Taste of Vengeance Read online

  “Wow,” Sydney said. “Who had this idea? Where did it come from?”

  Zimmer shifted uncomfortably.

  That’s right, motherfucker. You snake.

  “Um, my nephew. I, uh, helped him start the company last year.”

  “Really? Last year?”

  It was Alaia’s idea, and he’d stolen it.”

  Sydney realized that he’d probably killed her and passed off her idea as his own.

  The vein on Zimmer’s neck throbbed. “Uh, actually, maybe it was just a few months ago.”

  “Well, it sounds pretty cool.” She reclined again. Let him think she wasn’t on to him. Let him underestimate her.

  Julio brought a round of drinks and Thornwell, still standing, took two glasses, downing them both and then heading off down the beach.

  For a while, Sydney watched his back, but then he disappeared into the crowd.

  Gia came back to the group smiling and tossing back her wet hair.

  “The water feels amazing.”

  Sydney, who was on the other side of Gia, closed her eyes for a second, gearing herself up to be nice to Zimmer so she could get the information she needed.

  Around one, after a brief nap and dip in the water, Sydney thought Zimmer had enough alcohol in him to be a little more forthcoming.

  First, she asked what he looked for in an employee.

  “We’ve got a shit ton of special tests. Two weeks’ worth. Because the guy could be really talented, but we need to make sure dude can fit into the brogrammer culture.

  Sydney couldn’t hide her disgust. “Bro-grammer?”

  “Yeah, you know like bro and programmer?”

  It wasn’t even worth bringing up the fact that some of the earliest programmers were women.

  He was an idiot. Pure and simple. But that would make her job easier.

  “What do you do to determine that?”

  “One thing I like to do is a hot-tub meeting.”

  “Explain.”

  Sydney tried to hide the irritation in her voice.

  “We hold our first interviews in the hot tub at my Lake Tahoe house. If a dude can sit in the hot tub for ten hours straight, then that proves he is Sky material.”

  “What exactly does it prove?” she asked, nonplussed.

  The smirk on his face suggested he enjoyed her bewilderment. He didn’t bother answering her question.

  “We also take them to the casinos. If Damien is feeling really adventurous. He will fly them to Monte Carlo, and we’ll play all night and fly back in the morning.”

  “Really?” Sydney tried to sound interested to keep him talking.

  “We can tell if a guy can hang with us based on how he bets. If he doesn’t go big—all in—he’s probably not Sky material, you know. We don’t have time for wimps in this business. It’s high-risk, fast-moving. You gotta roll with the punches?”

  He paused to take a sip of his drink and winked at Sydney over his glass. She smiled.

  “We only bring on the best of the best. Because the coding we do, the inventions we create, the technology we launch, all of that is changing the future. We are actually fucking creating the future.”

  He sounded in awe of his own words.

  A chill of pure fear raced down Sydney’s spine. If these morons were the ones determining the future of the world, they all were fucked.

  “Unicorn companies like mine don’t have to follow the goddamn rules.”

  “What is a unicorn company?”

  A smug smile crept across his face. “If you make more than a billion bucks a year, you are a unicorn company.”

  Sydney tried to plaster a suitably impressed look on her face.

  Rich raised his hand to signal for more drinks and some nachos. “You know, with lots of cheese on them, okay man?”

  When Julio walked away, probably internally rolling his eyes, Sydney tried to casually ask the question she really wanted answered.

  “Do you guys have employees down here or is this just a vacation spot?”

  Rich was shitfaced. He looked at her sideways.

  “We just come down here to fuck around.”

  He closed his eyes. She was worried he’d fall asleep before she found out what she needed.

  “Oh.” She touched his elbow. “Is the villa the only place you guys own in Brazil?”

  He sat up, his bloodshot eyes narrowing.

  Fuck, Sydney thought. She’d said something wrong.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering what it would cost to own a place down here.”

  He examined her for a few seconds, his eyes watery and unfocused. Then he lay back down, closing his eyes.

  Sydney held her breath waiting for him to answer the question.

  “Nah. Only place we own.”

  37

  Purple Pills

  I dipped my head under the waves, hoping it would cool off my anger.

  How dare Damien treat me like a fucking piece of property. His “eye-talian” princess. Total fucking bullshit.

  He’d come to my room last night begging my forgiveness, but I’d told him I was going to bed, and slammed the door on him. This morning, he’d brought me breakfast in bed with roses and mimosas.

  After two mimosas, I’d felt less hatred toward him. He’d fucked up, but he was remorseful. I told him he needed to give me some time to get over my anger.

  “I’ll give you as much time as you need,” he said. “I was acting like a total jerk. I’m sorry, Gia.”

  Now, I swam parallel to the shore, feeling out of shape. I hadn’t really done any Budo practice this week. If I didn’t do some martial arts each day, I started to feel anxious and out of sorts. This swimming was doing a lot of good, but I needed something more.

  I swam down toward one end of the beach where the crowds were thicker.

  Damien had said earlier that as crowded as the beach would be that day, it was nothing compared to how crazy it would be during Carnival. It was one of the reasons he’d suggested we make it a beach day before all the festivities began.

  I walked out of the surf, shielding my eyes to locate the hotel near our beach spot. I’d swam quite some ways away. The walk back would give me time to chill out even more. I wasn’t sure why, but Damien’s possessiveness had sent me over the edge.

  That’s when I spotted his familiar form in the crowd. His head was dipped, and he was speaking to a dark-haired beauty in a white bikini. She tossed her head and tried to jerk away, but he yanked her entire body toward his. He grabbed her by her hair and kissed her. Then he pushed her away, slapping her ass. She smiled back at him. As she turned, I gasped.

  I stood still, astonished.

  The woman looked like me.

  Her hair was long and dark and in a similar style as mine. Her body shape, curvy. Same as me. It was hard to tell but it seemed like her features were similar, as well. But then she turned and hurried toward the parking lot, so I could no longer examine her features.

  I thought about that woman, Alaia, and how we also looked similar and a chill ran down my spine despite the sun’s heat.

  Worried he would see me, I ducked my head and dipped into the crowd on the far side of where he was. My heart slammed in my chest; I could feel the blood surging harder and faster in my veins, hot with anger.

  My entire body shook. The beach water trickled down my skin and twinkled in the hot Rio sun as I shuddered. It wasn’t so much that he had kissed that woman. That actually didn’t surprise me too much. He was a free agent. He’d made that clear. And right now I was so angry at him, I was glad that there was no commitment between us.

  The part that disturbed me was that she looked like me.

  And that fucking scared me. Because more than anything, I couldn’t help but think: What if Sydney is right?

  By three everybody was suitably drunk and worn out from the sun.

  Damien stood and stretched.

  “Let’s go home and take a nap before dinner,” he sai
d.

  Which was ridiculous because that’s what we’d been doing all day.

  Back at the villa, I locked both my doors—the main one and the one adjoining Damien’s room—before I hopped in to the shower.

  But when I walked naked back into the bedroom, Damien was sitting on edge of my bed. His hair was wet, and he only wore a towel. Of course, he had a key. He handed me a drink. I downed it and he smiled and fixed me another.

  Why the hell not?

  He trailed a finger down my thigh and despite myself I wanted him. My anger at him had faded and was more irritation than anything. I wasn’t crazy about him kissing another woman, but I’d agreed that we were not exclusive.

  The alcohol he’d handed me had hit me hard. I felt languid and buzzed and not concerned about anything except his touch. As he kissed my bare flesh. I closed my eyes and let myself go.

  Then, suddenly he was gone. I watched him slip through the door between our rooms. After a few seconds, he reappeared with a grin.

  He held two small, purple pills with the name of his company, Sky, deeply embedded in them.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “What are those?”

  I didn’t do pills. I didn’t do crank. I didn’t do heroin. The only thing I indulged in was booze and weed. I was old-fashioned that way.

  He didn’t meet my eyes as he spoke. “Something to enhance your pleasure. Save them for after dinner. I want to take you to a special place in town. Just me and you.”

  He did a damn good job not answering my question.

  “What are they?”

  “Molly.” His voice indicated I was idiotic for not knowing, which made me even more determined to pass. “This is the purest Molly you will ever see in your life. We have our own manufacturer in Portland.”

  “Isn’t Molly just plain old X, right? Ecstasy?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “No. It’s way better. And our Molly can’t compare to anything else out there. It is the crème de la crème. The most refined form of the drug in the world. Pure as driven snow.”

  “I’m not really into street drugs,” I said.

  “It’s going to be an FDA approved drug in the next year or two,” he said. “Right now, the FDA has given it breakthrough therapy status. It’s being used to help combat vets deal with PTSD. The results are astonishing. We’ve been backing some of the research and helping develop a form of it for Phase 3 trials.”

  “I don’t have PTSD.” Which was a fucking bold-faced lie, but whatever.

  The truth was the last thing I needed was to have some feel-good drug in me distorting my thinking. I already felt out of sorts and fuzzy-brained lately.

  He nuzzled my neck and then whispered into my ear. “Baby, I just want you to experience a pleasure you never have before. All your inhibitions will disappear. I promise you the sex will be mind blowing.”

  I was a little insulted.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said, drawing back. “But I really don’t have any inhibitions.”

  He laughed.

  “True. But I want to share this with you. Please think about it.”

  Looking right into his eyes, I saw that he really meant it. He was pleading with me. Maybe I was a fool, but I couldn’t help but think it was maybe because he thought I was special.

  But then I brushed that thought away. Every woman who ever fell for a creep thought she was special to him.

  I grabbed my bag and opened my door.

  “I’m starved.”

  He didn’t follow me out the door. I paused in the doorway and looked back.

  “I’m going to go out with Rich after dinner,” he said in a monotone voice. “Hit the town. Catch some live music. Do some male bonding.”

  It was a threat. If I didn’t take the pills like he wanted, he was ditching me for the night? Fine. Fuck him.

  He was still sitting on my bed. His face was expressionless.

  Finally, he stood and said in a flat voice. “Remember, you were the one who wanted to be alone tonight.”

  Dinner was tense. I didn’t sit by Damien and did my damnedest to ignore him. However, he made a point to personally keep my wine glass filled.

  Sydney was closer to him, but kept shooting questioning looks my way. I wish we’d been sitting beside one another. I wanted to ask her more about her theory and see if she’d discovered anything else about Rich and Damien. The more time I spent away from him, as I had over the past day, the more I began to wonder if she was right.

  After dinner, the two men said their goodbyes and took off in one of the SUVs.

  I’d had too much sun at the beach and too much wine at dinner, so I was looking forward to a quiet night in my room and then an early bedtime.

  Later, sometime in the night, I heard noises in Damien’s room. He was home. I’d been having a dream about wild crazy sex with somebody—an unknown figure who had crept into my bed in the dark and was having his way with me. So when I woke, I was suddenly filled with desire for Damien. I’d slept naked and thought I’d go to him and slip into the sheets, surprising him. My irritation with him had waned and right then I just wanted some make-up sex.

  But when I tried the adjoining door it was locked on his side. I was about to knock when I heard voices on the other side. Several voices. I put my ear to the door. I couldn’t make out the words but then a few seconds later, I could make out the sounds. Loud sex sounds. Fuck him.

  I stormed back to bed.

  How had I ever got myself into this fucked-up situation and fucked-up relationship, if that’s what it was?

  The next morning, I heard more noises, giggling and whispers. But this time from the hall. I cracked my door and peeked out. Three people were leaving Damien’s room. Two women and one man. Tim, Cat, & Zoe.

  Damien’s words came back to me: “Remember, you were the one who wanted to be alone tonight.”

  38

  Molding the Future

  He glared at the morning sunlight filling his room. He paced his room naked. Fuck. Things were not going the way he had planned.

  And that was unacceptable.

  He hadn’t worked as hard as he had only to NOT have everything go exactly the way he wanted.

  She was a fool not to see what he was and what he had to offer. But she’d made her choice.

  How dare her not choose him and his ways.

  She would pay for that rash, stubborn decision.

  If someone in his position of power and wealth couldn’t get things to go his way, then things would have to change. Didn’t they fucking know that his company controlled the future? What Sky invested in would dictate the way society was shaped. He and his colleagues were not just molding the future they were reshaping the world.

  The love pill was just the beginning. Gia had provided the breakthrough. The dose had been perfected. The anger and paranoia others had experienced had been alleviated. Although, he really wanted to see what it was like when he combined the love pill with Molly, it wasn’t absolutely necessary. He could dose her with it, but he knew she would notice right away. With the love pill, he could slip it into her drink and she would not realize she’d been dosed.

  The experiment had been one-hundred percent successful. Now his buyer would be on board.

  In exchange for the formula, Damien would receive enough money to launch an ungodly technology that would change life on earth forever.

  He had developed the blueprint to create a brain-computer interface— an implantable device that provided a direct communication link from a person’s brain to an external device.

  The interface would have the capability of transferring a person’s feelings, emotions, memories, and thoughts—essentially everything that made a person a person—onto a computer.

  By allowing people to transfer their sentient beings to a computer or external device, the essence of a person could eventually be reinserted in a new, cloned body. People would live forever.

  He would be God.

&nbs
p; Now that he had perfected the love pill and would be able to afford to hire the brains he needed to create the device, he would not let anything or anyone stand in his way.

  Yanking his phone from the charger, he punched in a number. He didn’t wait for the person to say hello before he spoke.

  “Take care of it. Make it look like an accident.”

  39

  The Shine

  While I didn’t particularly want to be around Damien, I did want to scuba dive. I’d done it once. A long time ago in Monterey. But this was Brazil. Damien had chartered two boats for our party, and we were going to spend the day diving.

  When our cars dropped us off at the harbor, I took a minute to inhale the fresh sea breeze and stretch. We had a few minutes until the boat operator was ready. Damien was onboard the boat speaking to the crew and occasionally shooting glances our way. As I stretched, I noticed Sydney was doing the same, and we shared a grin.

  I did a few Budo moves and she nodded at me in approval.

  After we boarded and the boat started up, we all turned and faced the land we were leaving behind.

  Far in the distance, the Christ the Redeemer statue looked down on Rio from the summit of Mount Corcovado.

  “Tomorrow we hang glide up there,” Damien said, coming over and wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

  I fought the temptation to push him away.

  One of the crew members, a teenager, passed out drinks—soda and beer— and plates of peeled shrimp and fruit and chocolate. Damien opened a bottle of wine near the front of the boat and handed me a glass.

  As we left the small harbor and its sailboats, Damien pointed toward an area fronted by white sand and gleaming white skyscrapers. Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. I shielded my eyes to take in the spectacular views of Rio from the bay.

  “That’s where we will eat tonight,” Damien said, pointing to the beaches and addressing the entire boat. “You can’t come to Rio and not dine at least once in Ipanema.”