Chapter Text
October 31, 2020
Venus moved silently and carefully past the displayed art in the mansion’s second-floor hallway. Despite the raucous party that had taken place into the small hours of the morning, or perhaps because of it, the upstairs hallway of the mansion was lifeless and silent in the light of the soft predawn that reflected off the distant ocean and in through the wall of windows that made up the other side of the hallway. Evidence of the party was everywhere, in the form of smudges on the windows, a discarded pair of women’s panties under one of the indirectly lit works of art on the walls, and even the stain of spilled red wine on the gold-traced cream carpet of the upstairs hallway. Tydeus, Spark, and Neptune were already busy downstairs, if they had stopped grumbling about being on cleaning duty, but Venus might need to prowl the subbasement for anyone else who was not on assignment in the beds of the guests.
Thoughts about the fine details of running the mansion were a deliberate distraction from Venus’s anxiety. She was not used to feeling anxiety. But then, she could not precisely remember the last time she had been called in for an audience with the old mister. There had been regular updates when he had given her to his son, who she now called mister, to be his ‘secretary’ – the keeper of his calendar and the supervisor of his stable of pets, the most powerful position that a pet could be in herself – but over time, they had tapered off. He hadn’t given her orders or asked for favors in a long time.
One of those favors had been to write the complex program that shifted the old mister’s business holdings around to avoid taxes. That program included a series of microtransactions that had, built within them, small rounding errors that shunted money off into a different series of accounts. Venus’s accounts. Over the years, those accounts had grown quite plump.
She had never known what she intended to do with the accounts other than have her girls as the beneficiaries. The point had been merely to have them, to have the options, and to leave something for her girls when she died. When the mister’s increasingly volatile behavior of late, and in the knowledge that the old mister was dying and would no longer be able to reign in his son’s worst excesses, Venus had been glad for her rainy-day fund.
Knowledge was power. Money was power. That Venus had access to both had allowed her to implement the first steps of her escape plan faster than she’d thought possible. This meeting, coming so shortly after the first time she had transferred anything out of her accounts was, well. ‘Highly concerning’ would be an understatement.
Without quite paying attention to how she got there, Venus arrived at the massive double-doors to the old mister’s suite. Anxious energy thrummed through her veins. As one hand rested on the cool metal of the golden doorknob, ready to turn, her fingers slipped into the pocket of her silky black skirt. There, along the inside seam, was the smaller sleeve for the syringes. One full of a powerful, opiate-based sedation drug, the second full of a neutralizer. One syringe to knock you out, the other to keep you from dying if the dose was too strong. The full-strength dose in the sedative had been measured a man at least twice her weight.
It was her way out. Like all things Venus had done in her life, it had been practiced and measured. A slight slip upward of the neutralizer to get it out of the inset cap, a hard shove with the thumb to empty it while drawing the second syringe from its sheath. That would go into her thigh through the skirt. Unless Hera was present in the room, by the time they found a neutralizer, she would be dead.
Death was not the worst thing that could happen to a person in the mansion.
Reassured that she had options, Venus turned the golden knob under her hand, eased the door inward, slipped through the crack it made, and closed it behind her. Her anxiety led to a heightened awareness, bringing details into focus that she might otherwise have simply glossed over.
The inside of the old mister’s suite hadn’t changed much over the years. As Venus stepped from the carpeted hallway into the hardwood-floored suite foyer, it was like stepping backward in time. The old mister’s foyer was a shrine to his younger self. The heavy, old-world-style furniture released the subtle aroma of citrus-based wood polish into the air. Antique mountaineering gear and antique guns were displayed in their cases along the walls, among framed photographs. The old mister, on the peak of Mount Elbrus. The old mister, one foot posed on the body of a male lion. A framed photograph of a seaside resort, the colors faded by age, next to a framed set of blueprints. The fireplace mantle was scattered with awards and trophies.
Venus’s old owner kept his things of value close and private. They had value because they had meaning to him. Her current owner kept his things of value – like his golden panther mask – out in the den because they had value only if he could show them off.
No one was in the foyer and the lights were on low, but the warm yellow glow of the old mister’s lamps shone from the open door to his bedroom. There were rugs under the furniture in the sitting area, but Venus didn’t need the rugs to walk silently. She paused just outside the threshold of visibility, taking a slow breath to steady herself and to place her face in neutral lines.
That she needed to steady herself again established how anxious she was. She reminded herself that the syringe was in her pocket, if she needed a way out.
Venus crossed the threshold, chin bowed, and knelt on the hard floor. Doing so made her knees ache. She felt like a woman in her prime, but sometimes her body disagreed with her.
Despite the sensation of returning to the past, some things were far too present. The smell of the mister’s musky aftershave was still there, but it didn’t quite cover that the room smelled of antiseptic and urine.
“Venus.” The old mister’s voice was no longer the booming voice that it had been, commanding and strong. The treatments for the lung cancer that was now killing him had reduced him, voice and person both, to a raspy shell of what he used to be. But the cadence of command was still there.
“Yes, sir.” In Venus’s ears, the deference in her voice was real.
Abasing herself to the old mister never had the sense of mockery that she brought to her abasing herself to his son, called the mister, or his grandson, called the young mister. This was the man who had taken her from her family and broken her. That she had adapted and later come to thrive in her new environment did not erase those old scars or keep her mind from dropping entirely into the old patterns.
“You may look up.”
Venus lifted her chin. What she saw gave her pause.
This room was no longer as it always had been. As well as the yellow-shaded lamps that were lit, there were also smaller, brighter LED lamps that were presently turned off. Of the old mister’s play equipment, there was no sign. Where there once had been a similarly heavy, old-world-style poster bed under the window-banked wall across from the walk-in closet and the bathroom, there was now a much larger empty space and an adjustable hospital bed. On the far side of the bed, she could just see the top of a too-modern floor cabinet. On the near side was the mister’s wheelchair.
The old mister sat in his wheelchair, wearing one of his old, soft brown robes over the black sweater he favored, but with a thick, crocheted brown-and-white blanket over his lap. It had tassels. Tassels, for fuck sake.
Argia, the curvy and dark-haired pet that acted as his nurse in his old age, knelt in front of his chair in a prim and proper position. Like most of the pets, she wore only a skirt, but because she was one of the old mister’s, she had no golden rings through her nipples. Over her ears, she wore a pair of headphones. Being in the foreground and unusual, that caught Venus’s attention first.
Her attention second caught on the gun in the old man’s lap. Although she could only see the way his hand sat on a shape whose weight deeply indented the blanket, she knew that it would be one of his antique dueling pistols. Probably the one with the ivory handle. That one had been his favorite.
Venus was still sorting the visual information when the old mister spoke. His voice had some of the old boom of command under the rasp. “Keep your hands on your thighs, Venus. Right where they are.”
“Yes, sir.” The old man would know about Venus’s syringes. He had approved the protocol. Argia might have Narcan. Not because the old mister thought that she would kill herself – judging by the gun, he thought that the threat was to him, not that she was a threat to herself. The gun wouldn’t matter if she though he could make death clean and quick, but she didn’t think he could. Not with how bony his wrists had become.
Being caught and trapped were strange and terrible feelings. The evening before, Venus had felt powerful, in control of the board and with everything to gain. Strange how but a few hours could turn that into feeling as if she had nothing left to lose.
Still, she shouldn’t jump to conclusions, even if the timing and gun made it clear that things had gone terribly wrong. “Do you intend to kill me, sir?”
The old mister’s hawk-bright eyes studied Venus. The cancer had spread in his body like a drop of ink in a cup, but Argia had told her that he would not take the medications that affected his mind, pain be damned. “That depends. Why did you pull money from one of your accounts?”
Another blow to Venus’s control. That one struck her foundation. He had known about her stealing from him, but never punished her? Instead, had he simply watched to see what she would do with the money?
It was brilliant. It was something Venus would have done.
His raspy, wheezy voice didn’t sound weak to Venus’s ears anymore. “Answer me, Venus. Why. Did you access. That account?”
Her answer had to be believable. Which meant that, at least in some respect, it had to be true. Whatever else he knew about her giving money to Michael White, it had to track with her answer, or she might have more to lose than her life. This man knew where her daughters lived.
Venus lifted her chin a little farther, straightened her shoulders, and met the old mister’s piercing, steel-colored eyes. “It was part of putting an escape plan in place.”
His eyes registered no surprise. He also didn’t respond. A gesture of his wasted hand, ravaged by age and disease, indicated that she should go on.
Very well. “Sir, your son is dangerously erratic. I wasn’t going to leave myself or Neptune in his power.”
The old man’s eyes didn’t change, but his tongue tried to wet his lips. They were cracked and blistered, as they had been since early in his treatments. It wasn’t a tell that he had had when he had been her master. “And your daughters? And his, for that matter?”
“If they couldn’t be convinced, they’d be taken.” Her first lie. It seemed to slide past unnoticed.
“You have to know that we would find you. You set up half of the tracking plans and network yourself.”
Only half? What an underestimation.
Venus could have kept the disdain from her voice, but she didn’t. “You could, sir, even if I scrubbed the programs on my way out. But your son? Wasn’t a concern. He can barely keep the company you built for him afloat. He’s burned through most of his trust fund. I wasn’t going to go before you died, and the only thing he’d have then would be your fortune. I estimated that we could hide for longer than it would take him to burn through it.”
The fingers of the hand not on the gun tightened on the arm of his wheelchair. “And Mike would have covered for you.”
No. He didn’t know the real plan, then. Things were not so far gone as that.
“Yes,” she said.
Venus wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it hadn’t been for the old mister to close his intense eyes, for one hand to relax on the arm of his chair and the other to stop clutching his gun, or for him to loose a raspy sigh. Even from her distance, it smelled like the bad breath that the elderly seemed to have simply by reason of existing.
“He could burn through it in a decade or less.” The old man’s eyes opened. He looked physically pained. “The liquid assets, that is. He would have to start selling the holdings to maintain his lifestyle. And he would.”
“He would,” Venus agreed.
“So damned shortsighted. An empire it took generations to build, pissed away on gambling and ridiculously showy conspicuous consumption.”
Again, Venus agreed, though she held her tongue. To many ‘yes sirs’ would annoy him.
The old man’s eyes focused in on Venus from the distance. “I’m not sure which is the worst disappointment. Him. Or that you think I’ve slipped so far.”
Venus thought she knew what she was hearing, but she needed it confirmed, and she needed the details. She needed them right now. It was low-grade agony to refrain from trying to prompt him.
When his words came, they were music to her ears. “It isn’t going to him.”
It shouldn’t have been so shocking, but it was. There had never been a single inkling that, no matter what his son’s flaws were, this highly traditional man would disown him. She didn’t speak out of shock, though, she spoke to draw him out. “Sir, I’m not sure what you mean.”
The old man finally lifted his hand from his gun. He spread that and his other hand in the air like a pair of dusty old spiders. “Oh, he’ll get the Caribbean estate and a few of the minor holdings. If he tries to challenge the trusts, he’ll lose even those. The bulk is going to Junior.”
Venus wasn’t quite sure how giving the estate to his immature college-sophomore grandson would be better. “Sir, he’s so young. And impulsive, himself.”
The old man’s thin, cracked lips pressed. “Are you trying to advise me, Venus?”
“Yes, sir.” As if they had returned to their old relationship with each other. “I apologize if I’m out of line.”
The old man snorted. “You should be sorry. You were supposed to steer Randolph. Moderate him.”
And how was she supposed to have done that? The man before her had barely controlled his son, and he’d had the power of his purse-strings.
The old mister didn’t have to read her mind to read her expressions. His hands fell, and he rubbed the back of one spidery old hand with the thumb of the other. “lt was partially my fault. My mistake to wait until he was in his thirties to give you to him. I’d always thought he’d outgrow it, and you were simply too valuable.”
“Thank you, sir.” Well, since he seemed to appreciate her advice. “And you think I’ll do better with the young mister, sir?”
“Junior is much younger. More malleable. He’s spoiled, he’s impulsive, but he’s not an idiot. There’s still hope for him.” The old mister paused and the corner of his mouth trembled, a ghost of the old half-smile that used to be one of his tells just before giving a reward. “Besides, I don’t intend to leave you powerless. An old dog can still learn from experience.”
Venus’s mind stilled. “Not powerless, sir?”
The old man laughed, and for a moment, Venus heard the echo of his old, booming laugh, the one he’d used when he’d gotten one over on someone. “Not that much power, pet. Cotrustee with Sarah. She hates the idea of sharing with you, but she understands that it’s a full-time job, and she likes her lifestyle. Besides, she likes you. She knows you know your place.”
That the mister’s wife liked Venus at all was news, but that she liked Venus better than her husband wasn’t surprising.
Venus’s mind immediately tried to start spinning out plans, but she held a firm leash on it. With the old mister, she always needed her wits about her. “And Victoria, sir?”
The old man shrugged his too-thin shoulders. “Sarah’s fortune’s going to Victoria. She’ll just have to wait her turn.”
“I see.”
His steel-colored eyes bored holes into her. “Cancel your plans, Venus.”
“Yes, sir.” Even if the power wasn’t tempting, the thought of it being Sarah trying to track her down with the old man’s fortune behind her put an entirely different spin on things. Sarah had been a target of that plan as well, of course, but she was never the main target, and Venus was still not sure whether she could nudge Dancer – much less Fine Steak – into killing the entire family. And it had to be them. Venus needed her hands clean if something went wrong.
And then there was the power.
It was a good thing that the old mister had called her into his suite when he did. Regardless of what the he thought, it had passed the point where Venus could escape at any time. But why would she? She had had what she wanted. Power, control, respect. Neptune. If she was occasionally fucked by circumstances or the boss, how was that different from life outside?
It had been only the threat posed to her power and control that had driven her to act. The mister had chosen to keep Eteocles by his side against all of Venus’s advice and despite all of her manipulations. Eteo fueled the mister’s dangerous instability, and worse, when Eteo was with the mister on their outings, she was not even the loudest whisper in his ear.
Now, the old mister was holding even more power and control in his cupped hands and offering it out to her. Not only that, but legal recognition of her fictitious personhood as more than simply a name and Social Security number in the HR files. A cotrustee could not so easily disappear.
Venus bowed her head low. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you again.”
The old man’s sigh was melancholy. “I know you won’t, pet. Get up here and give me a kiss before you go.”
Venus unfolded up to her feet and crossed the floor to the old mister. Argia flinched away a little, unconsciously putting space between herself and the two people who had the power of life and death over her. Venus bent down and pressed her lips gently to the old mister’s cracked lips. It was like kissing parchment already scraped and dried. He rubbed her ass through her skirt, but for old times’ sake rather than from any amorous desire. Amor had fled his body quite some time ago.
When the golden doorknob was again under Venus’s palm, it was because she was closing the door from the other side. Her veins still thrummed with energy, but it was no longer the adrenaline-energy of anxiety. The electric pleasure that suffused her body was almost as good as orgasm but didn’t leave her sleepy.
She had things that she needed to see to, and she needed to see to them right away. Michael White would need to be told that her acceptance of his proposition to be an informant for his ‘powerful outside resource’ had been a test and that the misters now had blackmail material about him going outside of the cabal to solve his money problems. That sort of thing would get the entire cabal to turn on him and bring him down.
Venus still needed to determine who this powerful outside resource was, whether they actually had the means to do what White had promised, and if so, what their motivation was. The mister had more than a few rivals, but White could give her leads, and she now had his balls in a vice.
She would need to put the brakes on the plan to accelerate the misery in the basement, if not throw it entirely in reverse. She had been deliberately destabilizing things, tipping the entire basement toward a feeling of hopelessness so that jumping off the ship despite the sharks in the water would appear to be the least deadly option for the key players. She would need to work at righting the ship as soon as possible.
Could she convince the old mister to transfer power early? Not to her, that would be asking too much, but to put things in trust for the the young mister even before he died. She could phrase it as a mentorship plan, or ensuring that the mister’s challenge would have to come while the old mister was still alive, or…
Venus’s thoughts moved as fast as her footfalls on the carpet, as fast as the thumbs already working the blue-cased tablet she held in her hands. So much to do, and so little time to do it. It was good that that wasn’t different from her usual schedule.