Kept

He sat back, a bottle of Coke in his hands. “Well, tonight, I'm letting you tear down my walls. Ask me anything.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, and picked up my hamburger again. “And you’ll actually answer me? Honestly?”

“Yup. And we hope I don’t get shot for it.”

I took another bite of my hamburger as I mulled over the options. What did I want to know first?

“Tell me about your business. Everything. I can handle it.”

He nodded. “Okay. I deal black-market prescription drugs. I work mostly with hospice clinics, and patients whose insurance has run out. The insurance companies are such an enterprise of their own, it doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you're dying of cancer, sometimes they just won't help. So I serve private clients who are ill, and then I have the clinics. Most of my income comes from the private clients though, the clinics are kind of a side project I run on my own.”

I set my hamburger down. “And, where do you get the meds? Who supplies them?”

He shook his head. “My company does most of the supplying, they work for a larger pharmaceutical corporation who's in the drug trade. I never see the trucks though, so I don't actually know. But I know the stuff is legitimate and good. None of the generic stuff; brand name only. I don't want anyone get hurt because of me. Especially some sick kid lying in a hospital bed. That's not what I'm about.”

So he was in a bad business but it sounded like it was for the right reasons. I wasn’t naïve though, at the bottom of the issue was the money. Or so I thought. “Why do you do it?”

He smiled mostly to himself. “You asked about my mom before. This all started with her.”

I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

He leaned forward on the table, looking at his hands. “My mom was sick. Not physically, but she had mental illnesses, a whole list of them. And let me tell you, when you get diagnosed by multiple therapists, and they all argue with each other over your official diagnosis, your insurance company sees it as fraud. They stopped all her prescriptions when I was a teenager. My dad worked on Wall Street, and had loads of money, but didn't know where to find the drugs. I was at one of my boarding schools where all the guys did recreational, and I asked them about it. It pretty much saved my mom’s life; I think she would've committed suicide without them.”

I sucked in a breath. So, this is why he didn’t discuss his parents.

“Once my dad realized how lucrative of a business it was, he started investing in the black-market. He taught me everything he knew, so I would learn how to do it myself. I'm a dealer, I also mule. I go across the borders without being caught on a private jet. In some ways, I'm just like my father, and in other ways, I’m not.”

“How are you not like him? And if he was funding these guys, you working for them is the same thing.”

He looked out over the water, hunched over the table, with his hands resting on what was still an empty plate. “I thought that, because of him, I would never fall in love. I thought because of how my mom was, I couldn't trust anyone; he had made me think that.” He looked back at me, gazing into my eyes. They weren’t as cold as they once were. Nothing like when I met him in the club that night. He was so different now; so much had changed. “But when I met you, I knew that I wasn't like him at all. I want out. I like helping people, but this isn’t the way to do it. I want to run a legitimate business, maybe a non- profit dealing with hospice care or pediatrics. I know medicine, but I don't want to be part of that side of it anymore.”

I was shocked. Before Hudson met me, he had just been another playboy. I couldn't believe he was willing to take the risk of getting out of the trade just for me.

I smiled at him and raised my milkshake up. “To big changes.”

He smiled back, and tipped his Coke so that it touched my plastic cup. “To big changes.” He gulped down some of the soda, and took a hot dog. He looked like he didn't even know how to hold it right. I wasn't sure how he would survive in the everyday world without his business suit and his mansions. It made me think. “What about the money?”

“What about it?”

“I mean you don't have enough to live forever. Not the way you live anyway.”

He studied me. “You have no idea how much money I have, do you?”

The truth was, I didn't. Even through all this time of us dating off and on, I hadn't even really looked him up.

“I was a billionaire before I was twenty. And most of that was my father's money. Now that I've made my own, I can live this lifestyle for as long as I want to, and help other people. You don't have to worry about me and the money.”

There was something else I was considering though. “What about your safety? How do you get out?”

He sighed. “I don't know about that yet. These two guys are my own security detail, but Rudolph, he'll try to get me wherever I am. I’m going have to transition out slowly or make a deal.”

“Who's Rudolph?”

“Rudolph Lenko is the head of the Russian mob. He's currently the supplier I work for. My father and he had a relationship, so it just seemed like the right move when I got into the business. But he’s ruthless, doesn't always give me the script I need for the people who need them. He pulled some shit recently that made me rethink my involvement with him.”

So, it wasn't just me he was leaving for. There was something else going on. “What is that?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. He just thinks I owe him something that I don't. But I'll work it out, don't worry.”