30. Rhaim

30

RHAIM

T he main thing you should know about Wall Street is that financial crimes don't count.

Mostly because they're committed by white people and shit's deeply unfair, but also because on some level, the crime is the point of the whole thing.

It's all one giant gambling ring that the entire country's bought into, relying on the knowledge of investors and investor relations groups, comprised of a fleet of men and a handful of women, very few of them brown or Black, who get to decide whose stakes rise or fall based half on significant amounts of math and half on your ability to elicit a certain special feeling in their tummy.

And while there are no guarantees, at a minimum to succeed you will need one of at least three things: an actually good product or concept, the ability to tell lies on top of your dead mother's grave, or to have made the right connections along the way.

Which was why I was here at a secluded table in a quiet restaurant, meeting Nicholas Samson the Third, of the eponymous Samson Investment Corp.

"Rhaim," Samson said with a wolfish smile as he walked in, as I stood to shake his hand. He walked big, talked big, and was Nero's mirror in almost every way, except for the fact that he'd never had to scrape out blood from underneath his fingernails. The only things that'd left any residue on him had been either ivy or ivory. That fact made him no less shallow or venomous, however—in fact, if you asked most of these guys how hard their lives had been, their answer would've been very . I had learned, through numerous intentional conversations during which I'd been sober, letting drunken or high scions of industry chat me up and spill their guts, that it was very difficult to get through life when your rich father expects good grades and doesn't beat you every night.

"How long has it been?" he said—a thing which we both very well knew, because I had most definitely made eye contact with him when he'd been balls deep in a sex worker a few NIRI conferences ago. And no shade onto him, I'd had two on my arms, and we'd been looking for a third, because I'd placed a bet.

Only at that conference I'd been looking for industries for Corvo to invest into...to be the fuck er rather than the potential fuck ee.

"Too long," I said, rather than go into our shared history.

"I honestly couldn't believe it when you reached out." I'd been nebulous about the reason I wanted to catch up on purpose, hoping it would intrigue him enough to not damn me. "I just want you to know, whatever you're asking, the answer is yes."

My eyebrows rose. One of my skills was being quiet for long enough to let other people fill me in on what they were thinking.

"I don't say yes to just anyone, Rhaim. But I will double whatever that leathery asshole is paying you."

I let out a low chuckle.

"You've got a boat?" he went on, "I'll make it a yacht. You've got a yacht? I'll fill it with supermodels. On leashes. Everyone knows you're into that," he said with a wicked gleam in his eye.

It was also entirely okay to have vices on Wall Street, as long as you had the wherewithal to never let anyone else knowing about them get to you.

"I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea, Nick—but please know, I take your offer as a compliment."

He took a glance around the rest of the place. "Should I be worried about my personal safety, then?" he asked, smart enough to pick up on the fact that I'd made half of this restaurant's lunch invitations, paying thousands of dollars to ensure that no one was near our table to hear a goddamned thing.

"No, that shit's well behind me," I said. But not quite far back enough. "I'm afraid my actual reason for inviting you out is far more prosaic," I said. "I've got a business opportunity coming up, and I need to know which analysts over at NYSE I can trust, as determined by whoever you already have enough dirt on to make my job easy."

His eyelids lowered and he sucked his wide bottom lip. I hoped for his sake he never played poker, because that was an awful tell. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

I leaned forward. "That really depends on the outcome of this conversation." Because if I couldn't find an analyst willing to lie about the state of Corvo's books going far enough back, we would never get listed.

It was a shit system, because honestly Samson and all the other men like him didn't give a fuck about my shell game, or where any of our startup cash had originally come from. We could've said it was from "the Old Country" and they would've toasted us with champagne and looked the other way. But to get publicly listed I had to be willing to let my books get reamed— to let me possibly get reamed, to be frank—so whoever I had on the inside of the New York Stock Exchange giving us permission to go public needed to be so deep in my pocket his lungs were worsted wool.

"And what are you offering?"

"A seat on the board, and forty percent of a hundred million shares at twenty." This was also the first step in my plan to rescue Lia—if I packed the upcoming board with people who owed me, I felt certain I could make them vote my way.

Or else.

Samson sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table in thought. "Hmm, Rhaim—just how far back is your alternative occupation?"

I stared at him blankly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Would you like to pat me down for a wire?"

"We both know you can afford to get groped by the best."

He laughed at that, then said, "Seriously, Rhaim."

I'd done plenty of research through my personal network prior to scheduling this meeting, and nothing about Samson wanting to off someone had come up, plus he'd always struck me as even-tempered. He was an asshole—we all were—but he never pushed it to excess.

But I didn't want to freelance. Not because I was suddenly uninterested in violence, but because I had a girl I needed to keep whole. I imagined being someone's Daddy in jail had an entirely different connotation.

Then again, if I wanted Samson to owe me— truly owe me—there was no surer route.

"That's quite a long pause," he said.

"What are you prepared to offer?"

"The yacht and the supermodels, of course," he said, knowing that wouldn't actually tempt me—if it did, I'd already have them.

I shook my head. "I'd need you to vote my way in an upcoming proceeding, to be determined—and to buy in at twenty-five."

He did the math in a millisecond. "Two hundred million more dollars? Fuck you."

"If you want what you want—you'll take what I give you." If his investment group bought forty percent of the stock we would offer, it'd make other people jump in—we'd be profitable no matter what. Especially at that price. Hell, he'd help me drum the price up along the way for other investors, so he wouldn't be made to look like a fool.

"That's obscene, Rhaim."

"If you knew somebody else who could do what I do, you'd already be paying them. Professionalism costs. So does discretion."

Samson considered me. "Two hundred million more dollars—but into Corvo's pocket, not your own?"

"What better way to wash it?" I asked. It wasn't like I could dump a fifth of a billion dollars into my personal bank account without someone noticing. Which wasn't to say that I didn't already have offshore caches of money I'd stockpiled away like someone who might someday need to avoid extradition. I shrugged subtly. "I'll get mine eventually."

Samson snorted. "I feel certain that you will."

I wrote down an email where he could send over whatever information he wanted anonymously and it wouldn't be traced and handed it to him. He pocketed it.

"It might be awhile," I said. "Listing's hard work, and I'm going to be very busy." I didn't want him under any illusions that I was going to go out and murder anyone tonight.

Perfect crimes took time.

He nodded his head in understanding. "I'm in no rush, as long as it happens. I'll get the information you asked for later to you today." He pushed back from the table. "What's Nero want the money for anyway?" It said a lot about the state of commerce that that was of secondary concern to him—that under certain conditions, getting to sit at the table and move the chips around the board counted for more than knowing what the chips were for.

"One of the new casinos the state's allowing."

He chortled. "Isn't that a bit on the nose for you all?" he asked, giving me a look that said he knew all of our last names were Italian.

"What can I say?" I told him, also standing, while spreading my hands. "None of us can really escape our roots."

I watched him make his way out of the restaurant, and waited for him to leave before I sat back down and reached for my phone. It'd buzzed three times during the course of our conversation, and I was curious what pictures Lia had decided to send me.

What I got instead though was a text and only two photos.

I scrolled back to double check I'd told her three. I definitely had—so I felt a note of concern. It'd been well over an hour and thus far Lia had been well behaved. I didn't want to assume she'd forgotten to send me a third photo on purpose—but reasons why she might not have worried me.

I brought up my link to the private camera in her office and hopped back to the timestamp when I'd gotten the other texts.

I didn't have a camera in my own office, so I couldn't see her—but I could see one of Freddie Junior's known associates coming into Mrs. Armstrong's office, looking through her desk, and then Lia rushing out to confront him. And then when Freddie Junior came in?

Lia swayed.

Why?

Was she just easily overwhelmed?

But she'd been relatively unfazed— feisty even!— when I'd taken her to a fucking grave the prior night.

I needed to know so much more about her if I was ever going to get her to think straight.

Be strong, little girl.

I could tell how they were playing things from here—Junior coming in like he was her knight in white armor, while Bobby, his punk asshole friend and suck-up was playing the bad cop—but she was smart enough to know that. I saw it in her eye roll when she turned away from them briefly, unwittingly facing my camera. And then after a little more back and forth they'd left and she'd sunk down to her desk, holding her head in her hands.

I didn't bother hopping back to the current time, I just texted,

You okay?

A third image from her set came in immediately thereafter. A photo of the cubby beneath my desk, presumably the final destination on her "places she wanted to visit" list.

I know I'm not supposed to apologize—but I am sorry. I thought I'd sent that.

You're fine

I messaged her back.

I'll see you tomorrow morning. I'm not coming back to the office tonight. Take off early.

Because now that Nicholas Samson the Third was on my side—I knew I was.

I hopped back to the current camera feed, and saw her packing up her desk with alacrity.

Frightened to be alone without me.

Those fuckers.

I paid off my restaurant tab and hit the streets.

Instead of going back to Corvo, I took a detour to go to Blackwing Downtown. It was a gorgeous, palatial hotel that Freddie Junior was nominally in charge of, in the same way you could put a hat on a dog and call it a limo driver.

With only five percent of Corvo's current shares, he was financially bound by the decisions Nero made, although I knew Nero had thrown me under the bus multiple times just to not hear anymore of Junior's grating voice.

I walked into the lobby, gave an accommodating nod to the people behind the registration desk who recognized me, and then let myself into the back end of things, where I knew Junior's windowless office was. He'd decided to ensconce himself here, away from his uncle's pressing thumb, but in doing so he'd put his office in a cave.

"Mr. Selvaggio!" a secretary exclaimed—the same one who'd pulled me into Nero's meeting the other day. Maybe she was passing messages back and forth; I didn't care.

"He in?" I asked, and when she panicked, I knew he was, so I opened his door so hard the doorknob probably left a dent on the opposing wall.

Junior looked spooked for half a second, before exclaiming my name. "Rhaim! What on earth?—"

"I thought we were just visiting one another's offices for funsies?" I said, striding up and sweeping half of his shit off his desk, so there was space on it for me to sit down, one knee bent slightly, so I could easily see him as I kept myself casual, like a cat.

I watched the muscle beneath his jaw crawl back and forth while he gritted his teeth, unable to chastise me. "I take it Lia told you I dropped by?"

"She didn't have to. I could smell the stench of your cologne," I said, then picked up a baseball cradled on a little stand on his desk. "That's twice in a week's space, Junior. I thought we had an understanding. I leave you alone, and you can go fuck yourself."

He gave me a begrudging nod. "Maybe. Yeah. For now," he said, then leaned forward. "But my dad won't be stuck in Asia forever, Rhaim. And we have a controlling interest in Corvo—no matter how hard you swing your dick around, that's never going to change. Blood is blood."

"Which is why you're so scared of a little girl," I taunted him—but then I realized Nero's actual plan. Not just to marry Lia off, but through her to find someone else to give his company to, while potentially breaking the vampiric hold Freddie Senior and Junior had on Corvo's neck, without taking them on or disowning them in public, tarnishing Corvo's reputation in the process.

Fuck.

Why could he not just tell me these things?

Goddammit.

"The second her old man dies, you'll be out on the street," Junior threatened—because he couldn't see the forest for the trees.

"Out on a yacht, more like," I muttered, getting up off his desk. "But until then, stay the fuck out of my building." I walked for his office door, then turned back, remembering the baseball in my hand.

I lifted my arm and he flinched. And while the temptation to pitch the thing straight at his head to see how many of his teeth I could knock out was strong, my need to go confront Nero was slightly stronger. I gave him a disgusted sneer, then I switched throwing it back at him underhand—and he still fumbled the catch.