Chapter 10: Building Something
The hammer felt wrong in my hands.
Not the weight—vampire strength handled that easily. Not the grip—the original Sam's muscle memory guided my fingers. The wrongness was subtler: the tactile memory of spreadsheets and keyboards, thirty-four years of soft work that hadn't prepared me for manual labor.
I drove the nail anyway.
The Silver Dollar's renovation had consumed seven nights. Daytime crews handled the visible work—electrical rewiring, plumbing updates, the structural repairs that required permits and inspections. Rodriguez's team was efficient, professional, and absolutely uninterested in why their employer only communicated through evening phone calls and midnight walkthroughs.
Nighttime belonged to me.
The hidden basement took three nights to excavate. I worked alone, hauling dirt through the emergency exit I'd mapped to sewer access, layering the walls with reinforced concrete and steel supports. The chamber was twelve feet square—large enough for shelter, small enough to defend. I lined the door with silver, an irony not lost on me.
A vampire building a silver trap. Corporate me would appreciate the strategic value.
"You're terrible at that."
Elena's voice came from the top of the basement stairs. She descended with the particular grace of someone who'd spent ninety years perfecting predatory movement.
"The nail or the concealment?"
"Both." She crouched beside me, examining my work. The silver-lined door frame glinted in her flashlight beam. "You're building a panic room."
"Emergency shelter. Light-tight, silver-reinforced, supply cache in the corner." I gestured toward the crates I'd already installed. "Enough bottled blood for two weeks. Weapons. Communication equipment."
"For you?"
"For whoever needs it. My people don't die because I failed to plan."
Elena was quiet for a moment. Her flashlight played across the concrete walls, the steel supports, the careful engineering I'd learned from YouTube videos and engineering textbooks downloaded to the original Sam's ancient laptop.
"I expected a bar," she said finally. "Maybe some private rooms for feeding. Not a fortress."
"The bar is the public face. This is the foundation." I set down the hammer and stood, joints aching from hours of crouched labor. "In two years, maybe five, vampire politics will become complicated. The Queen's position isn't as secure as people think. When instability comes, survival goes to those who prepared."
"You know this how?"
Because I watched it happen on television. Because Sophie-Anne's financial troubles lead to Russell Edgington's intervention lead to chaos across Louisiana.
"Pattern recognition. The Revelation disrupted established power structures. Old arrangements are straining. New opportunities are emerging." I met her eyes. "I intend to be positioned when opportunities arrive."
"And you're sharing this with me why?"
"Because I hired you as a partner, not a guard dog. You should know what we're building."
Elena's expression was unreadable in the flashlight's harsh illumination. Then something shifted—the wariness receding, replaced by something that might have been respect.
"The terms we discussed. I want them adjusted."
Here it comes.
"I'm listening."
"Twenty percent of net profits. Not fifteen."
"Seventeen."
"Eighteen. And I want decision-making authority on security matters. You can overrule me, but I don't implement orders I think will get us killed."
I considered. The negotiation was theater—she'd already decided to stay, and we both knew it. But the ritual mattered. Partnerships built on capitulation bred resentment.
"Eighteen percent. Veto power on security decisions, but I reserve final authority on strategic direction. And you tell me immediately if you think I'm making a fatal mistake."
"Even if you don't want to hear it?"
"Especially then."
Elena extended her hand. Cold fingers clasped mine.
"Done."
The days blurred into a rhythm.
Dawn sent me to the motel's coffin. Sunset brought me back to the Silver Dollar, where I reviewed the day's construction progress from photographs George had taken. Rodriguez's crew was ahead of schedule—the main bar room would be finished by week's end.
George himself proved invaluable. He'd spent forty-seven years learning which suppliers cheated and which delivered quality. His recommendations saved me thousands on everything from liquor distributors to kitchen equipment.
"You're putting a lot of faith in an old man's opinions," he said one evening, watching me sign off on an order for commercial-grade refrigerators.
"I'm putting faith in experience. You've forgotten more about running a bar than I'll learn in a decade."
"Flattery." But he smiled when he said it.
The jambalaya appeared on the third night. George brought it in a covered dish, steam escaping around the edges, the smell of peppers and sausage filling the construction site.
"Mary's recipe. You look like you haven't eaten a proper meal in weeks."
I hadn't eaten anything in 150 years. The original Sam's body hadn't needed food since 1858.
But George doesn't know that. And some gestures matter more than the physical act.
"Thank you." I took the plate, found a relatively clean corner of the bar, and forced myself to chew.
The taste was ash and texture, nothing more. My vampire metabolism rejected the food, demanded blood instead. I swallowed anyway, felt the mass settle in a stomach that would eventually expel it unchanged.
"Delicious," I said.
George's face lit up. "Mary always said the secret was the smoked sausage. Had to drive to Baton Rouge for the good stuff."
"She knew her craft."
"She knew everything." His eyes went distant, the particular look of someone remembering a life that no longer existed. "Forty-three years married. Every day I wake up expecting her to be in the kitchen."
I didn't offer platitudes. George had heard enough of those. Instead, I finished the jambalaya bite by excruciating bite, honoring his dead wife's recipe with attention if not appetite.
Small kindnesses. They compound over time.
The Silver Dollar's transformation became visible by the end of week two.
The exterior retained its roadhouse character—deliberately so. Weathered brick, simple signage, the aesthetic of a place that had survived decades without pretension. But the details had upgraded: new parking lot lighting, repaved asphalt, a subtle security camera system that fed to monitors in the office upstairs.
Inside, the changes were more dramatic.
The bar itself remained—George's oak masterpiece, polished until it gleamed. Around it, the space had opened up. New hardwood floors replaced the water-damaged originals. Exposed brick accent walls created visual interest without pretension. The lighting was dim but adjustable, capable of shifting from comfortable human levels to the near-darkness vampires preferred.
The private rooms in back were my particular pride. Three of them, each soundproofed, each equipped with comfortable seating and discrete access. Vampires could feed on willing donors without an audience. Deals could be negotiated away from curious ears. The rooms were legitimate business spaces that happened to accommodate supernatural needs.
"Not bad." Elena walked the main floor, testing sight lines, checking exits. "The security office?"
"Upstairs. Monitors for every camera, emergency communication, direct line to the panic room below."
"And the staff?"
"George handles the bar. I've hired two human servers—locals, well-paid, trained to ignore unusual clientele. You handle security operations."
"That's thin for opening night."
"It's what we can afford until revenue starts flowing. We expand as we grow."
Elena nodded, apparently satisfied. She'd been testing me for two weeks—questions designed to probe my planning, challenges meant to reveal gaps in my preparation. So far, I'd passed.
"The registration?"
"Tomorrow night. Fangtasia. I go alone—you stay here, keep an eye on the final preparations."
"I should come with you."
"And leave the construction site unsupervised? No. Eric Northman isn't going to kill me for registering a bar in Monroe. If anything goes wrong, you're my continuity plan."
She didn't like it. The tension showed in her shoulders, the slight narrowing of her eyes. But she didn't argue.
"Call me when it's done."
"You'll be the first to know."
3 AM. The construction crew had gone home hours ago. George had retired to the apartment upstairs. Elena had departed for her own feeding rounds, the parking lot predator routine she'd perfected over a decade of Monroe nights.
I stood alone in the Silver Dollar's main room, surrounded by sawdust and potential.
One week ago, I was sleeping in a coffin in a storage unit. Now I own property, employ a partner, and tomorrow I formally enter vampire politics.
The system pulsed at the edge of my awareness, registering progress I could barely quantify. Dominion climbing as the territory improved. Authority building as relationships formed. The metrics of a kingdom that existed only in potentials.
Maria's photograph is still in my pocket.
The thought surfaced unbidden. The woman from 1923, the original Sam's mystery. I'd been carrying her for two weeks, unable to discard someone else's memories but uncertain what to do with them.
She was important to him. Enough that he kept her picture for eighty-five years. Enough that her letters filled a box in his storage unit.
I pulled out the photograph. The sepia tones had faded further since I'd first found it, Maria's kind eyes becoming ghostly with age.
Who were you? What did you mean to the man whose body I stole?
No answers came. The original Sam's memories held facts without feelings—her name, her death year, the letters she'd written. Nothing about what she'd meant to him, why he'd held onto her image across decades of drifting.
Another mystery for another time.
I tucked the photograph back into my pocket and returned to work. The Silver Dollar would open in ten days. There was still much to do.
Tomorrow: the Viking.
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