The F train at 7:30 AM was not a mode of transportation. It was a metal tube filled with aggressive apathy and the smell of damp wool.
When the subway car lurched away from the platform, Julian Thorne almost fell over.
It was a completely ungraceful, purely physical miscalculation. He had braced his legs for the smooth acceleration of a Maybach, not the violent, mechanical jerk of a forty-year-old train. His massive hand snatched the overhead metal bar just in time, his knuckles instantly turning white.
A teenager in a massive puffer jacket accidentally elbowed Julian in the ribs while putting on headphones.
Julian's upper lip lifted, exposing a fraction of a fang. A low, territorial vibration started in his chest.
Elara, sitting on the cracked orange plastic seat directly in front of him, kicked him sharply in the shin.
"Don't," she muttered, not looking up from her cracked phone screen. The screech of the train wheels against the tracks was so loud she had to raise her voice just to sound normal. "You bite a high schooler, we get sued by the city. Stand still."
Julian closed his eyes, inhaling a breath that consisted mostly of stale coffee and body odor. "My father," he said, his voice a tight, measured rasp, "would have derailed this entire train just to make a point about personal space."
"Your father sounds like a massive liability to your PR department," Elara replied flatly.
She wasn't really paying attention to him. Her thumb was hovering over the cracked glass of her phone. The banking app was open. The bold red numbers of the joint liability were still there, but Elara was looking at a smaller, scheduled push notification at the top of the screen.
Oakridge Memory Care Facility - Autopay Scheduled: 15th.
Amount Due: $6,400.00.
Current Personal Account Balance: $0.00 (FROZEN).
Elara stared at the six thousand four hundred dollars.
A cold, heavy knot formed directly beneath her ribs. If that payment bounced on Friday, her mother would be moved from the secure supernatural ward to the state-run general population. Without the ward's dampening runes, her mother's fractured mind would pick up every stray psychic frequency in a ten-mile radius. It would destroy her.
Elara pressed her thumbnail so hard into the pad of her index finger that it left a deep, white crescent moon.
Above her, Julian let out a sharp, aggressive hiss.
He gripped the overhead metal bar so hard the steel groaned. He looked down at Elara, his expression twisted in profound irritation. He pressed his free hand flat against his sternum.
"Again. You're doing it again," Julian muttered, his voice a dark, dangerous rumble that made the teenager next to him instinctively edge away. "Your heart rate just spiked. It feels like I swallowed a hive of bees. What is wrong with you now?"
Elara quickly locked her phone screen, shoving it into her pocket. "Nothing. Mind your own business."
Julian's golden eyes narrowed. With a speed that was impossible for a human to track, he reached down, grabbed her wrist, and yanked the phone back out of her pocket.
"Hey!" Elara hissed, trying to snatch it back, but his grip was like a steel vise.
Julian's thumb effortlessly bypassed her cheap face-ID. He stared at the red numbers on the screen. The $6,400 medical bill.
He didn't look sympathetic. He looked deeply, utterly offended.
"Six thousand dollars?" Julian scoffed, dropping the phone back into her lap like it was a piece of trash. He looked at her with pure, aristocratic disbelief. "You are having a biological meltdown over six thousand dollars? I spend that on cufflinks."
Elara's face burned. It was a slap of pure class humiliation. "Give me my—"
"Quiet." Julian leaned down, his face inches from hers. The predator was back in full force, annoyed that his 'mate' was distressed by something so trivial. "Listen to me, little auditor. I have black-market accounts that Gideon doesn't know exist. When we get to your pathetic agency, you will look the other way, and I will have my people wire ten thousand dollars to this 'Oakridge' place. Then you will stop having panic attacks on public transit. Agreed?"
Elara stared at him, her chest heaving. He wasn't offering help. He was demanding a bribe to shut her up.
"If you access a black-market account during an Inquisition audit," Elara said, her voice deadly quiet, "that is Class-1 Treason. They won't just liquidate your assets, Thorne. They will execute my mother as an accomplice."
She ripped her wrist out of his grip.
"So keep your blood money," she spat, turning her head to stare at the graffiti on the train door. "And suffer through the bees."
Julian stared at the back of her head, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched violently. For the first time in three centuries, his money was completely, utterly useless.
The headquarters of the Supernatural Compliance and Revenue Service was not a magical, gothic castle. It was a brutalist concrete cube in Lower Manhattan.
The lobby smelled like floor wax and despair. Half the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling were flickering. A bored-looking troll—literally, a bridge troll in an ill-fitting security uniform—was aggressively stamping forms at the front desk.
Elara badged in, dragging Julian through the metal detectors. The machine beeped loudly at Julian.
"Belt buckle," Elara said automatically to the guard, not breaking stride. "He's with me."
She ignored the stares of her coworkers. She ignored the way the air pressure dropped in the bullpen as a six-foot-four Alpha walked past the cubicles, looking like he wanted to murder the photocopier.
Elara marched straight to her desk, shoved a pile of half-eaten takeout menus aside, and woke up her computer terminal.
She slammed her fingers against the mechanical keyboard.
Search: Thorne, Julian.
File: 884-T.
The screen loaded for five agonizing seconds. Then, a massive, flashing red banner covered the monitor.
ACCESS DENIED. CLEARANCE LEVEL INSUFFICIENT.
RESTRICTED BY INQUISITOR CROSS, G. (VATICAN COMMAND)
"Dammit," Elara hissed, hitting the Escape key. The keyboard clattered. "Gideon locked the digital files. He's trying to blindfold the audit."
Julian leaned over her shoulder, his massive frame boxing her in against the desk. He didn't complain about the neon green shirt anymore. He was staring at the tiny line of text hovering just beneath the red banner.
"Wait," Julian said, his rough finger tapping the glass of the monitor. "Look at the routing code. That's not a standard tax penalty."
Elara squinted at the code. Violation: Import Clause 4A - Restricted Bio-Materials.
The cold knot behind her ribs twisted into something much, much darker.
"Clause 4A," Elara whispered, the blood draining from her face. She looked up at Julian, her professional exasperation entirely replaced by genuine horror. "Thorne. Thirty-two million dollars wasn't a tax evasion fine. That's a black-market tariff."
Julian's golden eyes narrowed to slits. "I don't import bio-materials. My company manufactures synthetic blood substitutes."
"Well, somebody used your corporate accounts to import thirty-two million dollars' worth of something else." Elara's dry throat clicked as she swallowed. "Something illegal enough to trigger the Vatican. You didn't just forget to pay the IRS, Julian. Somebody is using Thorne BioTech to fund a war."