"No pain, just gains," Jason Rivers muttered, watching the pool crowd shriek and scramble for cover as the first fat raindrops dimpled the water.
He stood at the penthouse window with a glass of champagne going warm in his hand. The apartment took up the top floor of one of Manhattan's most exclusive high-rises, and the floor-to-ceiling glass gave him the whole skyline, its lights blurring under a bruised sky.
Thunder rolled in over the Hudson, still too far off for anyone at the party to care. Behind him, a hundred people were having the best night of their lives on his money.
Every major adult site on the web had put his face on their banner ads for over a decade. Half the room had seen every inch of him on a paywalled screen, and they still said "Jason, darling" like they'd earned it.
In the dark glass, a reflection detached itself from the crowd and drifted toward him. Jason turned before she reached him, and the smile was already in place.
"Jason! Darling!" Melissa air-kissed both his cheeks, jewelry flashing. "This party is simply divine."
"Credit goes to my team." His voice did what it always did, low and warm. He'd stopped hearing it years ago.
"Don't be modest." She squeezed his arm and lowered her voice, eyes bright with gossip. "Everyone's talking about your studio, you know. You snatched the exclusive platform deal right out from under Apex Media. Half this room came tonight to see whether you'd gloat."
"I don't gloat."
"That's exactly what stings." She laughed, and it was a shade too sharp. "Production heads hate losing millions in pay-per-view revenue to a performer who owns his own distribution."
"Apex will survive."
"Will they?" She raised her glass to him. "Well. A Jason Rivers party is always something special."
He kept smiling through the rest of it: the compliments, the story about her villa, the invitation he'd never accept. It was the smile of an AVN Male Performer of the Year, magnetic and a little dangerous, and he couldn't remember the last time it had happened by accident. Under it, the word Apex sat like a pebble in his shoe.
"If you'll excuse me," he said at last. "I need to check on something with the caterers."
The walk to the kitchen took ten minutes. A top cam-platform executive caught his sleeve, and a performer he'd shot a scene with last year pretended not to see him.
Everyone wanted a piece of him, and everyone had an angle. Jason nodded, laughed at the right moments, and kept moving.
The kitchen was quiet at last, if you ignored the caterers arranging tiny things on tinier spoons. He leaned against the steel counter and shut his eyes. Nobody tonight had asked him a single question he hadn't answered a hundred times before.
"Jason? You feeling okay?" a voice said.
Jason opened his eyes. Sarah, his personal assistant, stood a few feet away with her ever-present tablet clutched to her chest like a shield. She was in her early thirties, in sensible glasses and a black dress that had survived six hours of party chaos better than anyone else's, with a pen stabbed through her bun like she might need it as a weapon.
Of everyone in the building, she was one of the few who looked at him like he was a person and not a product, and right now she was studying him with narrowed eyes, like a detective who had already decided someone was guilty.
"I'm fine, Sarah." He straightened up, and the smile snapped back on. "Just needed a breather. How much longer do we keep this circus going?"
She checked her tablet. "The last guests should be gone within the hour." Then she leaned in and lowered her voice. "Or I can clear the place in ten minutes. Fire alarm, fake gas leak, or my cousin who's allergic to everything. Say the word."
"Sarah."
"Melissa has been guarding the canapés for forty minutes. I think she's eating the toothpicks."
"We are not evacuating my guests over a gas leak."
"A fake gas leak."
"Sarah." He didn't raise his voice. He never did. That calm, patient tone was the only thing in the building that had ever made her back down.
She sighed like he'd cancelled Christmas. "Fine. You're no fun, you know that?"
"So I've heard." The corner of his mouth twitched, the first smile all night that hadn't been on purpose. "Wrap things up the normal way. And once everyone's gone, bring the platform buyout papers to my study. Might as well get some work done tonight."
"You got it, Jason." She saluted him with the tablet.
She slipped back out into the noise, and Jason gave the party one last lap. He laughed at the right moments and promised to catch up soon, a promise he had no intention of keeping. The thunder was closer now, and every time it rumbled, the guests cheered like it was part of the entertainment.
An hour later, the last of them was gone. The penthouse felt enormous. Jason loosened his tie on the way to the study, a room lined with bookshelves and dominated by a mahogany desk, and poured a generous measure of scotch from the crystal decanter. Rain streaked the windows behind him. He sank into the leather chair and took a long sip, savoring the burn.
On the desk sat the contract folder he'd pulled out earlier that afternoon: an eight-figure platform licensing agreement, a multi-year content deal for his production label, and another few years spent maintaining the persona of Jason Rivers, adult industry kingpin.
"Is this really all there is?" he muttered, swirling the scotch.
He held the glass up to the light, and something felt off. His arm wouldn't stay lifted. The amber shook, then blurred.
"The fuck?" he breathed.
Dizziness rolled over him, then a hard, bright pain in his chest. He tried to stand and his legs refused. The room tilted. He tried to call for help, and what came out was barely a whisper.
Thunder cracked directly overhead. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the hardwood, and the sound was lost in the storm. Jason clutched at his chest and slumped back in the chair. Something warm ran from the corner of his mouth.
His last clear thought was a bitter one. 'A house full of people, and I'm dying alone.'
Silence settled over the dark study as his breathing stopped.
Ten minutes later, Sarah walked down the quiet hallway carrying the remaining signature pages. "Jason? I brought the rest of the paperwork."
No answer. She pushed the door open.
The crystal glass lay shattered on the floor. Jason was slumped unnaturally across the mahogany desk, unmoving.
"Jason?" Her voice cracked. She dropped the folder, paper scattering everywhere, and rushed to his side. His skin was already cool, his eyes vacant. She grabbed her phone with shaking hands, her fingers fumbling as she dialed 911, a horrified scream tearing from her throat as she begged the operator to send an ambulance.
Across town, the same storm hammered a nondescript office building, and one window was still lit.
"Turner, the sign-in sheet says you left at six."
Alex didn't look up from his monitor. "Then the sign-in sheet is a liar, Dana."
Dana leaned in the doorway of his cubicle, coat on, phone in hand. "Go home. The Halvorsen audit isn't going to love you back."
"The Halvorsen audit is my promotion." He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes. "Just a few more spreadsheets."
"You said that at four." She checked her watch. "Well, don't get locked in. I'm heading out before the roads turn into rivers." She shrugged into her raincoat. "Lock up when you're done, hero."
Her footsteps faded, and the floor went quiet except for the rain hammering the glass. Alex took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles, and went back to the numbers.
An hour later he hit send on the last email. He let himself have a moment of victory, and it lasted about four seconds. The client would be happy, and the promotion might finally be his.
He'd considered sleeping under his desk, but he had a nine a.m. with the Halvorsen team and exactly one clean shirt at home. So he shoved his papers into a worn messenger bag, pulled on a rain jacket that had seen better days, and ran for the parking garage.
Even that short dash soaked him to the skin.
He caught his reflection in the Civic's driver-side window as he yanked the door open.
Five-seven, mousy hair plastered flat to his skull, glasses fogged, gray smudges under his eyes. Twenty-eight, and he looked like he was working on forty. He had a face more kind than handsome, which was a polite way of saying forgettable.
Jason Rivers' face was on every major ad banner on the internet. Alex's was on nothing, and no one was waiting up for him tonight.
'Great. Really crushing it, Turner.'
He dropped into the seat, and the door groaned shut behind him. The old Civic protested when he turned the key, sputtering before it finally caught.
"Come on, old girl," Alex said, patting the dashboard. "Just get me home."
The storm had worsened. Rain lashed the windshield, the wipers barely keeping up, and wind shoved the little car around in its lane. Alex leaned forward with white knuckles.
"Easy. Just a few more miles."
At the next intersection, the traffic light went dark. In the second it took him to register it, a pair of headlights appeared on the right, coming fast through the blinding rain. He slammed the brakes, but on the wet road it made little difference.
The impact was deafening: metal crunching, glass shattering. The car spun, flipped, and came to rest on its roof. Alex hung upside down in his seatbelt, tasting blood, each breath stabbing at his side. The edges of his vision began to darken.
His last thought was almost funny. 'I'm going to miss that promotion.'
Then, mercifully, everything went black.