Rich Kid (The SPARK Files #3)

Chapter 5

Volt

Volt caught himself just before he stumbled. He was in the basement store room with Angel, who’d given him a hip-check while reaching for a box overhead.

“Brat,” he complained, good naturedly. To be fair, he hadn’t really been listening to whatever Angel was saying. If it was important, he could play it back from his short-term data storage.

“Uh huh,” Angel agreed. “Who is it?”

“Nobody,” Volt said, keeping his tone light.

“Mmm-hmmm… Let me guess: chubby-scruffy with the bowtie?”

“He’s not scruffy.” Wallace’s beard was trimmed and soft. The scruffiness was a classic look. One that made his big brown eyes luminous under those thick, adorkable glasses.

Angel laughed in musical tones.

“I’m just worried about him,” Volt defended. “He’s… He’s been hurt. Emotionally, not physically, I think. He doesn’t seem to have any friends, just people who want him for his money.” People who didn’t understand how sweet he was. How eager he was to please. How much he just wanted to be loved.

“And he hasn’t been back for three days?”

“Yes.” There really wasn’t much more to say, was there?

Angel raised one elegant eyebrow. “That’s not a long time.”

“I know. Maybe he’ll be back next weekend.” It wasn’t like Volt was pining for him. He just thought he saw the beginnings of a submissive interest emerge, and hoped that Wallace would make the choice to explore that with him. And if it just so happened that their kinks were extremely compatible, that was a bonus.

He’d gotten Wallace’s permission to text him the next day to check in on him after their scene, but all he’d gotten was a brusque confirmation that he was fine.

Professionally that was a good recognition of boundaries.

Personally, he found his mind idly wandering back to Wallace at odd times, wondering how he was doing. If he was having a difficult day at work.

If he needed someone’s shoulder to curl into as he let those pretty crystalline tears fall from his lashes.

If he needed to suck on a thick, perky nipple while someone petted his hair and told him what a very good boy he was. If he needed to be put on his knees, so that Daddy could teach him how to be a good little cocksucker while all of his cares melted away.

“Just as long as you’re…”

Volt cut Angel off. “He’s not Bobby. I know.”

“Or Sadie,” Angel pointed out.

“I know,” Volt snapped. “He’s a customer. I get to have some fun.”

“Sorry.” Angel put an arm around him, squeezing from the size and nuzzling against his shoulder. “I just worry about you.”

Volt squeezed him back. “I’m fine. Really.” Bobby was a long time ago. Sadie had been a mistake. He knew better now.

“He’s rich,” Angel pointed out.

Volt rolled his eyes. Rich customers were the worst. Well, not always. Some were really generous.

But Angel was talking about Kurt, who’d taken Volt out to fancy dinners and heavenly weekends at his beach house, making Volt think that they really had something together. Until he offered to purchase Volt’s contract and keep him for personal use.

And he was only the first of several to make that offer.

“You could date,” Angel commented.

Volt snorted. He didn’t Know if Angel meant that he should date Wallace or just date in general, but it didn’t matter.

“We live and work in a brothel.” Though that wasn’t really a barrier. He could date if he wanted to. It was just… that was what had gone wrong with Sadie.

He told himself that he had other priorities right now. Better to stick to making them both money to pay off the mountain of debt and having a bit of fun while he did it.

He gave Angel another squeeze, silently letting him know he appreciated his friend’s intent, and went back to rotating stock. They served light snacks and drinks, and Volt wasn’t quite sure if all of the inventory was matching up. Some small discrepancy was natural, but this…

Was he paranoid to be counting literal peanuts? He thought there should be a few more boxes back here.

Angel let a box fall with a bit more of a thump than necessary. Since they were both far stronger than their human equivalents would be, and Angel always kept careful control of his movements, that was unusual.

Maybe Volt should be paying more attention to the man right in front of him. “Is everything alright?”

Angel shrugged.

So, not good then.

“How is she?” Volt asked.

He didn’t need to specify. Unlike Volt, Angel had no interest in customers beyond greeting them at the door. There was only one she in his life.

“She tried to walk to the bathroom this afternoon and she fell again. While she was at the hospital! They should have been watching her.”

“Oh, Angel…” Volt put his arms around him. “You should have told me right away. I’m so sorry.” It was 3:27 am, so this had likely been weighing on him all day.

Angel shrugged. “She’s over ninety years old. She’s had a good life.”

Volt pulled him closer, letting Angel rest his head on his chest.

Volt had always had a solid friendship with Magnolia Demirci, the proprietor of Prism, but Angel’s relationship with her was more like mother and son. She’d been training him for nearly forty years to take over for her when she passed on, but none of them were in a hurry for that moment to come.

Modern science had done wonders to extend human life, but it couldn’t last forever. Magnolia still possessed her full wit and charm every time Volt went to visit her, but she’d been in the hospital now for almost three weeks. She’d been hit by an unexpectedly vicious cold this spring, on top of still regaining her full mobility after a hip replacement over the winter.

“Did they say when she might be coming home?”

Magnolia, Angel, and Volt lived on the third floor of the building, each with their own space, but collectively, it was home .

“At least a week.”

“I’ll go see her in the morning,” Volt promised.

“She’d like that,” Angel agreed, his arms tightening around Volt as he squeezed him back.

In other words, Volt really should be visiting the hospital more often.

He called up his virtual to-do list and shifted it higher before closing out the little app again. He’d been going every two or three days, but he’d make sure to prioritize it for the rest of the week.

Angel shook himself out of Volt’s arms. “Maybe we can…”

A silent ping cut off his words, and by the way Angel stopped talking too, they’d both received it.

It was from Calliope, one of the androids who was assigned to tidy the first floor lounge overnight when it wasn’t charging up.

Something broke the window.

The text was simple, but it had been sent with an alarm signal at level three.

Volt and Angel both set down their packages and raced up the stairs.

Calliope, like all the other sexbots, had very limited programming for anything beyond its work. It could seduce and entice with pretty words and make decisions that drew on a bank of emotional interactions to please a customer, but its evaluation of a broken window was outside its programming parameters. It might be accurate, or a substantial overreaction.

It wasn’t an overreaction.

Glass shards were strewn across the floor, glinting in the plush carpet. Cold air rushed in, a jagged framework of glass all that remained in one of the large front windows, the sharp edges reflecting against the backdrop of the night.

Volt sent a mental command for the lights to turn on and surveyed the space. He pointed wordlessly to the large rock under the edge of a side table for Angel to see.

“Were you in this room?” Angel asked Calliope.

“No.”

“Did you see or hear anything?”

“I heard the glass shatter. I didn’t see it happen.”

“Did you hear anything before then?”

“A car drove by.”

While Angel was fruitlessly interviewing Calliope, Volt rushed outside.

Of course, the street was empty. The street lights illuminated rows of parked cars and businesses that were closed for the night, but with the deep shadows between them, the vandal could have been standing twenty feet away and they might not know.

Volt sent a silent message to Onyx, one of the newest bots, which had come equipped with heat-sensitive vision. Look out the windows on each side of the building and tell me if you see a person on the sidewalk or street. Check in the infrared range.

Message received. Onyx sent back, simply. Then, There are no people on the west side of the building.

Sexbots, as a rule, didn’t utilize their AI capabilities for complex speech or observation when it didn’t pertain to seduction. Volt could have explained more, but Onyx, like Calliope, was just a machine, programmed to do a job. They had names, courtesy of Orbit Robotics, but no more self-awareness than a toaster or a truck.

Neither of them were capable of the fear and worry that was currently coursing through Volt’s system.

It wasn’t the immediate threat that had him on edge. The assailant had probably gone. But Volt wasn’t just being paranoid. The harassment was escalating.

He received a ping from Angel. I’m calling the police.

Not that they would do anything except write up a report that could hopefully be used with the insurance company. At this point, though, their insurance coverage for vandalism was wearing thin. The last two events had taken hours on the phone for Volt to secure. As the agent had explained to him repeatedly, insurance wasn’t supposed to cover an ongoing problem.

And there was no denying that that’s what they had. The police already knew Volt and Angel on a first-name basis.

Volt stepped back inside and called up the closed-circuit cameras to review the footage. It wasn’t hard to find. A car with something covering the license plates drove down the street and stopped in front of Prism. It had a sunroof, and a heavyset masked man in dark clothing stood up and hurled the rock, before the car disappeared from view. Volt got a quick glimpse of the driver’s eyes as the car drove away, but he, too, was masked.

Volt could clearly see the model of the car, but that was worthless as identifying information.

He relayed all of this to Angel, who sent him a wordless burst of frustration and worry.

Replacing the window would be expensive. Replacing it before business opened at 4pm tomorrow would be even more so.

When was this going to end?

Do you think we should consider it? asked Angel.

Volt didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. No. Absolutely not . Magnolia had received an offer to purchase the entire business several months ago from a competing company. She’d taken one look at the letter—an actual paper letter—and torn it to shreds.

“This is my legacy and Angel is my son,” she’d sworn. “And this will all belong to him when I’m gone.” She’d looked over at Volt, then corrected, “to both of you.”

He’d nodded, content with his secondary place in their lives. They’d welcomed him into their little family, and now Volt wanted to honor her wishes.

Prism was his home. He had years of scattered memories of this building from before he’d caught the spark, and afterward it had been where he found himself and his family. It was where he’d cried in Angel’s arms after his first heartbreak. And his second. And, regretfully–since it really had taken him a while to learn–even more after that.

It was where Magnolia had called him into her bedroom for cozy chats over tea, advising him on working with customers ethically and how to do it with his mental health intact. And it was where she’d encouraged him to branch out and find other things that he loved.

So yes, the building was familiar… but Magnolia and Angel made it into the place where his heart lay. And Magnolia might not be around much longer.

His gears stuttered and crunched at the thought, before his automated systems took over and smoothed them out. The pain still lingered though, no matter what Magnolia said about having a full and happy life.

It also didn’t help him figure out what to do personally.

If Angel was doubting the wisdom of keeping the business, maybe Volt should be considering it, too.

They’d always had a responsible level of debt—luxury sexbots were expensive and often came with a twenty to thirty year payoff schedule. Maintaining the building wasn’t cheap, either, not in a nice part of town like this, on a quiet street surrounded by upmarket businesses.

Over the past year, though, their debts had somehow increased. Magnolia had made a few bad investments. They’d had to purchase two new bots, and really should have bought five.

On top of everything was the endless string of attacks and harassment, like the one tonight.

Volt silently accessed Prism’s bank accounts and transferred a sum of money from their dwindling long-term savings to the checking account that he’d use to pay for the window tomorrow. Then he sent a quick message to a spark-run company who he hoped would be able to do the job overnight.

He told Angel when he was done, but didn’t mention the cost. It would just be frustrating for both of them.

It never seemed to end.

Volt would never advocate for selling Prism while Magnolia was still alive. It was her baby. It would break her heart.

And it was Volt’s home.

But perhaps, after a memorable six years, it was time for him to find another home. Maybe even another career. There was nothing requiring Volt to remain in the sex industry, and Magnolia had relieved him of his bond—the amount he would have had to repay her for her remaining investment in his purchase—the moment she realized he was sentient.

The only thing was… there wasn’t anything else Volt would rather do. He enjoyed managing the house with Angel. He enjoyed sex.

And he especially loved being there for adorable creampuff boys like Wallace, who needed someone like him. Someone who could make their lives magical for just a few hours.

Despite the prejudices some humans had, it was a worthy career.

But if the harassment didn’t stop, he wasn’t so sure it would continue to be a viable one.

And then what would he do?