Chapter 15

- Renee

Kneader was driving.

It had made sense to put her there. She had a swimmer's hands, steady and precise. Maybe it was a dumb reason to pick her as the driver. She could have been a nervous wreck behind the wheel for all I knew. But she'd obeyed, taking the key without making anything of it, settling into the seat, adjusting the mirrors, and pulling out of the lot with the kind of quiet competence that made me feel like I'd made the right call after all. Girl knew how to drive. Good enough.

The car itself had come from a woman in a yellow raincoat standing outside the club, keys already out when I'd walked up. She handed them over, stepped back onto the pavement, and watched us pull away with the same resigned look of someone who'd just missed their bus. No fuss. No second thoughts. Just done. My car now.

That was the thing I kept coming back to. Not the car, not where we were headed, but how little effort it had taken. Four words, one look, and the woman was already reaching into her bag. No back and forth, no moment where she weighed it. Just that smooth, immediate give.

Simple. The whole thing was just simple.

I settled back and looked out the window. We were rolling through one of those neighborhoods built to project a certain kind of quiet, the kind only serious money can afford. Hedges cut so clean they looked digital. Driveways that went on long enough to make you forget what you were doing. Stone gateposts, security cameras tucked in at discreet angles. The morning light was just starting to come up over the rooflines, pale and thin.

Kneader had both hands on the wheel, ten and two, shoulders squared, eyes tracking the road with calm, unhurried attention. She was back in her clothes, her top barely tucked in, her muscles visible through the thin fabric every time she turned the wheel.

I'd told my girls to get dressed before we left. Not because anyone would have batted an eye at three naked women climbing into a stranger's car, but because there was a time for everything, and I was looking forward to undressing them again myself.

Kneader checked the mirror, read a corner, eased into the lane, and settled back with quiet ease. Not zoned out. Not robotic. Just present, the way someone is when they're doing exactly the right thing. Which, of course, she was. She was driving because I'd told her to, so she was happy at the wheel the way a dog is happy retrieving a ball. I was willing to bet my three new toys were considerably happier right now than they'd been last night on that dance floor. I mean... I'd commanded them to be.

Behind her, Pillow sat with her arms loose in her lap, her curly hair still disheveled, the kind of mess that takes effort to make. Oh, we'd been naughty... Her tank top too was back on, stretched tight across her chest, the fabric straining with every slow breath she took. Her eyes were open and aimed at nothing. Just waiting.

Mouthpiece was beside me, her unbuttoned shirt draped back over her shoulders, her thigh warm against mine. She stared at some fixed point between the headrests, patient and empty and perfectly still.

Then I saw it.

Set back from the road behind a low stone wall, the kind built to suggest a boundary rather than enforce one. The house was modern, the real kind, not the kind developers slap that word on to justify quartz countertops. Three stories of dark steel and glass stacked with architectural intention, each floor cantilevered slightly further than the one below it, jutting out over a landscaped slope like it was reaching for something. The facade was mostly floor-to-ceiling windows, and the lights inside were on, warm amber bleeding out into the dark and catching the surface of what looked like a lap pool running the length of the ground floor terrace. A pair of Japanese maples flanked the front path, their branches bare and reaching. The front door was a single slab of blackened oak wide enough to drive a motorcycle through.

It was enormous and it was tasteful and it was exactly the kind of house that made you understand, viscerally, what it meant to have won.

"Stop here," I said.

Kneader pulled over in one smooth motion, cutting the engine. I leaned toward the window, pressing my fingertips against the glass, and looked.

The pool caught the light. The upper floors glowed. A shadow moved behind one of the windows, unhurried. A woman.

Perfect.

I got out of the car.

Three steps toward the house and I realized I was alone. I turned back. All three of them were exactly where I'd left them, sitting in the dark like a display no one had switched on yet. Kneader's hands were still at ten and two, her eyes open, her face slack and untroubled and completely empty. Pillow hadn't moved an inch. Mouthpiece was staring at the headrest in front of her. No task, no purpose. Just three very pretty statues parked on a residential street on a quiet morning.

I laughed. Couldn't help it. I walked back and opened the passenger door. "Come on. All of you. Follow me."

It was like dropping a needle on an old record. Kneader pulled the key from the ignition and pushed her door open. Mouthpiece found her handle on the first try, stepped out, and tugged her shirt straight across her shoulders. Pillow climbed out the back, caught her curly hair in a gust of wind, and pulled it out of her face with one hand, holding it back while she got her footing on the curb.

They fell in behind me without a word. Not in a line, not in formation. Just loose and easy, the way you walk with people you know. Kneader's boots were quiet on the pavement. Pillow tucked her hair behind her ear. Mouthpiece glanced up at the house as we came around the front of the car, and something in her expression shifted, just briefly, taking it in.

The gate was one of those big powder-coated black iron jobs, the kind with spikes along the top that are more aesthetic than functional. A panel was mounted on a stone pillar to the left, brushed steel, with a small camera lens and a button. Fancy. I pressed it.

Nothing.

I pressed it again, held it a beat longer.

The girls stood behind me in a loose cluster. Kneader had her hands in her pockets. Pillow was looking at the Japanese maples. Mouthpiece was examining her own fingernails. It seemed that as long as they were still technically following me, my will was still animating them, giving them a bit more leeway to fill the space however they liked.

A crackle, then a voice. Female, clipped. "Yes? Who is this, and what do you want?"

I leaned in toward the camera. Close enough that the lens would have caught mostly face, burgundy hair, and a grin I wasn't really trying to control.

Silence on the other end.

Then, quieter, the edge gone out of it entirely: "Oh."

A soft mechanical clunk, and the gate swung inward.

I straightened up and glanced back at my girls. "Come on."

The path from the gate to the front door was a long straight run of dark paving stones, wide enough for two cars, with low-voltage lighting set into the edges at regular intervals. The garden on either side was the kind that looked effortless and cost a fortune to maintain. Ornamental grasses, clipped boxwood, a few specimen trees positioned exactly where they'd do the most work. The lap pool I'd spotted from the road ran along the right side of the terrace, its surface catching the pale morning light and throwing it back in slow, shifting patterns across the steel and glass above it.

I took my time walking up.

The girls drifted along behind me, unhurried, their footsteps soft on the stone. Nobody spoke. The neighborhood was still quiet, that particular pre-dawn stillness that feels pressurized, like the whole street is holding its breath. I looked up at the house as we got closer and felt something settle comfortably in my chest. Three cantilevered floors of it. The floor-to-ceiling glass. The blackened oak door, already swinging open before we'd even reached the steps.

She was standing in the frame.

Early forties, maybe right at them. Tall, with the kind of posture that comes from years of being the tallest woman in a boardroom and deciding to own it rather than apologize for it. She was wearing a bathrobe, dark navy silk that fell to mid-calf, the belt knotted loosely at the waist. Her hair was dark with a few threads of silver at the temples, pushed back, not quite put together but not far from it either. She had a strong, clean face. Good bones. The kind of woman who'd been striking at twenty-five and had graduated into something better than that. Her jaw was set, but her eyes were doing a lot of work trying to keep up with the situation.

Those eyes moved from me to the three girls at my back, and then back to me.

We came up the last few steps of the path and she stayed in the doorway, not moving aside, not quite blocking it either. Her hands were at the belt of the robe, fingers working it without her seeming to realize she was doing it.

"Do you want to have sex with me?" she asked. Her voice was steady. Good effort.

I snorted. In this situation it was clear she was hoping that was all I was looking for.

"Maybe," I said. "Probably. Later."

Her jaw tightened a fraction.

I looked past her into the hallway. Polished concrete floor, a console table in dark walnut with a single piece of sculpture on it that probably had a provenance. A staircase curving upward in the background, steel cable railing, the same blackened finish as the door. The whole thing was airy and considered and lit like something you'd find in a design magazine.

"I really like this house," I said.

She exhaled. Slow. Controlled. She knew. You could see it working across her face, the thing she knew and wasn't ready for and wasn't going to run from either.

"I've been working toward a house like this for a long time," she said. Something careful had crept into her voice. "Fifteen years. More than that, really. The land acquisition, the architect, the build itself—" She stopped. Started again. "There were people who said I'd never—" She stopped a second time. Her fingers tightened on the belt of her robe.

"Give me your house," I said.

She stopped talking. Her mouth stayed open for half a second, her eyes searching my face for something she wasn't going to find.

Then she sighed. Long and quiet, the kind that comes from somewhere deep.

"Of course," she said. "It's your house."

She said it like she was reading the words off a card someone else had written. Flat. Factual. True.

Her eyes went bright, suddenly, and she pressed her lips together. "Where am I going to live?"

I shrugged. "You've got other houses, right? You'd have to, to afford a place like this."

She didn't answer that. Which was answer enough.

I smiled. "While we're on the subject." I tilted my head. "I could actually use some money. It always comes in handy. Even when you own all women."

She went very still. "If you take my money, I don't—how am I supposed to—"

"How much do you have?"

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She swallowed.

"Tell me how much money you have."

It came out of her like a cork popped from a bottle.

"Checking accounts, combined, four hundred and twelve thousand. Brokerage, just under three million. The Cayman account has another eight hundred. There's a real estate trust I control outright, current valuation around eleven million, though it's not liquid. Liquid, you're looking at just over four million, give or take." She gave it to me like a confession being pulled out of her, each figure arriving with the reluctant precision of something she'd rather have died than said.

When she finished, she seemed to fold in on herself a little. Not dramatically. Just a small, quiet defeat settling across her shoulders. "What am I even supposed to do with my life now?"

I looked back at the girls.

Kneader was standing on the paving stones with her hands loose at her sides, her dark eyes aimed somewhere past the pool. Pillow had one hand pressed to the side of her face, her curly hair blowing in the early morning breeze, her expression the particular blankness of someone whose brain was idling. Mouthpiece was standing slightly apart from the other two, looking up at the second floor of the house with mild, empty interest.

I turned back to the woman in the bathrobe.

"What's your name?" I asked.

She opened her mouth.

I smiled before she got there. "Actually," I said, "I know exactly what your name is going to be from now on."

I let the pause sit for a second, looking her over. The silk robe. The silver in her hair. The number she'd just rattled off without being able to stop herself.

"Wallet."

Hey there! This was chapter 15 of 4 Billion Toys 2. I'll be posting chapters here regularly, but if you want early access to the next chapters, feel free to support me on Patreon!

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