No, he didn’t want to be with her like that.

As the raw mechanics of the way she earned her money tackled him, Vin thought, of course she was in danger. Look at what had happened tonight. Men couldn’t be trusted when their cocks were involved, and he himself was guilty of that kind of penile thinking. Just now, for example.

Desperate for a drink, Vin headed for the bar in the living room. Devina had turned the lights off, but the electric fireplace was on and the flames flickered around the walls, turning them liquid and making the shadows move like they were tracking his stride through the room.

With his fucked-up punching hand, he poured himself a bourbon, and as he drank it, his lip hurt on one side.

Looking around, he measured everything he had bought with money he’d made, and in the shifting illumination it seemed to melt around him, the wallpaper dripping off in oozing sheets, the shelves sagging, the books and the paintings morphing into Dalí-esque figments of their normal selves.

Amidst the distortion, his eyes went to the ceiling and he imagined Devina up above him.

She was just one more thing he’d purchased, wasn’t she: He paid for her with clothes and travel and jewelry and spending money.

And he’d bought that diamond yesterday not because wanted her to have the stone as a token of love—it was just one more part of an ongoing transaction.

The fact was, he’d never told Devina he loved her…not because he was emotionally repressed, but because he didn’t feel that way about her.

Vin shook his head until his brain sloshed around enough so that the room returned to normal. Tossing back the rest of the bourbon, he performed a refill. Which he drank.

’Nother refill. ’Nother polish-off. More of the pouring.

He had no idea how long he stood in front of the bar drinking on his feet, but he was able to measure the way the level in the bottle dropped. And after four inches, he decided to just finish what was in the thing, and took the Woodford Reserve with him over to the couch that faced the view.

Staring out over the city, he got really fucking drunk. Saturated. Plowed. Messed the fuck up until he couldn’t feel his legs or his arms and he had to let his head fall back against the pillow because he couldn’t hold it up anymore.

Sometime later, Devina appeared naked behind him, her reflection in the glass looming in the archway of the living room.

Through the haze of his numbed-out state, he realized that there was something wrong about her…about the way she moved, about the way she smelled.