Page 184 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
“Trenton Alto ishere for you,” my secretary said, poking her head around the door.
I waved at her to let him in.
“Not like you to come here,” I grunted as he walked on through and sat himself down across my desk from me.
“Not like you to ask for something so blacklisted.” He leaned back in his seat. “This was expensive. And risky.”
“I’m well aware of both,” I told him. “Is it comprehensive?”
“It’s comprehensive. Changeable, but comprehensive.”
He handed the business card across the desk, and I took it. “This is accurate?”
“From a reputable source.”
“Good.” I stared at the encrypted web address.
“How the hell do you think you’re gonna get into these places? They’ll shoot you dead on sight.”
“I have methods.”
“A method to the madness,” he said.
“Fuck off,” I said without heat. Trenton Alto was useful. Useful enough that I ignored his comments. The risks I took were my own problem.
“Got too much to talk to you about before I fuck off.”
I put a pause on official business to hear him out about the shifting tides of secrets behind the scenes. He was right. He had plenty to be talking to me about. My life was a web of dealings. Veins of darkness running under the surface of the world all around us.
We were into everything. Everywhere.
Every industry, every trade, every corrupt investment scheme.
Still, I was sitting in my tailored suit behind my desk, living out my facade of corporate godliness. People wouldn’t ever dare challenge me.
They may as well carve out their own gravestone if they tried.
Trenton Alto was my right-hand man on the underside of my existence, and had been for years, far more nefarious than even the most thuggish of criminals could ever know. Usually I’d be interested in hearing what he had to say, but I was restless, itching for something I couldn’t scratch. Calls and meetings had felt strangely dull, nothing spiking my interest. The bustling city around me seemed plain and flat.
“What’s going on with you today?” he asked me and raised an eyebrow.
I raised one back. “In what sense?”
He shrugged. “Just seem a bit…distracted. Even for you.”
“I’m doing just fine,” I said with a glare. “Carry on.”
He carried on talking about business. Shipments and payments.
His words didn’t get any more engaging. I was frustrated, bristling with boredom, wishing he’d fuck off and be done with it. My concentration was weak, jaded, and faded until the very second he spoke her name.
“This Elaine Constantine stuff, you gonna use it to fuck around with her?”
Elaine Constantine.
I snapped back to focus. Fast.
The woman’s name should’ve given me rage, not a prickle in my balls. It gave me both.
