Sabrina's Clan (17 page)

“You wanted it, too,” Sabrina reminded Riley. “Until you found Nick and Damian.”

“I’m still telling the world to fuck off,” Riley said sharply. “I’m just not doing it the way we thought we had to. Neither of us knew there were other ways, ‘brina, but there is. You can choose what you want and go for it, no matter what it is you choose. I don’t want the corner office anymore. I probably never did, not really. I wanted what it would give me and so do you.”

Sabrina swallowed. “I want the office,” she said stiffly. “I want the power.”

“Do you?” Riley asked gently. “Or do you want the money and respect that comes with it? The love that might come out of it?”

Sabrina shook her head. “No. Love isn’t…that’s not a part of my plans.”
Not anymore
.

Riley’s eyes glistened. “How could you not want love?” she whispered.

“What man is going to love me, when I can’t give him children?”

Riley looked bewildered. Then horrified. “The appendicitis….” she breathed.

Sabrina nodded.

Riley’s tears fell, rolling down her cheeks with poetic loveliness. Even crying, Riley was beautiful.

Sabrina sighed. “Don’t. Please don’t,” she begged.

“I didn’t know…” Riley whispered. “Oh, Sabrina, I’m so sorry….”

Sabrina closed her eyes and shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have told you. I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Not being able to have children…it doesn’t mean you can’t find love. Look at me.”

Sabrina swallowed. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go,” she said thickly. “God, Riley, we used to talk about this all the time. The corner office, the great career and the absolutely essential businessman husband, the two kids, the big house in the Hamptons. The clothes, the travel….” And as she said it, Sabrina thought of Jake Summerfield, who lived the life.

Riley looked down at her knees and Chloe balanced between them. She was wearing jeans, as she nearly always did these days, boots and a loose sweater. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and if she was wearing makeup at all, it was so subtle even Sabrina couldn’t see it.

“They’re designer jeans,” Riley said, with a little note of protest in her voice.

Sabrina didn’t know where the humor came from, but she found herself suddenly laughing. Riley smiled, too, making her dimples show.

It healed the little crack that had suddenly appeared between them and Sabrina was glad. She still needed to explain it to Riley, though, because it was important her one true and greatest friend, her sister-by-choice, understand this much about her. “Seriously, Riley. The sort of man who lives the life I want…he’s the sort of man who considers marriage to be part of the mergers and acquisitions portfolio. A suitable wife to adorn his arm and provide the heirs to his kingdom. What man would want me, who can’t give him children?”

Riley sobered. She considered Sabrina for a moment. “Would you really want to love a man who thinks like that?” she asked softly.

“In all the years we talked about this stuff, neither of us pretended love would be part of it,” Sabrina said, just as gently. “You’ve only started talking about it since you fell in love.” She tried to smile. “In typical Riley fashion, you went all out and fell in love with two men at the same time.”

Riley gave a small smile of her own. “And they’re not even men, by normal standards,” she added. “That’s just the point. You can have love and you can have the life you want, too. It just might not look like the life you keep thinking it should be.”

“Well, I’m not in love and there are no suitable candidates on the horizon,” Sabrina said, getting to her feet. “So for now, I’m hanging on to what I’ve always wanted.”

“Even if it isn’t what you want now?”

“It
is
what I want,” Sabrina said quickly.

“Well, okay, then,” Riley replied.

Sabrina climbed back down to the apartment, frowning. That
I know better, I’m just not arguing with you about it
furrow between Riley’s brows—Sabrina knew it from many years of their equally strong stubborn streaks colliding. They’d learned to work around each other and that was Riley’s strategy—step away and wait it out, until she was proved right.

Except she wasn’t right this time. She couldn’t be, because if she was right, then that left Sabrina with more than a decade of hard work and nothing to show for it…and that was where
her
stubborn streak kicked in. No way was she going to blow ten years’ worth of dreaming and wishing and working her ass off.

No fucking way.

It seemed that boys were fascinated by toys, no matter what world they lived in, Sabrina realized.

Once everyone in the two apartments was awake, dressed and functioning with or without caffeine, Damian served up a late lunch—two huge trays of sandwiches and subs, deli cuts, cheeses, fruit and veggies. All of it was finger food and all of it was served on the flat top of the ancient old gramophone against the wall next to the windows, because the table was taken up by bags of gear, equipment and an array of weapons that would have gotten everyone in the room instantly arrested, if a cop had seen it.

Riley and Talia were both hunters, yet they sat on the sofa while Sabrina sat in the armchair and Chloe lay on her blanket on the floor between them. The men all gathered around the table, pawing through and examining Jake’s gadgets and gear. Jake explained the various functions of the netting and fold-away knives, the anti-venom spray and more.

Sabrina only half-listened. She wondered if anyone else in the room realized the toys were all the products of advanced research and tech development, the sort of stuff that came out of experimental labs. It was the sort of weaponry for which governments paid billions to take
off
the market, so no other country except them could acquire it.

Sabrina had supervised the financing of such deals more than once. It seemed odd to see such products put to such strange uses. Jake had applied some very lateral thinking to skew the end-product to this highly specialized application.

Talia was glancing over now and then. Mostly, she concentrated on eating the enormous amount of food on her plate.

“You don’t want to check out the weapons, too?” Sabrina asked her.

Talia shrugged. “There’s no point.”

“They could help you hunt the gargoyles.”

Talia’s smile was sour. “It’s not like we could ever afford to buy that sort of shit.”

“A sword edge does the job, anyway,” Riley added.

Talia nodded. “Exactly.” She glanced at Sabrina. “Look at you. You’re earning lots, got the nice clothes and stuff that goes with it, yet you spend all your time on the job. You’re probably feeling guilty because you’re not there right now.”

Sabrina pressed her lips together. She
was
fighting off nagging sensations of guilt and worry about not being at the office.

“We can’t work the sort of job that brings in the money to buy things like that,” Talia said, glancing at the table. “We have to stay fluid. It’s not like demons clock off at five like you do.”

Sabrina shook her head. “Nine to five isn’t the only way to make money.”

Talia laughed. “No, there’s swing shift and graveyard shift, too. A woman’s gotta sleep sometime.”

“No, I mean there are ways to make money that don’t involve any sort of job where someone pays you to do their work for them,” Sabrina said patiently.

Talia just stared at her.

“She’s talking about passive income,” Jake said, from his place at the corner of the table.

“
Passive
income?” Talia repeated.

Miguel was holding one of Jake’s fold-away knives in his hand, up in mid-air like he had forgotten it was there. He was looking at Jake, too. “Passive sounds a lot like not working,
amigo
,” he said carefully.

“That’s exactly what it means,” Sabrina said, lifting her voice so Miguel and Jake could hear her, too.

“It’s not something that would work for hunters,” Nick said sharply. “There are no products they could use to generate the income.”

“It just means they haven’t developed them yet,” Jake pointed out.

Sabrina’s gaze fell on the two duffel bags sitting on the table between the vampires and hunters and the devices and tools they were pulling out of them.

“Look at the knife in Miguel’s hand,” she said. “Someone did all the R&D on that and will earn royalties for life when it goes into production.”

Miguel looked down at the knife, his eyes widening almost comically. “
This
would make me money?” he said, sounding awed.

“Not that one,” Jake said. “You’d have to develop a knife or some other weapon and it would have to be unique enough it could be trademarked and copyrighted. Then you could sell the design.”

“You mean, people make money from thinking up these things?”

“They make millions,
amigo
,” Jake assured him.

Nick shook his head. “It takes more money than most hunters see in a lifetime to develop just one product. You’re feeding them pipe dreams, both of you.”

Jake sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just used to thinking that way.”

Miguel put the knife back on the table with slow, sad reluctance.

Sabrina’s gut tightened. Thinking in terms of revenue streams and investments was what she did all day, too. None of these people, these hunters, had ever had time to lift their heads and look toward a future with a positive bank balance, let alone their next meal. Even Nick and Damian and Nyanther, the vampires, didn’t naturally think that way. Their vast fortunes came about as a result of time and compound interest. There was nothing remotely entrepreneurial in it.

Of course they weren’t used to thinking about such things. Survival was a higher priority. No wonder Talia wore second-hand boots and 1960s relics and Miguel’s car belched blue smoke. From their perspective, it was an impossible dilemma to solve.

Only, Sabrina spent all
her
time resolving problems far more challenging this this.

She sat back in the corner of her chair, letting the conversation wash around her. She absorbed the laughter and chat at the table and the little macho challenges and bravado as they flourished the weapons. She thought about everything she had learned about the hunting world and the hunters themselves and applied it to business models.

There had to be a way….

* * * * *

Jake could almost see the wheels start to turn in Sabrina’s head as she sat back in her chair and stared into middle-distance. Something had tripped her off.

His uncle Graham had looked into Sabrina Castillo’s background after Cory Morse had brought her to dinner to meet them. It was standard practice whenever one of the family met someone in a business setting to check the new person out, build a profile and learn what they could about the new contact’s strengths and weaknesses.

“There’s a reason she’s the youngest director Wentworth Kumatsu has ever had,” Graham had told Jake. “She’s driven, she’s smart and she’s creative. Some of the financing she has arranged for projects has been so out there no one believed the deals would hold together. If we can keep her on the team, it will be to our benefit. Maybe you should date her again, just to cement it.”

That had made Jake’s mouth curl down.

Only, the next day Cory Morse had let them know Sabrina had moved onto a bigger project. It was a code even Jake understood without his uncle’s translation.

“They slapped her down for a transgression,” Graham said and shrugged. “Possibly even for fucking you, Jakey. Men can get caught with their dicks in the wrong slot and shrug it off. Women get a completely different set of rules.” He had dismissed the matter and moved on.

Jake found himself wondering if he had somehow screwed up her professional reputation. He’d never considered just sleeping with a woman would impact negatively on her life, before. Although Sabrina was the first high-powered suit he’d ever taken to bed.

As he watched Sabrina go into thinking mode, Nyanther nudged him. “Did you hear Connor’s question?” he asked, his voice low.

Jake shook off his inattention. “No, sorry.” He looked at Connor. “What was the question?”

Connor was hefting the knife that folded up to look like a harmless power bar. “Can you get these anywhere? How much are they?”

“They’re not on the market,” Jake told him. “That’s a prototype and upper management decided it was too much of a novelty to sell well.”

“Which means they were pressured by a government somewhere that didn’t like the idea of covert weaponry,” Nyanther said.

Jake grinned. “That’s almost exactly what happened.”

“Does a lot of weapons development get suppressed?” Damian asked curiously.

“Suppressed or bought outright, so no one else can get hold of it,” Nyanther said. “It’s happened to me twice.”

“You sell computers,” Damian pointed out.

“I develop software,” Nyanther said. “Cyberwarfare is the new frontier.”

Damian snorted. “Humans…. We haven’t finished with the old battles yet.”

Jake glanced at Sabrina once more. She was listening to the chatter with a smooth, absorbed expression, as if she was sifting through every word said.

An hour later, he found out that was exactly what she had been doing. By then, the remains of lunch had been cleared away and the weapons all returned to the duffel bags.

Chloe was settled for a nap and the adults broke up into smaller groups—Nick and Nyanther sat across the chessboard from each other, while Riley laid against Damian’s chest and drifted in and out of sleep, completely relaxed despite the room full of people. Jake had seen Miguel and his kids do the same thing over the weekend. Grabbing sleep no matter where they found themselves was apparently part of the lifestyle.

Connor had his nose buried in one of Nick’s precious books and Talia was breaking down and cleaning a pistol that lived on her hip when she was hunting. Jake hadn’t seen her use it. She was handling it like someone who knew what they were doing.

Jake wondered if he should go home. It was possible he had outstayed even a hunter’s extended welcome. Besides, his other life was waiting for him. Like Sabrina, he had taken a dive for the day. Tomorrow he would have to report in and work like a good little human, although after this weekend of hunting with real hunters, the human world held less than zero appeal to him.