,” August mused over breakfast. “Bremmer is paranoid about sabotage after his business partner split from the company half a year ago. It was a whistleblower situation; their unicorn ended up losing over half its expected value right before their IPO.”
“A billionaire technophile with a sense of ethics?” Ricardo asked, disbelief plain on his face as he cut into his omelet.
“Hey, they could exist!” They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds before August began laughing. “No, actually Bremmer’s partner slept with his wife, now ex-wife, and she helped the guy walk away with a lot of company property thanks to a very loose prenup.”
Ricardo rolled his eyes. “Wonderful people all around.”
“I know.” The more August learned about Bremmer’s business practices, from his Mafia-style tactics with townships when it came to building data centers to the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct about him from women in his employ, the happier he got about the job.
“But the result of that karma hitting him so hard is that now he’s gun-shy about meeting with investors outside of highly choreographed circumstances with lots of witnesses around at every step.
The rest of the time he stays locked in his ‘think-tank.’” It wasn’t quite the easy job Heidi had led them to believe, but that just made it more interesting.
“I know you’ll figure it out,” Ricardo said, smiling as though he couldn’t quite help it. “You’re ridiculously charming.”
August melted a little inside at his husband’s faith in his abilities. “Thank you, sweetheart,” he purred. “Want to go back to bed and find out what else I’m ridiculously good at?”
Ricardo did, in fact, want to go back to bed and experience August’s expertise for himself. That pushed their job back yet again, but in the end, it was as simple as scheduling a treatment at the same spa Bremmer visited every weekend he spent in Chicago.
The room was thick with steam when August entered, his special sandals squeaking on the tile flooring.
He moved slowly toward the benches, completely shameless about the fact that he was breaking the calm, peaceful atmosphere of the room, then sat down with a loud sigh, crossed his feet at the ankles, and slowly pumped his ankles up and down as the heat from the steam seeped into his pores.
He’d already seen the client roster for the spa today; there were no more than two or three other people in the room with them, if that. He just had to annoy the right one for long enough, and then—
“Excuse me,” Bremmer’s irritated voice huffed from somewhere to August’s right. “But you shouldn’t have shoes on in the steam room.”
August laughed. “I’ve got special dispensation,” he said airily, tilting his head back and watching swirls of moisture cut through each other above his head. There was a sharp hiss as water was automatically poured onto the heated rocks in the corner, almost loud enough to drown out his squeaking.
He’d have to squeak harder, then.
Bremmer broke in less than thirty seconds. “The hell you’ve got special dispensation,” he growled. “Take those things off, or I’ll complain to the manager.”
“But I do,” August insisted. “With a doctor’s note and everything.”
August heard the squick-slick sound of skin detaching from the wooden bench, and a second later Bremmer himself emerged from the fog like a very lackluster ghost. At least he’d had the decency to wrap his towel around his midsection before showing himself.
Bremmer’s jaw was tight with indignation as he dropped his flinty gaze from August’s face to his feet. Comprehension came fast enough, though, followed by perhaps the faintest hint of shame. “Oh.”
“You’re welcome to speak to management about me,” August went on, “but given that the Mason Group is considering purchasing this property, I don’t think they’re going to side with you in a dispute right now.”
It was a delight to watch actual realization strike the man.
“Wait.” Bremmer blinked. “Are you—you’re not—are you—”
“Let me save you the trouble and just say ‘all the above,’” August said with a smile. “You’ve heard of me, then?”
“I mean…kind of.” The same way everyone at a certain level of wealth heard about the follies of their class. Even the nouveau riche had learned the cautionary tale of the Mason family. “I, uh, your…yes.” He pulled himself together. “Purchasing the property, huh? You like the spa that much?”
August smirked. “Not the spa, the entire building.”
Bremmer’s jaw dropped. “Ex…cuse me?”
“My sister is interested in expanding our operations in Chicago,” August said, still idly flexing and pointing his toes. Squeak…squeak…squeak. “She sent me to do some scouting for an appropriate location.”