Page 14 of Black Reign

We've made a lot of them tonight.

The models arrived around seven.

Not my idea.

Drew swears it wasn't his either, which means it was absolutely his.

Five women. Champagne. Cases of imported German beer. French wine nobody is sober enough to appreciate. A humidor of Cuban cigars Tristan produced without explanation and refused to explain even after Haverhill asked whether importing them involved an international incident.

Dinner came first. Five courses at a restaurant overlooking the marina where each plate had four bites of food and a paragraph-long description.

Then Vale took us to some hole-in-the-wall club in Antibes—Haverhill's words.

The hole in the wall had velvet booths carved into ancient stone, a seventy-thousand-euro sound system, private security, and champagne bottles arriving with sparklers.

Apparently definitions have evolved.

Now it's after two in the morning. The French coast is a ribbon of lights behind us, stars scatter across a black Mediterranean, and every man aboard is somewhere between drunk and useless.

Except me.

I'm drunk.

Not useless.

There's a distinction.

“BLACKWELL!”

I turn toward the stern.

Drew has lost his shirt.

That happened at some point after the club.

I don't know where it went, and I don't care enough to reconstruct the timeline.

He's also acquired the captain's hat.

It doesn't belong to him.

He lifts both beer bottles over his head.

“This is the greatest country in the world.”

Vale raises his head from the floating swim platform behind the yacht.

He's stretched across a pool noodle with one ankle hooked over the other. A floating drink caddy bobs beside him, tethered to his wrist like an emergency medical device.

His Scotch sits safely in the center.

“We're in France.”

Drew pauses.

Looks toward shore.

Looks back.