3. Sinclair
Sinclair
I’ve made our meetup sound as casual as possible: Wanna grab a shake after training? In reality, it’s far from casual, because I have an agenda. But I’m damned if I’m letting Wolff know that.
Given that he and I both work for our families’ companies (and yeah, I know what they call guys like us, thanks), it’s not a huge surprise that we’re both based on Park Avenue.
Felix’s dad may have founded the conglomerate Wolff Holdings only a few decades ago, but it’s a fucking behemoth with offices on every continent.
Its market value is almost double what ours is—something he likes to remind me of on a regular basis—but Voss, Inc.
is a hundred years older than Wolff and, as a consumer goods empire, far more focused in its specialties.
We also have far more generational wealth, something I like to remind him of on a regular basis.
We really put our backs into today’s calisthenics class.
Our instructor is a former navy SEAL and a sadistic mofo.
It’s a forty-five-minute lunchtime class at our local branch of the K Klub, situated on Park and Fifty-First. And no, the K Klub isn’t the latest Kardashian venture but the creative output of our buddy Kieran—also an Alchemy member—who’s killing it with his rollout of these gyms. The VC money pouring into this guy’s pockets is disgusting.
Afterward, Wolff and I sit at the bar, drenched with sweat and chugging electrolytes as the server blends the protein shakes we’ll have in lieu of lunch. We make small talk—Voss’s share price, Wolff’s share price—until he asks, “Any joy at Alchemy last night?”
Bingo.
“Nah. Did a circuit, didn’t like the look of anyone.” Not a line I’ve ever had to utter before.
“You sad fuck. Do you think we’ve shagged everyone in Manhattan by now?”
“Feels like it, sometimes. Say, who was that woman behind the bar—Elyse, I think you called her?” I feign indifference as I ask the question, but he chuckles.
“Voss, Voss, Voss. You’re as transparent as a windowpane, mate. So you did see someone you liked the look of.”
I shrug churlishly. “No one upstairs, so it doesn’t count.”
“I suppose not. Thanks, bro.” He takes his shake from the server and slurps noisily at it before the guy hands me mine. “You’re right,” he says. “Never seen her upstairs. So it’s kind of irrelevant who she is, right?”
I exhale slowly through my nose. “Dude. Who the fuck is she?”
“Look, I don’t know, all right? She’s new—started a few weeks ago. Pixie introduced us. Seems sweet. I don’t know much more than that.”
Impatience wars with discretion and wins. “I asked her if she ever played upstairs, and she blew me off.”
That gets a hearty laugh out of him. “Bloody hell. An actual human female turns down some prime Voss sausage. That’s got to be a first.”
“Fuck you. And it is, actually.” I take an unhappy slurp of my shake. “So I need your help… you know, getting her.”
“Getting her?”
I give him a curt nod of affirmation.
“Mate, we have this quaint little custom in the U.K., and it’s called consent.
I assume it’s made it across the Atlantic by now?
I cannot ‘get’ her for you. I can’t make someone fuck you if they don’t want to—and, to be honest, I’d rather shake the girl by the hand for being a truly excellent judge of character. ”
For fuck’s sake. “She must have a price,” I mutter around my straw. “Everyone has a price.”
“And this is why you’re my favorite capitalist. But you see, some women still find sex for money morally repugnant. Shocking, I know.”
“I’m serious.” I turn to him. “Who at Alchemy do I need to hit up to lock this down? Can I get a proposal to her some way?”
“I am so tempted to set my stepmother on you next time she’s over,” he says. “She’d have your WASPy little guts for garters. But until then, like, what do you actually want?”
What do I want?
I want her.
I want her to myself.
I want her tied up and bent over and willing to let me do whatever the fuck I want to her, because—and I would die before admitting this to Wolff—her face is the reason I didn’t get myself laid last night, and it’s also the only thing I thought about during that fucking strength class just now.
I like to move on shit when the urge strikes me; I like to close, and fast.
I want to close on her.
And fast.
“An hour with her,” I blurt out. “I want an hour in a private room with her.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding weary, “so what’s your offer?”
I do some quick math. Assuming she works, say, four shifts a week, she can’t be on more than twenty-five hundred a month before tips. “Ten grand,” I say. “For an hour.” Surely even Miss Absolutely Not can’t turn up her cute little nose at four months’ salary for an hour?
“I’ll take it to Katrin,” he says impassively, and I inwardly cringe like a schoolboy.
Katrin, the club’s general manager, is formidable, to say the least. Apparently, Wolff’s stepmom hired her personally to rule it with an iron fist. He says overprivileged little shits like us (his stepmom’s phrase) need to know they answer to someone both female and indomitable so that we don’t try to overstep, or blur lines, or indulge in any of the other liberties that we might think our wealth and status entitles us to.
I should probably pray hard that word of my proposal for Elyse doesn’t reach his family’s ears. But hey, who cares? She’s an adult. I’m an adult. I’m offering her a lot of money for the privilege of showing her a good time. There are many women who’d pay me ten grand to fuck me.
More to the point, I want her. And I always get what I want.
“Thanks,” I tell Wolff.
He hops off his barstool, grabbing his to-go cup. “I’m hitting the showers. I assume this was the pretext for inviting me to share this special beverage with you?”
“Fuck off,” I say instead of the truth, which is far too embarrassing.
He gives me a little nod. “Thought so.”
“Jesus Christ.” He’s so tiresome. “Look,” I say. “Just make the call, would you?”