Chapter 3 #2
I huff. Fair. While I can bankroll most of the Bronx Children’s Hospital myself, I need sharks like them to make the twelve-story miracle happen.
This way, they’ll get their profit from the commercial floors—offices, pharmacy, café spaces, and whatever squeezed blood from stone.
A mission-hybrid model. I get the hospital; they get long-term revenue. Everyone wins.
Max claps once. “Enough philanthropy. Get to the filth that keeps the lights on. The Game. Who’s top of the list?”
On paper, Liam’s a ruthless investor who’d rather be stitching up alpacas or dreaming about being a sheriff, and Max runs hotels because it gives him an excuse to tinker with robots.
Their “bar” in the Hudson Valley is just another quiet asset: no signage, no socials, no walk-ins.
To the select few who cross those doors, it’s The Velvet Trap.
Nobody outside the inner circle knows I own the damn place, and that’s exactly how I like it.
The Trap is discreet, but never invisible. With a manor of that size and guests in masks and elaborate dress passing its doors, it was bound to stir talk. Yet only a handful know where the trail truly leads, down to the deepest layer of my life’s anatomy.
The Velvet Game.
My design. The Trap is the shell, but the Game makes it a sin-soaked machine.
And it works. An underground cure that patches marriages, clears heads, and scratches itches people won’t name in daylight.
Before anyone takes a step, the terms are set: rules, consent, boundaries. Nothing in the Game runs loose.
For all that, I’m doing the city a fucking favor.
Liam grins. “Mariposa Lily.”
Max whistles low. “Right. The jet broker.”
Mariposa Lily. It’s not her government name, obviously.
But that’s the mask we gave her when she entered the circle, vouched for by the client who keeps The Trap’s shelves lined with things you can’t buy without a private banker and a miracle.
Mariposa is private-aviation royalty, the woman behind those $150K-a-week “vanish from the earth” holiday packages.
“She finally cleared the waitlist?” I ask.
“Fresh signature.” Liam taps his phone.
I’m genuinely pleased. Inducting a new client is rare enough, but inducting a powerful young woman who forged her own crown tastes even better.
I lean back, my beer sweating in my hand.
I’m no saint. I never claimed to be. Saints don’t walk into hell and come out useful.
When the Game runs, I become someone else.
It’s the only charge strong enough to keep me operating above ground.
Dr. Marcus Lockwood doesn’t survive the pressure, the threats, and the backlash by chanting positive affirmations.
The Game is where I remember I have a pulse, without a hundred eyes waiting to judge the next move.
It’s honey without pretending the bees don’t exist.
And spare me the faux-moralizing. We’re not commitment-phobic losers. The Game was never about love, and I’m not here passing out fake affection like counterfeit bags. It’s about pleasure earned, not emotion owed.
“So what does Mariposa want?” I ask.
“Don’t tell me she’s claustrophilic,” Max says.
“Well, she’s not asking for a CT scanner,” Liam deadpans.
I rub the bridge of my nose. I didn’t work that job, but the recap was enough to give me PTSD by proxy. He called it erotic. I called it radiology porn.
“She wants an auction,” Liam adds.
I smile sideways. The woman has good taste.
I miss the era when the Game didn’t sprawl into half the city. When a five-course dinner could turn into a blindfold kidnapping, and a kidnapping could turn into the kind of night you crawled out of on shaking legs—grateful, wrecked, and starving to be wrecked again.
But power attracts more power, and dreams get stranger, so we adapt. If someone wanted a medieval torture tableau under the Met, we delivered. If someone wanted a CT-scan machine, we’d damn well find a CT-scan machine.
An auction, though, brings the main event back home and back under my roof. A clean hit of nostalgia with a side of danger.
“Do we need to screen a plus-one?” Max asks.
Liam shakes his head. “Nope. She’s going solo. Fresh breakup. Cheating ex.”
Max snorts. “Who cheats on a woman who finally hits the top of the Velvet Game waitlist?”
“One who didn’t know she made the list,” Liam says.
I look between them. “Any doubts about her?”
Liam shakes his head. “Background checks are all green. She’s legit.”
Max meets my gaze. “And I trust her.”
I nod.
We build trust like currency and respect like oxygen, especially when the partners change, which they often do.
If you follow the rules, you get the night.
If you break them, you’re out. No spillage, no awkward half-excuses, and none of that “I had a good time but…” rejection dressed as courtesy. If you’re in, you’re in. Cleanly.
We vet every player—background, boundaries, temperament—because one wrong motive in the wrong room can burn the whole thing down. Boundaries aren’t optional. They’re the spine of the Game, and most players follow the rules for the collective. Everyone has something to lose if it breaks.
Does it still go sideways sometimes? Of course. Humans aren’t neat. But it’s nothing we haven’t been able to repair, except the occasional fantasy of something lasting forever. That one’s harder to fix.
“Let’s find a bidder for her,” I say.
Both brothers look at me then.
And they keep looking.
“I’m not playing,” I cut in.
“Not playing?” Max groans, his voice dropping into that low growl I use when I’m in Wolf’s skin. Then, back in his normal voice, he grumbles, “Christ, you’re no fun anymore.”
“Why don’t either of you jerks step in then?” I shoot back.
Liam smirks. “Don’t act like you’ve been busy playing. We’ve been playing while you’ve been Mr. Above-Ground. Tell me Pompeo didn’t neuter you with all those interviews.”
“Shut the fuck up. My dick works just fine.” I take a long, unhurried pull of my beer. “And newsflash, I don’t need an erection to run the Game. I’m the architect.”
Max barks out a laugh. “The Trap’s doomed!”
Liam is more subdued, as if his concern is real. “Yeah, he can sculpt an ass out of nothing. Pity he can’t pick a woman worth half that effort.”
They’re joking, mostly. But the silence between my breaths isn’t.
I pick partners the way I pick patients.
Mariposa Lily is a temptation on legs, but I haven’t forgotten the last time I slipped.
I trusted a partner who knew the rules as well as I did, and she still crossed a line you don’t come back from.
One betrayal was enough to strip the honey out of the whole thing and leave me with nothing but the stings.
The fantasy, the promise, the trust, all rotted from the center.
So no. I don’t grab the next warm body just to fill a role. If I ever play again, it won’t be for the Game. It’ll be because of her, whoever she turns out to be.
And Mariposa is not her.
Still, the Game doesn’t stop because I’m staying out of the heat. The Velvet Trap isn’t some vanity project on a balance sheet. It’s flesh and risk and design, same as surgery, just lit from a darker angle.
“I know just who to bring into the Game,” I decide. “Trust me. By sunrise, she’ll be rethinking her definition of ‘satisfied.’”
Max lifts his glass. “Right. The matchmaker no one asked for and everyone depends on.”
My mind is already turning the pieces, assembling the skeleton of the night ahead. “We need mirrors,” I say. “A lot of mirrors.”