Chapter 43

“So, I called Threnody today.” Shelby said out of the blue.

“When?” Alexis asked. They were sitting in Nick’s hot tub sharing a very good bottle of Nick’s Riesling with Lev’s cousin Rifkeh and The Infamous Cat Easton - a title Cat herself had suggested should be attached to her name last night after the four of them had split three bottles of Nick’s excellent Shiraz.

Alexis had started subtly adding possessives to things around Nick’s Loft since Shelby had convinced them to go clothes shopping on Nick’s expense accounts. It was a way to remind herself and more importantly Shelby that everything around them belonged to someone - most of it to Nick Coyle, their possibly reluctant host and that, if they strained their welcome, there could be consequences.

She didn’t expect it to make any difference with Shelby or necessarily to even register. Some time shortly after moving to the US at fifteen, Shelby had learned that it was sometimes possible to communicate with her father more clearly through his credit cards than direct conversation. It seemed she now had something to say to Nick that could best be transmitted via a four-figure bill courtesy of Ferragamo and Jimmy Choo.

For people who didn’t know Shelby, it would be easy to dismiss her as a fashion-obsessed airhead whose only contribution to the world around her was her appearance. For the last three years, Alexis had assumed Shelby cultivated this impression as defensive armor against the corrosive social scene in Brownfield Mills. And while that was certainly part of the truth, Alexis was only now starting to realize all the strange things about her best friend that should have tipped her off that there was more going on than that.

Shelby answered the question, but Alexis didn’t really register the answer. Cat said. “That must have been a fascinating conversation.”

“Wait. Who’s Threnody?” Rifkeh asked. “And is that her real name or your nickname for her, Shel?”

“Threnody Ferrari-Stone is the richest member of the Stone family and possibly the closest thing you will meet to a real-live supervillain in this world. She’s also beautiful and fabulous and...” Shelby gestured with one hand that there was more, but she was putting it aside for a moment. “Oh, and she’s Italian, but she’s got a Marilyn Monroe thing going. My nickname for her is Cruella de Medici.”

“So...” Cat stretched out in her corner of the hot tub. Of the four, she was the only one who’d elected to be topless tonight, but that was hardly surprising for her. “What did you talk about with Ms. de Medici?”

“Not much. She’s going to be in Europe until I leave for Philly.” said Shelby. “She did suggest we meet for drinks the next time she’s in New York or I’m in Italy. She gave me Jesse’s number and said I should call him.”

“Jesse Stone?” Alexis momentarily jumped out of the water in her excitement. “You called Jesse Stone? What did he say?”

“I haven’t called Jesse.” Shelby sipped her wine. “I don’t know if I’m going to either. The timing is terrible.”

“Jesse Stone the fencer?” Rifkeh frowned, looking puzzled. “Is he one of those Stones too?”

“He’s definitely one of those Stones - billionaire, philanthropist, Olympic fencer Jesse Stone.” Alexis listed. “Why wouldn’t you call him?”

“Well...” Shelby held her glass up over the roiling water. “What would the best possible outcome be of such a call? I called Threnody because she picked me up on her kinkdar within seconds of meeting me and gave me her number. I figured she had something she wanted to tell me and that it was probably worth the effort to hear.”

“Kinkdar?” Rifkeh asked. “I really should take notes from these conversations.”

“Kinky radar.” Alexis filled in. “It’s like gaydar, but for kinky people. Only, is that a thing?” She turned to Shelby.

“It is for Threnody.” said Shelby. “Of course, I still had finger marks on my throat at the time, which was probably a tip-off.”

“I haven’t tried much breathplay.” offered Cat. “How did you like it?”

“Depends on the context.” said Shelby. “When Simon did it, I think he really couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill me or fuck me more. That was pretty hot. Most of the time Beck did it, I knew he was just trying to convince me he was more of a bad-ass than he really is and that’s just more exhausting than anything else.”

Alexis looked over to Rifkeh. Shelby had already shocked the young Israeli woman a number of times with drunken descriptions of her sex life, but Rifkeh waved away the look. “I’m just a sponge over here right now.”

“So, if you called Threnody, why wouldn’t you call Jesse?” Alexis prompted Shelby. “He’s kinky too. Isn’t he?”

“Notoriously so.” agreed Shelby. “But that doesn’t mean I should call him. He didn’t give me his number. Threnody did. What would I say? ‘Hey, Jesse. We met at that dance performance. I heard you have a red room of pain. Could you show it to me?’”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Alexis. “Why not? He’s rich and gorgeous and, if you were willing to let both Becton Michaels and Simon Anderson do that sort of thing to you, why wouldn’t you let Jesse Freaking Stone?”

Shelby closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them. “I don’t know. Simon’s coming back in a week and then I’ve got like two weeks before I leave. What’s going to come out of hanging out with Jesse?”

“Well ... let’s see.” Alexis tapped her lips with one finger. “You could hang out with Jesse Freaking Stone and maybe get to experience his pain room and totally capture his heart and become Mrs. Jesse Freaking Stone! Do you not read BDSM e-romance?”

“Do you?” Shelby turned to look at her.

Alexis flushed a little, but wasn’t deterred. “Some since you started talking dirty and pulling my hair. Yeah.”

“So, I guess you’re saying you would call him?” Shelby challenged.

“On my own, probably not. I don’t know if I’m freaky enough for Jesse.” Alexis said. “But, I’d love to meet him.”

Shelby considered it for a few seconds, then sighed. “Okay. Fine. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” Alexis insisted. “Now before you sober up and it seems like a bad idea.”

“It already seems like a really bad idea.” Shelby pointed out, but levered herself out of the tub anyway. “All right. I’ll just tell him Threnody said I should call him and see what he says.”

“Fine, but don’t forget you can invite yourself to his red room of pain if the conversation lulls.” said Alexis. “Go get your phone.”

As Shelby left the hot tub enclosure, Cat started laughing. “It’s good we have you here for adult supervision, Lexi.”

“Can’t get much more adult than this.” Alexis pointed out. “Adult beverages, adult behavior, adult language. What more could you want?”

“Adult movies?” Cat suggested with a grin.

“Not my thing.” said Alexis.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Rifkeh asked Alexis.

Alexis laughed. “Sure. Why? Have I fallen behind the others on oversharing?”

“Maybe. I’ve had more of an education on alternative sexual lifestyles in the last two days than the first twenty-two years of my life.” Rifkeh leaned forward. “Just ... what’s going on with you and Shelby?”

“We’ve been fucking.” said Alexis.

“Asked and answered.” Rifkeh sat back. “Follow-up question: Why does Shelby keep referring to you as straight girls?”

“Ah.” Alexis considered the different parts of that question. “Part of that is because she self-identifies as straight. Part of it is because she identifies me as straight and I don’t care enough to correct her.”

“So, you’re bisexual?” Rifkeh suggested. Cat hid a laugh behind her hand.

“If you want to call me that, I won’t correct you either.” Alexis told her. “It’s not a word I use for myself. ‘Bi’ suggests a certain balanced attraction. I’m attracted to a lot of guys and very few women. Calling me ‘straight’ is probably more correct than calling me ‘bi.’”

As Rifkeh absorbed that, Alexis turned to Cat. “How am I doing?”

Cat shrugged. “You’re describing yourself. That makes you the expert. I use ‘pansexual’ myself because it gives people the best misunderstanding of who I am. The truth is that I’m attracted to maybe a tenth of the people in the world, but my strongest attractors aren’t genital-based.”

“I totally get that. Most of my thing is lean muscle. I don’t care who it’s on.” Alexis smiled. “Shelby looks all soft and girly, but she was my base when we were cheerleading and the first time she picked me up, I was so confused, I nearly peed on her.”

Rifkeh was giving Alexis an odd look. After a moment, she realized why and smiled. “Yeah, Stretch. In case you’re wondering, you’re totally my physical type. If I were alone, I’d totally be pining for you. But don’t worry. As it stands, I’m not looking to have sex with you.”

“Okay.” Rifkeh managed, blushing deeply.

“On the other hand, I think I’d really enjoying wrestling with you and losing.” Alexis added.

Shelby strode back into the hot tub enclosure and slid into the water. “Okay. I called him. Here’s the deal, Lexi. He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night. And we’re invited to join him at his exclusive club afterwards.”

“We?” Lexi asked, voice squeaking a little.

“Oh, yeah.” Shelby smirked. “If I’m going to a sex club, you’re definitely coming with me.”

Nick was pacing. He knew it was absurd to do so, but he couldn’t help feeling bad that he’d brought all his friends on vacation and they’d had two terrible days of weather in a row. They were camped out in what the management of the palazzo euphemistically called the sun room. Today, there was no sun to be seen, only a steady pounding rain in every direction. The group had eaten breakfast up here and now, with the dishes cleared away, pretty much everybody was on a tablet doing their own thing.

Nick walked up to Simon who had his feet propped on a window pane and a spreadsheet open on his iPad. “So ... I guess this is happening. Huh?”

Simon looked back at him. “Looks like it. We probably shouldn’t have crammed all the museums into one day yesterday.”

“You’re right. I missed a golden opportunity to listen to all of you whinge about having to walk a hundred feet through rain instead of just bitching about the heat.” Nick offered.

Simon lowered his iPad. “You do know you’re not actually responsible for the weather. Don’t you?”

“Obviously. That’s SSCS’s job.” Nick suggested.

“Glad you understand that.” Simon brough his tablet up again. “I thought maybe I was talking to the same guy who apologized for a blizzard on New Year’s Eve 2011.”

Nick laughed in spite of himself. “Fine. The weather’s not my fault. Are those the numbers for IBJ you’re looking at?”

“Brianna says she’ll have the IBJ numbers for me by three. She’s in Edinburgh, so that’s be four here. I’ve got two brokers in New York who desperately want your business who have agreed to double check her work. I’ll strip out any sensitive, non-aggregate data and send it to them. They’ve promised to have an answer for me by five PM New York time, which is eleven here. Barring additional catastrophe, we’ll be at the disco by then. That means you will have my analysis by lunchtime tomorrow.”

Nick nodded. “So, stop asking you for the IBJ numbers?”

“You can ask, but you’ll get the same answer until lunchtime tomorrow.” said Simon.

Nick smirked. He’d recognized the distracting tactic. “So, what’s the spreadsheet?”

“It’s nothing yet - still a very preliminary model.” Simon said.

“Of what?” Nick asked.

Simon held up the iPad for Nick to see. Nick looked at rows of numbers and abbreviations that meant nothing. It wasn’t until he read the sheet names that he made sense of it. “You’re comparing my assets and Threnody’s?”

Simon shook his head. “I’m modeling how I would position your assets to do the maximum harm to Threnody if it ever came down to mutually assured destruction. It’s really only a toy model at this point, though. I only have real, tangible assets here - nothing about allies or how she could use Ferrari to raise funds or other human factors.”

Nick gave a low whistle and looked around to see if anyone was listening. “You must be really pissed at her.”

“No.” Simon gave a sharp head-shake. “I’m not mad at her. Of all the people who’ve tried to turn me against you so far, her method of bribery is by far my favorite. This is just an interesting exercise - like playing Risk. For five billion dollars, you could buy a controlling stake in the companies that provide sixty-one percent of her income and have enough left over to buy nearly all of her revolving debt. You could bankrupt her within eighteen months.”

“While at the same time bankrupting myself?” Nick asked.

“You’d still have two or three billion dollars left of your original assets.” Simon tapped a number on his pad. “And whatever you could seize in terms of collateral of course. You could actually be richer than you are now when the dust clears.”

“That’s ... good to know.” Nick said. “It reminds me of how terrifying your mind can be when it turns to systematic destruction.”

“This all assumes the Stone family trustees don’t come to her aid and that she doesn’t get Jesse or Opal to throw in with her ... or some other billionaire outside the family.” Simon clarified. “Any real situation would be a lot more dynamic.”

“You do know I’m not planning to try to bankrupt Threnody. Right?” Nick felt the need to say.

“No, but it must be comforting to know you could.” Simon pointed out. “And it does show some ways you could fuck with her if she fucked with you. More than half of her debt comes due within the next five years. Right now, she pays off a small percentage of it each year in cash and the rest in sovereign bonds. Her current creditors accept a fairly low rate of return on the new bonds, but none of the debt is structured as PIK. It’s all just convention and gentleman’s agreement.”

He finally noticed Nick’s blank stare. “Every year, Threnody pays off most of her debt with more debt. The current debt holders treat her new debt like Ferrari was a real country, but there’s no contract that says they have to or have to accept it all. They ... or anyone who buys the debt from them could demand payment in cash. She’d have to raise that cash on the open market. It’s extremely unlikely that she can afford to pay her debts if that happens.”

“Shit.” Nick ran his hand through his hair. “Could somebody do the same thing to me?”

“No. One of the few things the jackasses at Black and Stringer did right was to avoid debt even when it might have made short-term sense. The best someone could do was go around buying companies that buy or rent things from companies you own and stop doing business with you. But that would be way more expensive for them than it would be for you.” Simon shook his head. “I’m not saying there are no possible edge attacks against you, but I can’t find any.”

Nick nodded thoughtfully. “Assuming the numbers make sense, would you invest in IBJ?”

Simon sighed and looked at him. “Well ... we are planning to move about a billion dollars from safer, income-based investments to more speculative growth-based ones. And a lingerie startup is pretty damned speculative.”

“Was there a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ I should have been able to extract from that?” Nick prompted.

Simon shook his head. “You’ve got two main goals with your investments. You want to guarantee your current income levels year over year and you want to increase those levels. Right now, nearly all of your investments are focused on wealth maintenance - making sure you can spend three hundred million dollars a year and not be any less rich. You need to start selling things that guarantee income and buying things that have a chance to pay off big if you want your fortune to grow. IBJ could pay off big. Your five million today could be a hundred million in ten years or it could be zero. A good strategy is to have your risky investments hedge each other so that some pay off bigger when others fail. There’s no obvious hedge for lingerie, but with a portfolio your size, you can generally hedge on a bigger scale. The trick is determining how much risk you should take on.”

Nick grunted. What Simon said was starting to make sense, but he was glad to have someone who understood this stuff in his inner circle. “Threnody suggested I focus on aggressively growing my assets for a few years before I commit to giving all of the income away.”

Simon grunted. “That’s not a terrible idea. If you were to restrict your non-investment spending to a hundred million dollars a year for the next five years or so, you could build up a cash reserve that would let you speculate more aggressively and still guarantee an income of a quarter billion dollars a year in... 2020 with fairly high confidence.”

“Why would I want to guarantee less income in five years than I have now?” Nick asked.

“A quarter billion is a nearly-worst-case scenario.” said Simon. “Basically - unless the entire world started shitting on you at once you’d project to make a quarter billion a year. In return for the increased uncertainty, there would be a chance you could be making four hundred million by then or more, maybe way more. IBJ is speculative, but it’s not super-speculative. If you want aggressive growth, you should invest some small percentage of income in things with a really high upside - tech start-ups, black sky ventures, biofuels, maybe a bit of serious sci fi shit. If one of those hits, it can dwarf every other source of income you have.”

Nick looked out the window at the rain pouring down. “You know, the first time they told me how much I was inheriting, it sounded like all the money in the world.”

Simon nodded. “Instead, it’s like three percent of Apple’s market cap. But, if you could invest a small bit of it in the next Apple...”

“I could do a lot more with it. But, I could lose it all too.” Nick finished.

“Not really - not unless you do something colossally stupid or get more unlucky than anyone in the history of luck.” Simon told him. “People love to say that the system is rigged so that the rich get richer, but first it’s rigged so that the rich can stay rich with very little risk. You could actually make about a hundred million dollars a year guaranteed barring anything short of the simultaneous collapse of the twenty richest countries in the world. You’re only taking on a tiny amount of risk to triple that.”

Nick didn’t answer right away. He’d hoped Simon would tell him something that directly contradicted Threnody’s view of the future - the rich getting richer and more powerful indefinitely and possibly the best hope for humanity being good rich people as a bulwark against bad rich people. When he’d accepted the lunch date with Threnody, he’d expected to find a capering villain who didn’t care about anything but her own power. What he’d found was far more nuanced and made him wonder if the rest of the family wasn’t exaggerating how bad she really was.

Considering Simon’s current attitude towards Threnody, Nick wasn’t about to bring that possibility up to him. Instead, he decided now was as good of a time to bring this up as any. “How speculative would buying real estate in Brownfield Mills be?”

Simon snorted. “Pretty damned speculative. You wouldn’t make a profit unless somebody shut down all the meth labs.”

“Assume someone could.” Nick said.

“It’s close to the city. And it’s on the lake. There are a ton of...” Simon paused. “This isn’t entirely a speculative question. Is it?”

Nick gave a faint shake of his head and raised his voice so that everyone in the sun room could hear him. “While we’re stuck inside by the rain, there’s something I’d like to talk about.”

Because Nick had asked everyone to let him get through the whole pitch before commenting, Arwen listened respectfully to the whole hare-brained scheme to save Brownfield Mills from itself before asking. “Can I just vote ‘permanently fuck no’ now and save us the rest of the discussion?”

“Maybe I’m imagining things, but I think Arwen might have some objections.” said Simon.

“Fuck yes I have some fucking objections.” declared Arwen. “Starting with this: there are a million places where you can do more good for less money. Pick a random town in Nepal that’s not full of wanna-be gangsters and meth heads and drop a tenth of the money on it. Then buy a hundred dollars worth of gasoline and burn the Mills to the fucking ground.”

“As a charity, I agree.” Simon said.

“There. Simon and I agree for the first time on anything ever.” Arwen said. “That should be enough to kill the discussion.”

“As a pure charity play, it doesn’t make any sense.” Simon repeated. “It only makes sense if you consider it as both a charity play and an investment. This is one of those sweetheart deals only rich people get. The government takes all the risk of enforcement. We reap all the reward. And we get to do some good for the place we all grew up.”

Arwen glared at him. “How are you not on the burn-it-down side of this argument? Didn’t you once calculate exactly how much dynamite it would take to raze the whole town?”

“That was an academic exercise. If I blew up every place I ran a blast analysis on, the whole world would burn.” said Simon. “This is about real people’s lives ... including all of our parents. They still live there.”

Max had borrowed Nick’s tablet to look at the map of the land being sold. “This land goes all the way up to Ridge Road, right across the street from my parents’ house. You would own the land Campanelli Towing is on. Could you shut it down?”

Nick looked to his assistant. “Rosangela?”

Rosangela worked on her pad for a good thirty seconds before saying. “That depends on how the land is leased out. I don’t have the information here. Once I get it, I can give you a firm answer. May I ask the significance of Campanelli Towing?”

“It’s this big lot across the street from my house - and Simon and Dennis’s.” said Max. “A guy named Tony Campanelli runs his towing business out of there and the place is full of old rusted-out cars. Two or three times a week, there’d be a caravan of trucks pulling in there at like two or three in the morning. My father started filing noise complaints with the town and Tony Campanelli threatened to kill him if he kept it up. This was like ten years ago.”

“I thought I heard gunshots there the night Ryan Vikander was murdered. I didn’t say anything.” Dennis added. When everyone turned to look at him, he added. “I also thought it might be trucks backfiring and I was smoking that night. Plus, everybody knows Tony is a fucking psycho.”

“Another excellent reason not to get involved.” said Arwen. “Ryan got murdered over way less than what you’re proposing to do. You can say the government’s taking all the risk, but what happens when you buy this land up and try to shut them all down?”

“That’s a good point.” said Nick. “I talked to Ainsley about hiding my identity as a buyer and she believes she can structure a shell corporation to make the purchase look unconnected to us. But that’s not an absolute guarantee nobody will figure out who has an interest in rejuvenating Brownfield Mills and the money to do it.”

“And we have security.” Max pointed out.

“We have building security.” Arwen heard herself raising her voice and forced it down. “What if somebody came after us here?”

“We have security here as well.” Rosangela said quietly. “And we could get a good deal more within minutes if we believed there to be a threat.” She then turned and whispered something to Nick.

Nick raised his hands. “All right. Clearly this is going to be a contentious issue. We don’t need to decide it right now and I forgot Rosangela doesn’t have clearance for all the information I need to share. That was an ... oversight on my part. Let’s ... think and talk about it. I’ll get Rosangela clearance and anyone who has questions about the specific details will be able to ask her or Tanvi directly. I meant to wait until we were headed back to New York before I brought this up anyway.”

“Can we get a consensus on registering for the auction before we close the matter?” Simon asked. “It’s not a commitment to actually do anything, but it would let things move forward.”

“I can move to table or I could just wait and vote no.” Arwen said. “Which would you prefer?”

Nick raised a hand. “Clearly there’s no consensus. I’ll send you all the documents we have on the proposal. You can look them over at your leisure. Please remember not to share them with anyone outside of this room except Emily, Ainsley, and Tanvi. If you find you do need to share them more broadly than that, contact me and or Ainsley and we’ll see about getting them clearance.”

“You do know only the mean teachers give us homework over vacation.” Simon pointed out. Everyone laughed.

“At your leisure.” Nick repeated. “What else are you going to do today?”

“Looks like a perfect day for D&D.” Max suggested. That got another laugh, but he persisted. “I’ve actually got a one-off I’ve been working on based in Pangaria.”

“Seriously?” Nick asked. “If I’m going to let other DMs get their grubby mitts on my precious, I guess having you do it first is as gentle an introduction as I’m ever going to get. I’m in.”

Pretty soon, they’d all agreed to play a session. Arwen was annoyed and wanted to say no, but realized it would be churlish of her to do so. She gestured her assent.

“What is D&D?” Rosangela asked.

“It’s the game Nick played with the lingerie models to make them like him.” said Max.

Rosangela’s face lit up. “Oh, yes! Dungeons and Dragons. Of course. I watched the video. It looked like fun.”

“I’ve got a character for you if you want to try it.” Max offered.

Rosangela looked around the room. “Why not? Nearly everyone who could need me for work is going to be here. I’m in.”

“Great. Let me gather my stuff and we’ll reconvene here in like a half hour?” Max asked.

Everyone agreed and started to head out. Arwen rushed to catch up with Simon as he left the room. When they were alone in the hallway, she asked. “Hey, Anderson. Since when do you care about people?”

“People like my parents?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Dickinson. I’m not that much of a sociopath. I only want to see ninety-eight percent of the world go up in flames.”

“Ah. I thought maybe you figured if you helped her daddy, you could get Titstick to love you.” Arwen suggested.

Simon’s spine stiffened and he actually stopped walking to turn and look at her. Arwen felt an odd thrill of fear. She’d been half kidding, trying to get a rise out of Simon, but clearly the nerve she’d touched was a lot more sensitive than she’d realized.

“You got me.” Simon smirked at her. “All I need to give up my principles is a bit of tail. Maybe you should have sex with me and see if I change my vote.”

Arwen knew Simon’s quick recovery didn’t mean she hadn’t wounded him, but she couldn’t get serious now or she would only make it worse. She fell back on familiar patterns. “Eww. I’d rather move back to the Mills myself.”

“Well, if you find something you want badly enough, I’m just down the hall.” Simon said. “You wouldn’t be the first one to think that’s the way to control Nick.”

Before Arwen could think of a response, Simon turned again and left her standing alone in the hall. There had been such bitterness in her old frenemy’s voice that she had a feeling she didn’t know the whole story behind it.

Lev caught up with her while she was still standing there. “What’s wrong? Did Simon say something terrible to you?”

“I think I said something terrible to him actually.” Arwen said quietly.

“All right. I’ll withhold his ass-kicking until it’s his turn again.” Lev wrapped an arm around her shoulders to guide her back to her rooms. As they got walking again, he laughed. “So, we’re going to be playing Dungeons and Dragons in an actual castle. I guess this is what nerds like us do when we get some money.”

Arwen smiled and nodded. “Maybe we can play on Nick’s plane some time.” Once they got back to the room, she added. “You’re with me on the Brownfield Mills thing. Aren’t you?”

The amount of time Lev took to say anything was more of an answer than his words. “You know this palazzo once housed Nazi generals?”

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice.” Arwen said wryly, her stomach sinking.

“That doesn’t make the palazzo evil. It’s actually very beautiful. I think Brownfield Mills could be like that. It’s been used for evil by evil men, but if those men can be defeated...” Lev shrugged. “There’s nothing ugly about the place itself.”

Arwen rubbed her temples with thumb and forefinger. “You’ve got a justice boner for this. Don’t you?”

Lev looked at her seriously. “In Nepal, we helped a lot of people who had suffered great misfortune. This is good work. In Brownfield Mills, we have a chance to fight real evil. That is great work.”

Arwen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There were so many things she wanted to say about the situation, but she knew Lev’s desire to fight evil was central to who he was. She wasn’t going to win this argument. She opened her eyes. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Obviously, we should do this.”