But Cino had the look everyone wanted. And if everyone wanted it, Milos Dragovic wanted it even more.

The best of everything, first class all the way—that had become his credo, the rule by which he would live the rest of his days.

The watch on his wrist, for instance: a gold, thirty-seven-jewel Breguet, considered the best watch in the world. Did it tell time better than a Timex? Hardly. Did he need to know the phases of the moon on its face? It said there was a new moon now—who cared? But people who counted would know it cost upward of thirty grand.

Did he need the fifty-inch plasma TV screen hanging like a painting on the wall of the entertainment room? He hated television. But the sort of people who’d be his guests here Sunday would see it and know it was the best screen money could by.

This house and its lot, where waves tumbled onto the beach beyond the sliding glass doors that lined the south wall of the living room, was the absolute best money could buy. But that hadn’t prevented certain locals from interfering with its construction. The Ladies Village Improvement Society—he’d thought someone was putting him on, but this turned out to be a real group, with real clout—had objected to his blue tile roof. He’d paid through the nose to bypass them.

But then, he’d paid through the nose for everything connected with this place. He’d overpaid for the land, been overcharged by the contractor who built it, gang-raped up the ass by the crew of fag decorators who had been swarming through the rooms for the past few months, and to top it all off, the place squatted a hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a sitting duck for the next hurricane that wandered too far north.

Milos didn’t care. It was only money, and he’d always known how to make lots of money. What mattered was having the best. Because if you had the best, that meant that you recognized what was best, and people—at least people in America—equated that with class. They were all jerks as far as Milos was concerned. He didn’t know a designer sofa from something from the JC Penny catalog, an antique dresser from a junk store reject, but so what? He simply hired people who did. And what was the only thing you needed to hire anyone? Money.

It all came down to money.

But sometimes money wasn’t enough to impress the people who really mattered—the people inside. They demanded more than money. They wanted breeding, lineage, class, celebrity—take your pick. Some computer geek could start a company, sell it for a hundred million a few years later, but he’d still be a geek. He’d still be an outsider. Milos had always been an outsider, but now he was working his way in. It took work, it took smarts, but he was learning the ropes.

His reputation—some called it shady; he preferred colorful—actually worked as a plus, lending him an air of dark celebrity. That was a toehold in that other world. He found that certain insiders liked to drop his name. He played up to that. That was why he had invited Cino out for the weekend. She would be his trophy, a decoration on his arm for both parties.