“What are you mixing it with?”

“Are you asking me to share my secret recipe?” Paul shot him a sly grin. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“How many donors do you have?”

“Three.” Paul frowned, then said, “No, two. One of them lost the kid. She’s not back in rotation yet. I’ve got to give her some time to, you know, heal up before I breed her again.”

Breed her.

Sebastian didn’t harbor any illusions about what he did for a living. When you boiled it down to its core, he abducted carriers—young kids and teenagers, more often than not—and stole their blood and sold it. He took only carriers who came from broken and shitty homes and gave them not only a better life but a safe one, where they would never be hunted or abused. He was as good to them as he knew how to be, given the circumstances—not out of guilt but because it was the right thing to do.

But what Paul was talking about—it was unthinkable.

Paul looked at him with those boyish, innocent eyes. “It doesn’t matter who knocks ’em up—Jolie proved that to me today. Although, I’ve got to say, with her I needed to use less blood for some reason. Maybe it’s because another carrier impregnated her, makes the blood a bit more potent. Maybe we should shoot for that down the road—carriers breeding with other carriers. For right now, though, anyone can— Where are you going?”

Sebastian had gotten to his feet. “I want to see it,” he told Paul, masking his disgust and anger.

“See what?”

“Your farm.”

“It’s not really a blood farm. It’s more like a holding pen, and a crappy one at that.”

“Still, I’d like to view your operation. How you harvest the blood, how you store it, the medications you’re using, et cetera.” And once you take me there, Sebastian added privately, I’m going to blow your brains out.

“So we’ve got a deal?” Paul asked.

“What you’ve got is my interest. After I see everything with my own eyes, we’ll sit down with Frank and discuss terms.”

“Then a toast.” Paul slid the second glass across the table.

Sebastian didn’t take it, his mind seized on a string of questions: Have any of his carriers carried a baby to full term? What did he do to the kids? What does he want to do to the kids? No, don’t ask.

“Just one sip,” Paul said. “You can do that, right? Just take one sip?”

Sebastian felt his lunch sloshing around in his stomach. “Get up and get dressed.”

Paul remained seated, squinting up at him. “You do realize what I’m offering you.”

“And you realize what I’m offering you.”

“Capital and infrastructure.”

And that, Sebastian believed, was the leverage he had over Paul. If Paul had wanted to launch his own operation, he would have put something together already. But undertaking such an operation took a tremendous amount of capital. Paul didn’t have that, or an infrastructure, which was why he was here. Paul needed him in order to produce his ungodly product.