3. Adam

3

ADAM

I ’m used to women staring.

But not like that.

The staring happens a lot. It tends to take the form of recognition or desire or curiosity or intimidation—sometimes a mixture of all those. But I’ll tell you now: that mysterious beauty back there, in a jewel-encrusted catsuit that I’d swear was high-end ready-to-wear if not actual couture, stared at me with nothing short of horror.

I don’t get it. Disdain I can handle. Plenty of people are haters, plenty abhor it when others succeed, especially when they get there on their own merit. Deserved success? Ugh. That’ll provoke the Daily Mail readers at every turn.

This wasn’t that.

It was more like abject, horrified disbelief, and the force of it still rankles as I sign the bottom of each page, swiping as I go.

‘Do you think she’s all right?’ I ask Anton as we head down the broad corridor. In the head, I mean. Maybe she’s delusional.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, pulling open one of the double doors in front of us. ‘Nat’s a lovely girl. Always very professional, very friendly. She’s diabetic, though, so that could be it.’

I freeze, stopping in the doorframe , my entire body tensing. ‘Shit. Type 1?’

‘I believe so, yeah.’

My body may be frozen, but my brain is in processing overdrive, cataloging the clues she gave us back there, analysing. Something was wrong, but it didn’t look like she was hypo. I run through the diagnostics. She didn’t look pale or wan—on the contrary, her face and neck were flushed when she gazed up at me. No visible beads of sweat on her forehead or upper lip. She was flustered, which is worrying, but not overly panicky, and, when she finally got her words out, she was lucid. No obviously jerky or thrashing movements.

I exhale hard. You can’t fuck around with this stuff. Failing to spot a hypo episode within the correct window can be catastrophic. ‘Perhaps I should go back and see if I can help,’ I tell Anton. ‘Maybe we should call an ambulance, just in case.’

For fuck’s sake, Gen even asked her if she was crashing in front of me. How could I not have clicked? I twist my body and watch as Gen says something to the doormen and closes the front door before disappearing into a room off to the left.

I’m in two minds. There’s no reason not to check, except for the very valid one that the look in that young woman’s eyes when she finally met my gaze was not one that suggested she’d be happy to see me again so soon. I muddle my bottom lip between my teeth, feeling uncharacteristically flustered and indecisive.

‘Nah.’ He gestures at the open door. ‘Gen will have it in hand, I promise. So, this is the main bar area. The Playroom is through there.’

Rationally, I know he’s right. I stride through the doorway, urging myself to shake off my feeling of unease, reminding myself that my reaction is wholly down to my personal triggers and not based in any way on the facts of what just went down.

Before me is a beautiful, high-ceilinged room sporting what at a glance is an exquisite fit-out. The main sources of light are the small, silk-shaded lamps dotted on the low tables and the long bar, crafted from pink onyx and back-lit to perfection. I nod approvingly before following Anton’s gesture to look to my right, where a security guard stands sentry in front of another set of double doors.

The space I’ve heard so much about.

The Playroom.

I’m very much looking forward to giving it a whirl—if I can pull myself the fuck together and shake off my unease.

‘Nice place,’ I tell Anton before turning my attention to the clientele. First impressions: well-heeled. Sophisticated. Some hot-as-fuck women.

Alchemy has been hyped up by what feels like everyone I know, but they haven’t lied. My gut tells me Gen and Anton are onto a winner here.

I may have made my fortune in tech, but I diversify more and more these days. Di-worse-ify, as the consultants call it, as if the only consideration that matters is one’s return on investment. The closer I get to forty, the closer to three billion my net worth climbs, the fewer fucks I find myself giving about ROIs. Rather—the fewer fucks I give about financial ROIs.

Question: what’s the fastest way to make a small fortune ?

Answer: start with a large fortune and invest in a fashion brand. That may be the case—the fashion industry’s ability to destroy value is well documented—but the growing stable of luxury brands I’ve acquired and quietly nurtured gives me more pleasure than the tech startup, OfficeScape, that made me ten figures.

I don’t need Freud to explain to me why luxury goods fill the particular void inside me, because I don’t fucking care what Freud—or my therapist—thinks. I do it because I love it.

Luxury experiences , however, are a newer concern for me. That money-can’t-buy offering is the next obvious step for me on my journey to build a premium portfolio that transcends sectors. And this joint venture with Alchemy might push the envelope in just the way I need on every front: personal and professional.

A new era, a new challenge, and serendipitous timing? It’s too intriguing not to give due consideration to. When Anton mentioned it, my interest was immediately piqued. By my understanding, if he had his way, the JV his company has with Alchemy for the club’s overseas pop-ups would only expand.

But he’s no longer CEO of Wolff, and since the company’s flotation last week on the London Stock Exchange, his Board has faced increased pressure to sever its ties with a sex club. It’s a fucking joke, if you ask me. The JV is a tiny line item on Wolff’s vast financial statements, but its mere existence has pissed off the many ethical and sustainable funds that are required, for indexing purposes, to hold a stake in one of the FTSE 100’s biggest companies.

Long story short, Wolff needs to divest, and Anton, who’s still the Non-Executive Chairman and far more involved than his new wife thinks he should be, suggested I take a gander before they formally look for a buyer.

So here I am.

I lounge at the bar with Anton, enjoying the quality of both the whiskey and the women. The former is in shorter supply than the latter, thanks to Alchemy’s two-drink limit. But I’m not short of female attention, much to Anton’s amusement.

I exchange some loaded glances across the room and politely fob off the three or four women who approach me as I chat with my friend, more distractedly than I’d like. There’ll be time for hookups later, but I’m keen to get an update on that woman—Nat, I think—before I allow myself to fully relax or get stuck in.

Eventually, Gen shows up in the bar, her gold sequins rippling over her body and casting their light as she walks across the room. As with every other time I’ve met her, she looks fucking glorious. Unfortunately, she also looks fucking pissed off.

‘You two.’ She jerks her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Grab a table and sit. Now. I’m getting a drink.’

I look at Anton, eyebrows raised. He murmurs something in Gen’s ear and kisses her on the cheek before guiding me to a nearby empty table. ‘You heard the lady.’

If I thought tonight might be an occasion on which the formidable Genevieve Wolff attempts to ingratiate herself with me on behalf of her club, clearly I was deluded. Anton and I sit and wait as sheepishly as two schoolboys who’ve just smashed a window might await their headmistress, but within a minute, she’s joined us. She falls just short of slamming her champagne coupe down on the table and sits on the free bar stool.

‘Is Nat okay?’ Anton asks her, and she shakes her head.

‘Honestly? No. No, she’s not,’ she says, glaring at me. I can feel the guilt, the defensiveness, instantly, even though I’m a grown man and completely innocent. After all these years, it’s still an instinct.

Blame Adam.

It must be his fault.

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong? Was it her diabetes?’

She shakes her head impatiently, but nothing on God’s green earth can prepare me for the next words to come out of her mouth.

‘Does the name Stephen Bennett mean anything to you?’

Stephen Bennett.

His name may evoke an incident that happened two decades ago—over half a lifetime ago—but it’s as fresh and as horrifying and as triggering tripping off Gen’s scarlet lips as it was all those years ago.

Stephen Bennett belongs to a different lifetime and a different me, as does the unspeakable, inhuman thing I did to him. My fun, sexy evening at Alchemy belongs to the here and now. It belongs to the Adam Wright who’s told himself a million times over that he’s earned his place in this world.

But the mention of his name forms a bridge from this world to that, a portal that has me hurtling through time and space to a past I’d give anything to erase.

I whisper my yes.

Somehow, impossibly, I know what she’s going to say next before she says it.

‘Well, it seems Nat is his sister.’