Embarrassment heats my face. All I want is to do good, but every time I turn around, I’m fucking things up worse than they were before I arrived. I can’t keep up with the major power players no matter how hard I try. I don’t even know if I’m capable of thinking about the long game the same way Zeus and Hades do. Every time I try to slow down, my instincts get the best of me and I jump without checking for water.
I need to change that about myself, and I don’t even know where to start.
Hades studies me as if he can divine my thoughts right out of my head. “There’s no shame in the impulsiveness of youth, little Hercules.”
I try for a laugh, but it comes out bitter. “Are you a mind reader now?”
“I don’t have to be when you wear your thoughts on your face for anyone to see.”
“I don’t know how not to.” I don’t know how not to do a lot of things.
He leans forward and braces his elbows on his desk. “Time and pain are the best teachers. You’ll learn. Maybe not soon enough, but you’ll learn.”
I should end this conversation, but he’s actually talking to me with something almost like compassion. I can’t trust it—I know enough to know that—but I also don’t want it to end. “Were you ever like me? When you were my age?”
“No.” His smile is quick and bittersweet. “I was much, much worse. Or better, I suppose, depending on how you look at it. You had the self-awareness to realize all was not as it seemed and to look past your father’s charismatic mirage. I didn’t.”
I can’t imagine that, a Hades with stars in his eyes. It’s possible he’s lying to me about this, too, but my gut says it’s the truth. I clear my throat. “I’m sorry for what he did to you.”
He takes off his glasses and pulls out a black cloth to clean the lenses. It’s such a mundane action, but it leaves me breathless. “Meg will be in her office. It’s the next floor down.” He glances up. “Tonight, we’ll have another lesson.”
That’s a dismissal if I’ve ever heard one. I should be happy to leave this man’s presence, but reluctance weighs me down. That was almost a full conversation without animosity or manipulation. Almost. I push slowly to my feet. “I’ll see you later, then.”
He lets me get nearly to the door before he speaks again. “And Hercules?”
“Yes, Sir?” I pause, but don’t turn around.
“Next time you walk through that door, I don’t want you wearing anything but your skin.”
Chapter Fifteen
Meg
As much as I love the late nights in the Underworld, mornings are my favorite time of day. The entire building feels like it’s a slumbering dragon, and I’m the only one around to witness it. The cleaning crew comes through before I’m up, so everything glistens and shines and feels brand new. Part of my job is ensuring they didn’t miss anything, but I enjoy the quiet moments walking the empty lounge and back rooms. Without the bustling energies of people filling it to the brim it feels like…mine.
Mine and Hades’s, though he stopped doing these quiet walkthroughs with me years ago.
It doesn’t stop me from looking for him every single fucking morning. I should know better by now, but my stomach still drops a little when I don’t find him waiting for me in the lounge.
I circle the bar that gleams in the low light, and then check all the booths. Our cleaning crew is the best, so this is mostly a formality. Next is the public playroom behind a locked door. When the Underworld is filled with patrons, this door is usually manned by Allecto or one of her people. I push through, putting my disappointment into movement in an attempt to exorcise it from my body.
The public playroom holds a little bit of everything. There are spanking benches and St. Andrew’s Crosses and various racks for suspension play. Scattered throughout the room, there are also couches and other furniture for people to sit on to observe or fuck or do whatever they want to. The only limit is consent.
Everything is as it should be. The room smells faintly of citrus and I inhale deeply. It doesn’t completely banish the sick feeling in my stomach, but it dilutes it. All my complicated feelings for Hades don’t make a difference when I’m in this room. Knowing I’m responsible for the people who work here, that they depend on me for guidance and safety. It’s a heady feeling. Hades might have paved the way for me to take this position, but I earned their trust on my own.
Next are the back rooms. They’re all themed, from a mundane bedroom to a study to a doctor’s office to a stable. During the day, the viewing wall is transparent so I don’t have to enter the rooms to check them. Clean. Perfect. Ready for tonight.
By the time I finish my walkthrough, I’m steady enough to focus on the office work that comes next.
First up are spreadsheets and the reports from the staff who worked the night before. Sometimes it’s just a simple record of their scenes with clients. Sometimes they have gems of knowledge that were dropped during the equivalent of pillow talk. All are filed and brought to Hades. He likes to hold all the cards when it comes to negotiations, and one never knows who will want a deal, so he has files on every major player in Carver City.
There are a lot of them.
The city is carved up into slices, each ruled by a different faction. Some of them are stable. Some are significantly less so. All have the ability to endanger the careful balance we have if they go rogue. By creating a neutral territory in the center, we ensure that nothing will happen without us knowing about it first. While Hades doesn’t intervene without a deal, knowledge is power. And power is everything in Carver City.
The door opens, and I speak without looking up, “What are you doing here, Tink? You have the day off.”
“Tink does have the day off.”
I freeze in the middle of typing. Even as I tell myself that Hades wouldn’t be that much of an asshole, when I look up, Hercules is still standing in my doorway. “What are you doing here?”
“Reporting for training.”
Oh yes, Hades and I will have words about his high-handedness. He may technically be my boss, but I am in charge of managing the club. Up until this point, he’s allowed me to do that as I see fit. Forcing Hercules into my presence is a test, and I resent him for it. Why is he so determined to rub this man in my face? It’s like he knows that Hercules got under my skin, keeps getting under my skin, and wants to… That’s the problem. I don’t know what Hades wants. I can’t begin to guess.
“Did our dearest Dom tell you what he intends?” I don’t have much faith in it, so I’m already turning back to my computer when Hercules answers.
“I guess I’m training for Tink’s job?”
That bastard. I close my eyes and take a slow breath. It’s not Hercules’s fault that Hades continues to play games. Whether this one is aimed at me, Hercules, or Tink doesn’t matter. All that does is display his willingness to use the club as his conduit. “Sit.” I grab my phone before I can think better of it. This is probably best left to when we have some privacy, but if he’s determined to shoehorn Hercules into every aspect of our lives, then he’ll just have to deal with the man overhearing our conversation. I push the button to dial his office.