Page 4 of State of Ruin

Most nights, though, my philosophical questions go unasked, because I’m just too darn tired to think. Most nights, my focus goes on keeping my wits about me as I speed-walk through the deserted streets of Meatpacking to Fourteenth Street. Tonight, I do more sprinting than running, a mace spray gripped tightly in my hand. We closed up a little late, and I’m desperate to catch my usual train. Forty minutes on an empty platform I do not need. Right now, it’s the end of September, and the weather is New York-perfect. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when winter comes.

I make the train and listen to my Hoopla audiobook as we trundle under the Hudson. There’s an all-too-regular calendar alert on my lock screen for nine a.m. tomorrow: Sylvie - hospital. When the train spits me out at Hoboken, I make my way out of the station as quickly as possible. My shifts at Alchemy end later than at The Mark, and that means there’s no light rail to get me home. Instead, the endless conflict of taking more pain for more money casts its ripple effect outward.

But it doesn’t matter, because this is a team effort. We pool whatever shattered remnants of our energy we have left, and we pool whatever money we scrounge together from those remnants. Case in point: the headlights of the fifteen-year-old truck idling across the street. I smile, even as my heart breaks a little more. We all do our piece, and this is his.

I pull open the door and climb up into the truck, mustering up a smile for the man waiting for me. If I’m tired, he’s exhausted—and we both have to be up again in five hours. I stuff my bag at my feet and lean across the cab to kiss him on his bearded cheek.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, pulling blindly on my seatbelt.

“Hey, baby. There’s my girl.”

I let my head fall back against the headrest as he pulls the truck out of the bay and we head into the night.

CHAPTER 3

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.”