The cool air in the empty hotel hallway cleared the cobwebs Michael's head for a brief, blissful moment. He could hear the muffled sounds of music and voices behind the rows and rows of doors. Then, the ground beneath his bare feet tilted, and the dim sconce lights bouncing off the pea-green walls pierced his sensitive eyes. Everything he consumed that night seemed to hit him all at once. A wall came towards him and smacked his shoulder. He looked up and saw a distorted image of himself on a door's shining surface. Was he a man or beast? From that image it was hard to tell. He rolled his shoulders with his back against the wall, and he let out a peal of drunken laughter. Ridiculous! The whole situation was ridiculous!

"Pay-ton!" Voice cracking, he had to close his eyes to ward off another wave of dizziness. It took some effort to try again. "Oh, come on, babe. Quick fucking around and let me in!"

Down the hall, a door opened. A group in the local college jersey, wearing rubber animal masks, dashed out. Hooting and hollering, they ran down the hall and disappeared in the opposite direction. No one saw the large drunk, naked man.

With a pained grunt, Michael lurched forward to grasp the door handle to his room. At least he believed it was his room. "Payton!" He jerked the handle. Locked. "Come on, open up!"

Silence.

He braced himself against the door frame as he pawed at the handle again. "Goddamnit! Will you open up?"

"Leave me alone!" came the muffled retort. At least it was the right room.

"Can you toss me my phone, then?" He pounded on the door with a balled-up fist, ready to beat a hole in the wood. "Open the goddamn door, Payton!"

Somewhere down the hall, another door opened, letting out the sound of music and the buzzing voices of what sounded like a party. He looked up to see a few snickering faces point and laugh at him. Then they backed away. The sound of a door slam echoed down the hall. He let out a sigh that stunk of alcohol, fighting against the desire to curl into a ball.

"Payton!" he called out in a hoarse voice that sounded painful even to himself.

Maybe he ought to sit down for a moment. He'll sit down and rest his sore eyes. And then he'll try talking to Payton and get her to...

Something jerked him awake. Did he fall asleep? Where the hell was he? Ah, yes! Still in this shitty hotel. Still naked.

At any moment, the hallway could be flooded with people. At least, no one he knew would ever come to a place like this. Fuck it! He should go down to the reception desk to get another room. Sleep it off. Only... This wasn't one of his usual haunts, where the concierge knew him on sight. Here they wanted identification and a credit card. If he went down to the lobby in his state for God and everybody to see, he might end up spending a very uncomfortable night at the local jail. And if they decided to drug test him... He tried to recall his lawyer's telephone number and drew a blank. Yeah. Better to stay put and hope for a miracle.

Then.

Something made Michael lift his head.

At the other end of that long hallway, stood a lone figure. He was on the smaller side with a receding hairline. An unremarkable in every way. But on this Halloween night full of costumes and revelry, the man's somber attire of a dark jacket and pants seemed out of place. Though the man's face was hidden in shadows, the way he stood there raised Michael's hackles. Michael Langdon had been in his share of fights with far bigger men. He didn't scare easily, but something about the unnerving way the man seemed to be staring at him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A shiver down Michael's spine woke him up. The drunken fog lifted.

"Payton!" He kept his eyes on the man as he pounded the side of his fist against the door until the wood shook.

Silence except for the faint sound of music and muffled voices from various closed doors down that long hall. The man standing at the end of it hadn't budged.

Michael balled his fists and squared his broad shoulders, ready for anything.

"You want some of this?" he shouted, grabbing at his cock.

The other man, held up a hand to calm him, then seemed to melt away.

When Michael's fists unclenched, he realized he was covered in cold sweat. As the adrenaline receded, he felt fatigue grip him once more. Even his teeth ached. He shook his head. It was uncharacteristic of him to feel so shaken. Perhaps it was the whiskey or the other stuff he took.

There was an alcove in the wall that housed a single potted tree that was as tall as he was. He plopped himself down next to it and closed his eyes. Spent.

How on earth did he get here, to this hotel?

Ah! Right...

The Blake's Halloween party.

Memories of the fake spiderwebs hanging down from the three-story tall ceiling floated before him. Under the sparkling decor of fake spiders and garishly dressed skeletons was a sea of party-goers in bespoke costumes. A mixture of some old-fashioned Baroque style and the futuristic. Only this party had a hysterical atmosphere of celebration. They were celebrating his uncle's victory. Fitting that his uncle came dressed as Caesar, surrounded by his friends. Ridiculous bastard. Better be careful of all the hidden daggers, Michael wanted to shout across the room.

Of course, Michael's reception was very different. When he sauntered in, he felt the shock reverberating through the room. He stuck to his usual devil-may-care demeanor, but in the next minute, his elbow knocked over a tray of champagne. He pretended not to notice and didn't break stride. Make them think he did it on purpose. They couldn't think any worse of him.

"Cunts," he muttered under his breath as several masked heads turned away. Not even their elaborate masks could hide their smirks of disgust.Those same faces were full of smiles and admiration a day ago. How quickly the tide turned.

Perhaps they didn't expect him to show his face. And certainly not dressed in a now crumpled suit that he had worn to the board meeting. He wondered if he should have stayed at the seedy bar where he spent the aftermath drinking instead of coming to the party. He was contemplating leaving when a group of his friends found him. They had been trying to reach him all day. And the single question on their lips was: How was he? How the fuck did they think he was?

"Where's Gabe?" he asked a tall, woman in the headdress and the revealing toga of Athena.

She gave him a surprised, quizzical look. "You know he never comes to these things."

Again, Michael regretted his own decision to attend. "Really? I thought he'd at least be here to light to fire to my funeral pyre. Some fucking friend he is."

"Not every day that there's a Langdon versus Langdon dogfight," a slender, wiry man named Ty gaffed. He laughed in a wide open-mouthed way that showed his pink tonsils and back molars. "But when you try to kill the King, you better not miss. Isn't that what they say?"

Rather than responding, Michael let out a loud burp in the face of that sniveling little shit. Not a bad looking guy, but Ty had a natural talent to irritate everyone he met.

Others took that cue to elbow Ty out of the way. Red-faced, the smaller man scurried towards where the crowd was thickest. Near its center was the tall, gorgeous brunette dressed in a vampire's evening dress speaking to his uncle. Michael licked his upper lip as he eyed her, but he remained where he was to watch her. With her back to him, she was speaking rapidly and energetically into his uncle's ear. Whatever she said didn't change his uncle's expression at all.

Then, more people clawed their way over to tell Michael how sorry they were. The board shouldn't have voted against him. But between him and his uncle, they can understand. In this business, experience mattered. Better luck next time... In a few years maybe...

For a moment, Michael took in the scene. Payton, in her vampire costume, still had her head close to his uncle, the Caesar wannabe. Meanwhile, Ty was trying to get her attention as he darted a glance over his shoulder at Michael.

And that's when he knew...

Michael felt as if he had stepped into a movie, where everything and everyone around those two dissolved at warped speed. His tunnel vision of Payton and his uncle made them sharper than he had ever seen either before. It all became clear at that moment. How his uncle found out which of the board members favored Michael. He had been racking his brain how those crucial votes turned on him at the last second. How would he know...? Unless someone close to Michael — who slept next to him with easy access to his phone and computer — passed along information. As the truth dawned on Michael, a heat burst from his core until he felt steam coming from his ears. He snatched up a glass from the tray of a passing waiter, but wine was not strong enough to cool his murderous rage.

He turned back to his friends without a hint of what he was feeling. As usual, Kit, Chris, and Mike C stood shoulder to shoulder, hanging on to Marla's every word as she blabbered about something.

"When did they all become best friends?" he asked Marla, with a tilt of his head at Ty speaking urgently to Payton.

Marla, like the wise Goddess she was pretending to be, saw through his cool exterior. "I did warn you to play your cards closer to your chest, didn't I?"

"So she's fucking my uncle?" he seethed in a low voice.

"NO!" Marla gasped, offended.

He glared at her. "Tell me the truth."

"Absolutely not."

"You're a damn good liar. But there's no honor amongst thieves, right?" he sneered at her. "How long have you known?"

"I don't know anything." She linked arms with him with a worrying look. "What I do know is, you weren't going to win that vote, no matter what. The board is made up of old curmudgeons. They want proven results that their wealth will grow every quarter. They're not interested in your pie-in-the-sky grand ideas. What do they know about tech? It was far too risky."

"Spare me!" He shook her off of him, then looked around with a sneer on his lips. What a crowd this was! This Who's Who of Bay City, in their glittering, bespoke costumes, formed a tableau worth of a Renaissance painting. He knew all of them. Some of them since birth. Yet, at that moment, he felt like he was in a sea of strangers.

Before he lost his composure, Michael spun around and left. He could hear friends' loud protests behind him but he kept going.

Somehow he ended up driving onto the freeway. No sooner after he felt a rush of speed than everything slowed down, and he was sandwiched in a long line of bumper-to-bumper traffic. The local college team was playing their biggest rival that Halloween night. He had been listening to the game in the car. Then, seeing those cheering college kids, he felt compelled, almost hypnotized, to follow them. He can't remember how he met the two girls, but one promised she could suck a golf ball from a garden hose. Her friend had condoms. This hotel happened to be close by... Not his finest moment, nor was it his worst. Only, how on earth did Payton find him? Did she place a tracker on him?

A sharp gasp snapped him out of his memories. He peeked around the fake tree, half expecting to see the short, balding man in the dark jacket again. But he was too weak and weary to put up a fight even if the man intended to kill him.

The first thing he noticed was a pair of women's small white tennis shoes. His gaze made a slow journey up a pair of long, slender legs in form-fitting yoga pants. The oversized collegiate jersey, with the local college name embossed on the front, couldn't hide those shapely breasts. Then, he reached the girl's face.

Through his blurred vision, it seemed as if the girl had a halo around her straight brown hair. He rubbed at his sore eyes. It appeared to be the sconce light behind her that created the effect. The girl couldn't be more than twenty years old. But the painted spider webs around her large doe eyes and her bee-stung lips made her look much younger. She would be much prettier if it weren't for the thick, blunt bangs that hide her brows. But nothing could hide the translucency of her supple skin on her porcelain doll face. In a few years, her translucent beauty would no doubt make any grown man cry. No surprise that his reaction to her was immediate.

"Well, aren't you just an angel sent down from heaven!" he leered at the girl. "So tell me, angel face? Is this how I'm going to die?"