Chapter Three

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RAKING MY FINGERS THROUGH my hair, I wedged my elbows into the desk.

My eyes hurt from the bright sunshine spilling in through my open driftwood doors. The base of my skull throbbed from dehydration. And the lactic acid in my limbs from last night had stuck around, tormenting me even after a full eight-hour crash.

I never usually slept that long. Normally, I was up with the sun, annoyingly attuned to the lightening world, and unable to ignore the call to work.

Not this morning.

This morning, I had the hangover from hell, thanks to far too much physical activity.

I blinked and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to wrangle my erratic concentration into paying attention to my emails.

Skimming my inbox, I placed the correspondence relating to my lab and questions from my team of scientists into one folder, deleted the junk and propaganda I had no interest in, and went to log off.

A swim would help.

The cool, salty water could wash away the dregs of my pain.

Afterwards, perhaps I wouldn’t feel like shit.

My mouse hovered over the shutdown button. My gaze snagged on a new email that flashed with fresh delivery.

The traffickers.

To: S.Sinclair@goddessisles.com

From: 89082@gmail.com

Subject: New Addition

We have received your employment request. However, due to unforeseen complications, we are pausing our recruitment services for a few weeks. We will resume business as soon as possible.

I groaned.

Fuck.

Even the scum of the underworld had sentenced me to suffering. I couldn’t even order a new girl to distract me from Eleanor. Then again, the way my body hurt this morning, the last thing on my mind was sex. Plus, I had an entire island of willing, beautiful goddesses...I could just choose one of them.

Perhaps, Jealousy could be a good alternative? She was the closest thing I had to a female friend in this place. She was honest about her intentions toward me. I had no sixth sense that she said one thing but meant another—unlike I did when Calico came sniffing around. Jealousy had already asked if I could keep her past her four-year contract, regularly helping my day staff in the kitchens and willingly hosting water sports and other guest activities. She’d gone above and beyond just being a goddess in Euphoria.

She’d proven she would be an asset to my team in other ways, not just selling sex. Maybe she’d be an asset in my bed too?

Fuck.

I dug my fingers into my temples, massaging the agony pulsing there. Jealousy was pretty, kind, and honest, but...the idea of keeping her as my own? Of sharing a bed with her?

Nope.

I couldn’t do it.

There wasn’t a...spark.

Not like with...

Shut up.

Don’t think about her.

Sitting straighter in my chair, I threw back a glass of cucumber-iced water that a staff member had brought in an hour earlier then resumed my task of working.

Screw my swim. I would just work through my foggy pain and get on with it.

I’d just clicked on an email from Peter Beck, my head scientist over at Sinclair and Sinclair Group, when Cal knocked and came in without waiting for my approval.

His habit of barging into places without an invitation had become highly inconvenient.

“Nice of you to wait for admittance.” I scowled, hoping he got the memo.

He shrugged. “Got things to do. No time to waste.”

“One of these days, you’re gonna barge in somewhere and regret what you see.”

He smirked. “Already happened. On multiple occasions.”

My eyes narrowed, wondering what incidents he referred to. Seeing me butt-ass naked after I’d had a shower and decided to air-dry instead of using a towel? When he caught me mid-masturbation a few years ago? Or how about walking in and cock-blocking me when I’d been seconds away from taking Eleanor last night before Markus fucking Grammer could claim her?

My hands curled into fists. “Some days, I truly want to fire you.”

“But you won’t.” He laughed. “Who else can you trust around here?”

He had a fucking point.

Ever since I’d opened my islands to my exclusive guests, I’d fought a never-ending carousel of people wanting to steal my idea. Virtual reality was huge in today’s society. Kids played it. Teenagers lived in it. High-class athletes and expensive professions employed it as a training tool.

It’d become common, easily accessible. However, none of them had the fully immersive experience like I did. Goggles and headphones with an interactive chair were the extent of what was available.

Mine, on the other hand?

The sensors, earbuds, contacts...it all ensured you lost yourself in the hallucination. It became so real that it wasn’t a hallucination. Your own nervous system and brain accepted the sensory clues I coded and treated it as true.

That was what people wanted to replicate.

And I wasn’t open to selling.

Which meant I’d made more enemies from my VR creation than I had through my pharmaceutical formulations...which—honestly?—was fucked up.

Drugs were better than gold in today’s market.

Create a drug that granted happiness?

Instant billionaire status.

Conjure a drug that offered salvation to disease or pain, but in turn caused side effects that needed a whole other box of pills to cure?

Instant presidential status.

Control the health of the masses, and you became a true god in every sense of the word.

I’d had people bow to me for what my lab had created. I’ve had councillors and governors try to kill me for not conforming to their rules. For delivering drugs that didn’t cause the suffering that they so readily relied on to thin out the population and make money from their misery.

And now, I had jealous assholes who wanted my technology. Yet another reason I appreciated the seclusion of my shores. No one could sneak up without being fully visible upon the sea. No one could take what was mine without being murdered long before they could claim it.

“What do you want, Cal?” I massaged the base of my nape, cursing the persistent headache. I should probably pop an anti-inflammatory, but just because I pumped out pills and marketed medicine like new fashion lines didn’t mean I partook very often.

I preferred natural cures. Cures grown in my gardens rather than in my lab.

“I didn’t think you’d make an appearance today. Figured I’d screen any important emails so you didn’t have to later. Also, Jupiter is in Euphoria tonight. That Nathan Fisher guy’s fantasy is twisted.”

Cricking my neck, I rolled my shoulders. “Twisted how?” Did I miss something when I let him play on my island? Should I have revoked his invitation as I did so many others?

“He wants a full underwater experience.” Cal carved air quotations on either side of his head. “His words: I want a slutty, hornier version of My Little Mermaid, but not on land, in that cave where she has all those knick-knacks and forks and shit.”

I rolled my eyes. “He watched way too much Disney as a kid.”

“Either that or he has a fetish for fish. His last name probably predisposed him to marine life.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to code something like that?” I bit my lip, working through the computer algorithms that I’d have to write. The gravity wires in Euphoria would have to be used so they felt weightless underwater. Even without half my brain throbbing with agony, I doubted I could design a mermaid that could have decent sex. Where were their sex organs anyway?

They’re mythical, Sully.

They don’t have pussies because they don’t exist.

Ugh, my temper was the length of a shoe-lace and threatening to snap.

Ocean.

I needed to wade into that wet haven and drown away my pain.

Cal noticed my huff of annoyance. “I can write the cipher. No big deal.” He chuckled. “Be kinda cool to see what sort of human-world rules I can break.”

My eyes swooped to his. “I can do it.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to. That’s why you pay me. I do the crap you don’t need to—”

“When have you known me to take a sick day?”

He frowned, legitimately thinking. “You know...I don’t think you have.”

“Precisely.” I grimaced and straightened my spine. “I’ve put myself through worse and survived. This is nothing.”

“Yeah, but...” He came toward my desk, his suit pressed and slate-grey sleek. “I haven’t seen you that drained in a very long time. Ever since you—”

“Enough.” I gave him a warning glare. “It’s just another day, Cal. That’s all.”

“If you say so.” He sniffed with history, glowering with his own temper. “But you fucked up last night. You know that, right?”

“Quit it,” I growled.

“You shouldn’t have prepared her or removed her from the VR hook-up. You should stay the hell away from her.”

“For fuck’s sake—”

“No, just listen.” His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth, knowing he shouldn’t say what he was about to but was going to anyway. “You never usually interfere with the everyday housekeeping...so you shouldn’t start now. And you know full well why.” Planting his fist onto my desk, he muttered, “You gave me one clear guideline when you started his place. One unbreakable rule that doesn’t make a shitload of sense to me, but you made me swear...so here it is. You said if you somehow forgot, I was to remind you why you choose animals over humans.”

I bristled. “I remember.”

“I don’t think you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have done what you did last night—”

“I told you to back the fuck off.” I shot upright, ignoring the disgruntled pain of my body.

“And you told me to keep you away from anyone who threatened everything you’ve become. You told me that you’d rather stay alone than let someone else have a power over—”

“Leave.” I pointed at the door. “I know what I said, and I know why you’re reminding me, but I have things under control.”

He snorted. “Yeah, if this is you under control—unable to stay away from that walking Jinx of a curse—then you’re in deeper shit than I thought.”

My mind skipped back to last night. Of holding Eleanor. Of my heart kicking when she snuggled close. Of all the other bullshit that’d happened since she’d arrived.

It was a minutely struggle not to ask him how she was this morning. Not to stalk to her villa and make sure she’d drunk her smoothie, taken her vitamins, and stuffed her face with life-giving food.

Had she enjoyed Euphoria?

Was she in pain?

Did she hate me less or more?

Ah, Christ.

He was right. I let her have way too much monopoly over me...and I couldn’t fucking stop it.

Sighing, I sat down and pinched the bridge of my nose again, trying to squeeze out her curse like an ugly zit.

“Look, Sinclair...I get it. She’s unique. There’s obviously something going on between you two. You’d have to be blind as those fat-ass fruit bats you rescued. But...I’m only doing what I promised—” He held up his hand in surrender. “—Guarding your back.”

Before I could argue, apologise, or agree, Pika flapped through the see-through curtains and landed on my laptop. Squawking and doing his little foot-stomping dance, he attacked the letter K, going at it like a feathered Rottweiler.

“Ah, no you don’t.” Plucking him from the computer, I held his little body, so vibrantly aware of his tiny thrumming heart in his very breakable chest. His sharp beak pecked at my fingers. His black glossy eyes gleamed with mischief as he squeaked like a dog’s chew toy, trying to get me to free him.

“Ugh, why do you do this? Your cuteness is pissing me off.” I opened my palm, expecting him to fly away, but he flopped upside down instead, rolling on his tucked-in wings, a strange aerial version of a turtle on its back. I rolled my eyes at his scaly little legs waving in the air. “Yeah, yeah. Good morning to you, you little nightmare.”

He squawked loudly, making me wince. “Morning! Morning. Pika. Pika. Pika!”

My eardrums physically ached. A swim was definitely needed. I refused to waste the entire fucking day to this residual agony.

“God, you and that bird.” Cal scoffed. “Get a room.”

My lips twisted into a half-smile, glad our previous conversation was over and fully aware that Cal had a soft spot for this little menace, just as much as I did.

After all, Cal had been in my life almost as long as Pika. He’d been the first to learn of Pika’s origins. The only guy I trusted when it came time for my massive liberation.

My second-in-command held my stare for a moment, reliving the path we’d travelled together. I’d told him to go off on his own multiple times. He had the brains to cook something equally as profitable as I had. But, instead, he decided to hang out with me, mastering the art of irritation.

Fuck only knew why.

Some might say it was a mistake bringing Cal with me to my islands. He wasn’t trained to be a personal assistant, manservant, or my second. He’d been a junior university geek when I’d taken over my parents’ pharmaceutical company. Training to be a pharmacist, he was doing some very underpaid research in the lab, so he could understand how drugs were mixed and blended, ready for the illnesses he’d be dispensing for.

We’d met in typical unplanned fashion.

I’d been nineteen; he’d just turned twenty.

I’d been head honcho of Sinclair and Sinclair Group for precisely five days. The policies I’d put in place had ruffled the delicate feathers of the stuffy board members. I’d done things they weren’t happy with. I’d implemented new rules they despised. But they couldn’t stop me as I owned the majority shares and had the wishes of an iron-clad will from my recently deceased parents.

Sullivan Aiden Sinclair...their new ruler and king.

My older brother, Drake, had also been in the will and testament. However, his inheritance came in the form of the ridiculously expensive mansion my parents owned, the summer house in Greece, and the entire contents of their lucrative bank accounts.

He was the golden child.

I was the second born kid who didn’t fit in with their family squad. I hadn’t been left cash or property—I’d been gifted Sinclair and Sinclair, not as a reward but as a punishment.

However...I was grateful. And I’d used it to my full advantage.

On the sixth day of my ownership, I’d sent out a blanket email announcing the immediate ban on all animal testing. I didn’t care what it was for—face cream, acne prevention, cancer eradicator—all animals were forthwith freed from their miserable existence.

When I’d bumped into Cal on the elevator, a monkey was wrapped around my neck wearing a diaper, his skin peeling from the latest tests and his eyes bloodshot from a new form of conjunctivitis medicine. In my left hand, I held four leashes, all tethering timid and terrified beagles to my heel. And in my right, I had a cage holding a dozen dying mice.

He’d stumbled into the mirrored elevator, lost in the humongous skyscraper of Sinclair and Sinclair, and came face to face with his boss’s boss’s boss who also happened to be evacuating a zoo.

Without a word, he’d taken the beagles.

We’d descended to the glass-caverned, travertine-coated lobby, and he’d helped me stuff the diseased and ill-gotten creatures into a massive truck destined for the airport.

That had been the beginning of an incident I was both deeply proud and immensely ashamed of. It’d also earned me a ruthless reputation.

Before I’d moved permanently to my Goddess Isles, I’d heard what they whispered in the fancy corridors. Human killer. Animal lover. They claimed I had the heart of a wolf instead of a man—choosing four-legged beasts instead of his own brethren.

They meant it as a slur.

I took it as a compliment.

Because it was true.

Humans deserved the worst from me. Animals were guaranteed my protection.

From anyone.

Pika fluttered to my shoulder, nibbling my ear.

I shivered and nudged him away with my chin. “Fly away, little flea. I’m busy.”

He twittered and tweeted, mimicking the sparrows and other birdlife that regularly serenaded the garden outside my office. My headache crested with each of his little chirps, not finding comfort in his song, when usually, my heart would settle and my stress would evaporate.

Fuck it.

Standing slowly, I pinned Cal with a stare. “You code Nathan Fisher’s fantasy. I’m going for a swim.” I smiled cynically. “And who knows...maybe I will take a sick day, after all.”

I left before he could rub my downfall in my face.

Pika fluttered after me, his wings snapping in the humidity.