“Yeah,” Paul sighed. “That was unfortunate.”

“That’s what you call executing two kids? Unfortunate?”

“It had to be done.” Paul put down the bottle. “If they’d lived, they would have told the cops everything.”

Only they hadn’t known anything. Sebastian took great measures to keep the salient details from his donors in the event one of them somehow escaped. It had never happened.

He didn’t need to share any of this with Paul. Sebastian said, “Your only job today was to keep an eye on them, make sure things went smoothly. Instead, you brought the cops—”

“No, sir, I did not. They just showed up out of the blue. Why? Because someone in our organization must’ve tipped them off.”

Our organization. Sebastian wanted to reach across the table with his fist, punch that smirk all the way back to the center of Paul’s sick brain.

“Vargas’s dog got out of the yard,” Sebastian said.

Paul narrowed his eyes at him.

“One of the kids let it out of the yard, and the cops found it—and a message,” Sebastian said, pleased by how calm and reasonable he sounded. He needed to stay that way if he was going to get Paul to go with him to Long Beach. “Someone, either Alex or Jolie, wrote a message on the dog tag. It said, ‘Help us.’ That happened under your watch.”

Paul stared down at his flat, hard stomach.

“Then,” Sebastian said, “I come to find out that you took blood from Jolie. Only you know she’s not allowed to give blood because she’s pregnant. Because it’s not safe, places her at risk of anemia. Because it could kill—”

“Her blood is different from all the others.”

“Different how?” The words jumped out of Sebastian’s mouth before he could stop to consider them.

“With Pandora,” Paul said, confidence creeping back into his voice, “I know a lot of people get super horny after a transfusion—a full-body transfusion. But if you take the blood from a pregnant carrier, it’s insane how potent this shit is. Think of it as Pandora on steroids. Pandora makes you look five to ten years younger? My shit makes you feel like a god. And the best thing is that it only takes a few units to get the results I’m talking about.”

“Too bad you killed the golden goose.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Jolie,” Sebastian said. “You killed her.”

Paul opened his mouth, about to speak when he snapped it shut. His face brightened. “Oh, I see. Forget Jolie. I’ll replace her with one of my donors.” Paul caught his expression and said, “I found some of my own carriers—for testing purposes, you understand. I wanted—”

“The stickman at Vargas’s house. He’s one of Anton’s.”

“I borrowed him, to do me a favor. He’s not a part of this. Anton. No one is. I’ve been doing the testing on my own, and on my own time. You’re the only person I’ve shared this with—the only one I wanted to share this with.” Paul frowned. “Wipe that look off your face. I had to get some of my own carriers to test out my theory. I didn’t want to approach you with some half-baked concept—and it’s not. My product is rock-solid. Let’s call it Pandora two point oh. Together, we can—”