Old grudge.

"My whole career just went to hell. Maybe my life will follow shortly as well." Nicole spat out her answer. "And everything happened because one horny dickbag wanted to get into my pants."

Well, that certainly sounded bad enough. I plopped into the second chair by the kitchen table.

"How about a bit more detail?" I asked.

"So, the regional branch chief, the guy who is signing my paychecks, for the last year or so was constantly trying to get me as his third mistress. I managed to lead him on, trying to either find enough dirt on him, or to make myself useful enough for someone even higher up the ladder to take notice."

She let out a long sigh and took a sip of her coffee.

"And, right when I finally found a way to do the latter, he decided to put his foot down. I slapped the pig, hoping that the great deal I was about to finalize in a few days will be enough of a spotlight to give me some sort of leverage in this."

Nicole paused, looking into the empty coffee cup.

"Hey, do you have something stronger? I really would love to have a stiff drink right about now," she switched topic abruptly.

"Nope, I'm not much into drinking at home," I responded. "So, what happened, Nicole?"

She raised her eyes from the coffee cup and stared at me. Her eyes were red, and only now I noticed that there were deep shadows under them as well.

"Somehow our competitors got all the information about this deal, so they undercut us really, and I mean really, badly. The internal investigations started, and, obviously, the leak went through me. I have no fucking idea why or how I would even think of doing something like that for the deal I had a stake in, but, well, as usual with corporates, nobody cared." Nicole sighed again, this time even deeper. "So, now I need to either recoup losses to the firm or get a nice personal apartment with free meals for a while for corporate espionage. And then I will need to slave myself for the rest of my life to repay the debt anyway."

"So, you came to me for help?" I asked the obvious.

"Well, you weren't the first choice. I exhausted all other options first, but someone already made sure that nobody will give me a broken dime." Yet another sigh. "Fucking dickbag, and I'm completely sure everything is his doing, had enough audacity to offer to help me to get out of this pinch. There must be something that investigators missed, said the fucker. Maybe we can take another, deeper, look. All the while looking at me like I am a piece of meat. Blergh."

She threw the cup into the wall, but I caught it from the air. It was one of the paired cups Olivia liked very much.

"Don't just go around breaking my girlfriend's stuff, Nicole," I chided her. "So, you've come to me. Why exactly?"

My conversation partner looked at me, as if failing to recognize.

"Michael. I need money. Serious money. And you are the only one left who can at least put me in contact with someone who has that kind of money," she explained. "That Alvarez woman of yours. If she refuses, I have no idea what to do anymore. Maybe I just should accept my fate then."

I looked at the desperate woman in front of me. To be frank, this was worse than I thought. It also explained a lot of her behavior in the first round.

I was a huge liability in such a situation, and the best thing she could do for me was to break all contact. Fucking hell.

Twenty-five-year-old grudges; the loss of one of the few connections I truly treasured; all because of misunderstandings and circumstances caused by human greed and lust. I felt anger spark somewhere inside of me. Ah, this will be a nice hunt.

"How much do you need exactly?" I tried to focus on something else. Losing control won't do me any good here.

"Around one hundred to one hundred and fifty million." She named the amount, and I couldn't help but whistle. That was a nice chump change.

"And even if you recoup this amount, it won't take away the stigma anyway," I summed up. "Yeah, truly a FUBAR, Nicole."

"You tell me." She deadpanned, finding the dark humor in this situation. "So, can you put me in contact with Alvarez?"

"She is out of the city." I replied

I looked at how the last vestiges of hope drained from her eyes. Should I help her or not? This wasn't really a question to me. There were some other questions that I wanted to ask, though.

"Hey, Nicole, I have a very out of the left field question. It's quite odd, but I'm really curious," I called out to her again. "Mind answering it for me?"

"Eh. Might as well. Fire away." She chuckled with the light tone of a stage four cancer patient, who knew for sure that they were doomed.

"Let's say that I fucked up. Like real heavy stuff. And dropped from the face of the planet for the next three years. And three years later, I would, at random, pop up at your doorstep out of nowhere, on the verge of keeling over from blood loss." I focused, observing her minute reactions. "What would you do?"

Nicole looked at me like I was an idiot. Perhaps that was the case.

"That's an oddly specific question, Michael," she drawled. "But, eh, I already said I would give you an answer. So, hm, the first thing you would need to do is be taken to the hospital. Then I would thoroughly ask you where, why, and how you were hiding from me. And, at last, we would need to find the fuckers responsible and make them regret it."

I started laughing. Fortunately, I managed to keep the volume under control. Girls in the other room didn't need any more disturbances.

After I stopped, a good five minutes later, I took my phone and dialed the familiar number of lady-in-black.

"Yes?" Instant response.

"Grandmother, I need your help."

***

Around four in the morning. The roads were almost empty, another discrepancy between my future knowledge and the current situation. Twenty-five years in the future, the city stopped sleeping even at such an hour.

I was driving the car, my destination being the familiar, unassuming bar of Kouzuki Miya. The passenger of my car kept staring at me oddly. I wasn't really in the mood to answer her questions right now, and Nicole, as if feeling this, kept her silence.

On the other hand, there was another question that I was curious about.

"Hey, there is another question, just about as out of the blue as the first one," I said, breaking the quiet stalemate. "Mind enlightening me?"

Nicole still kept staring at me. I kept staring at the road, occasionally glancing at her in the rearview mirror. A few minutes later, she sighed for the umpteenth time in the last hour and shrugged.

"Ask away," she replied curtly.

"You know, since forever, one particular thing kept bothering me. And, for the life of me, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. How exactly did my bastard of a father manage to con a woman like you?" I asked my question.

She actually started chuckling after hearing my words.

"Oh, it's simple, really. He sold you to me." What the fuck? "Though, he obviously failed to deliver on his promise. I guess he really managed to scam me in the end."