by M. A. Grant
Cristian’s chin tipped up when Atlas stepped closer. His attempt at maintaining eye contact left him strangely vulnerable by the time they drew chest to chest. He made a nervous inhalation when Atlas leaned in, then shivered when Atlas’s breath brushed against his ear.
“I don’t know how many agents you’ve gotten to quit, or who your father has been forced to fire,” Atlas told Cristian quietly, “but this time you won’t win. You can say what you want about me, do what you think will piss me off and make me run, but I’m not going anywhere. Do you understand?”
Cristian’s balance wavered, from surprise or fear or anger, Atlas didn’t know. He didn’t reach out to steady him, didn’t shift away, didn’t retreat a single inch. Instead, he let Cristian angle in closer. Then he asked again, with a little more steel in his voice, “Do you understand?”
The gentle brush of a warm exhalation against the side of his neck was a victory only made sweeter by Cristian’s soft, unsure answer of “Yes.”
“Good boy,” Atlas whispered. And because he was a bit pissed off, he added, “I didn’t even need a whistle.”
Cristian reared back, but no insult flew. He’d shocked the man speechless.
Atlas pressed the cue against Cristian’s chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, Mr. Slava.”
Chapter Four
The next two weeks were an exercise in patience. Cristian seemed hell-bent on driving Atlas from the job and grew equally confused and irritated when his best efforts failed. Atlas stayed even-keeled through it all, earning him admiring comments from the others in Decebal’s employ, including Helias.
He was grateful for the consilier’s notice. Helias had Decebal’s ear and a close, almost brotherly relationship with Cristian. He was careful to leave Atlas and Cristian to work out their business, but more than once Atlas caught him in private, earnest conversation with Cristian after one of their spats. Atlas was always able to enjoy at least one relatively peaceful shift after Helias’s intervention.
Tonight, Helias was taking a more direct approach. He’d texted Atlas before his shift to provide directions to one of Decebal’s medical clinics, where Cristian would be attending a business meeting. Apparently, it was the only time everyone’s schedules aligned, so Atlas shrugged off the odd hour and focused on the truly important part of the message. The meeting was an unexpected change in the evening’s schedule, Helias warned. Atlas knew what that meant, which was why he wasn’t surprised to find a car parked outside when he arrived on shift. He went inside and quickly found Cristian and Helias in one of the studies.
They stood close together, glancing over paperwork spread out on one of the decorative desks, murmuring in Romanian. Cristian’s shoulders were loose and he nodded at whatever Helias was explaining. Seeing him without his usual prickly exterior was a pleasant surprise, and one Atlas hoped boded well for the evening. He cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe to declare his presence.
Like that, the atmosphere of the room changed. Cristian glanced up, already glowering at the interruption. Helias ignored Cristian’s ill humor and gave Atlas a friendly nod as he gathered up the papers. “Good evening, Mr. Kinkaid. I assume you saw the car outside?”
“Yes,” Atlas agreed. He looked toward Cristian. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Cristian didn’t deign to speak to him again until they were outside at the car. And when he finally did, it was with an imperiousness that immediately raised Atlas’s hackles.
“You’ll wait in the car during the meeting,” he ordered.
“I’ll walk you inside and wait outside the office,” Atlas said. His irritation turned to amusement when Cristian’s scowl deepened.
“Walk me inside and wait in the car.”
“Walk you inside and wait in the lobby,” he volleyed back, settling his weight against the car’s roof.
“Are you always this irritating?” Cristian griped.
His change of subject meant Atlas had won the argument, and he relaxed. “Only when my paycheck’s at stake,” he replied.
Cristian rolled his eyes and slid into the town car. The moment his door closed, Atlas ran a hand down his face and got into the driver’s seat. At least Decebal paid well. Nights like this, when his head was already sore from the threat of an oncoming headache, he clung to the memory of his bank account for motivation.
He glanced over his shoulder and found Cristian leaning his head against the window, staring out at nothing in particular. “Do you have any plans for after the meeting?”
“Rapture,” Cristian murmured. “The others will meet us there.”
Atlas hummed in response and started them on their way. Rapture was one of Decebal’s many properties, a nightclub located in the renovated downtown district. He’d taken Cristian there a few times now. It wasn’t his scene, but the place was nice. Dinu loved showcasing it on a variety of social media accounts tied to Decebal’s firms. Its importance in the family’s empire meant Cristian tended to behave himself there.
Cautiously optimistic, he pulled away from the house. Once they were past the gate, he glanced back to his unusually taciturn passenger. The passing streetlamps cast bars of warm light over Cristian. He’d dressed up with dark slacks and polished shoes. He wore another fitted dress shirt, but left the top two buttons near the collar undone, giving Atlas glimpses of the line of his collarbone. Rolled-up sleeves added to his carefully crafted air of informality. Atlas doubted anyone at the meeting would care about Cristian’s relaxed dress. They’d likely be too distracted by his brooding expression, the tease of his chest, or his exposed forearms, which flexed when he reached up to brush his hair back. He was a living recreation of Joseph Geefs’s statue, enthralling and disturbing, arresting enough a man could lose hours studying him.
Cristian knew his allure. He used it to his advantage often enough that Atlas knew better than to fall for it. He ripped his attention back to the road.
“Do you mind music?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Cristian replied absently.
Atlas put on one of the local stations and turned the volume down until the music was nothing more than a pleasant drone in the back of his head. It kept the busiest of his thoughts away, but didn’t distract him as he’d hoped. It was difficult to ignore Cristian when he was like this, unable to act on the annoying prattle of his friends hanging around him, encouraging him to awe them with his boasts or wit or his leveling sharp comments at Atlas. Alone together, Cristian’s silence reminded Atlas of the stillness that came after removing body armor, when the skin and muscles remember to move differently, when common sense warns to approach the surrounding world with a bit more caution. The silence left Cristian younger, vulnerable, and far more approachable. He liked this version of the man much better, which was foolish.
He remembered that shortly after their arrival at the clinic, where Cristian transformed back into the heir apparent before stepping out of the car. Gone was the introspection, replaced with an empty smile and crackling wit designed to win over anyone in his path. Atlas followed him inside the clinic, where Cristian was welcomed by a number of people. He apparently already knew them, since pleasantries flew back and forth with charm and teasing, and without any reason to involve Atlas. He waited for the group to disappear into a nearby conference room before settling himself down in an uncomfortable chair in the lobby to wait.
An hour later, his phone chimed with a text from Cristian. Bring the car around out back.
He frowned and checked the conference room. The door was still closed, the meeting still going apparently, and he had no reason to refuse Cristian’s missive.
A few minutes later, he pulled the car behind the building and found the man waiting for him on the loading bay. A black duffel bag sat at Cristian’s feet, and he continued chatting with one of the men from the lobby as Atlas pulled to a stop nearby. He barely managed to put the c
ar in park before Cristian scooped up the bag and headed for the car, waving a goodbye to the other man, who quickly slipped inside the building.
“What’s going on?” Atlas asked when Cristian got in the back with the bag.
His attempt to keep his voice neutral must have failed, since Cristian rested a hand protectively over the bag and said lightly, “Nothing you need to concern yourself with. To Rapture, Mr. Kinkaid.”
A closer look at the loading bay as he pulled the car back around toward the front of the building didn’t give him any obvious clues, other than his observation of a worrying lack of security cameras. The bag itself was a dime-a-dozen duffel, simple and cheap. The fact that it was packed full of something was what set Atlas on edge.
His nerves didn’t fade as they drove farther into town. As if he sensed the weakness, Cristian asked, “Something on your mind?”
Atlas wasn’t expecting it and fumbled to come up with a response. The best he could manage was a pointless, “How was the meeting?”
“Boring,” Cristian said. “But I think you already knew that.”
His abrasive response reminded Atlas of someone. It took him a few intersections before he could remember. Kurt. That’s who it was. Kurt had acted in a similar way, a learned behavior from a life spent in and out of relatives’ homes and foster care before he signed up to serve. It took years of hard-assed COs and several life or death missions with Atlas and his platoon before Kurt had finally started to trust his brothers in arms. And then he’d been ripped apart on the way back to base after a fucking peacekeeping support mission—
“What do you really want to know, Mr. Kinkaid?” Cristian’s challenge was a godsend, a perfect diversion from the snapshots of memories.
Atlas forced his fingers to ease their grip on the steering wheel. “You’re the one who started the conversation, Mr. Slava. Maybe it’s not me who has something on his mind.”
Silence. He’d blown it. If he was lucky, Cristian would let it go. If he was unlucky...well, they weren’t to the club yet and Cristian would have plenty of time to dig in and find yet another way to get under his skin.
“Maybe I do,” Cristian mused, shocking Atlas wholly. “I’m not used to your...persistence. You treat this job as more than a payday. Your predecessors did not.”
“And that bothers you.” He didn’t ask it as a question, not when he knew it was true.
“It confuses me,” Cristian clarified. “I know you don’t like me. Why do you stick around?”
There was too much to unpack in that, so Atlas focused on the most basic truth. “Because I have to pay rent on my apartment,” he replied shortly.
“Father offered you employee housing. Why didn’t you take him up on it?”
Atlas grunted in lieu of a real response. There was no way to explain why living on Decebal’s property was a horrible idea, in spite of the plush accommodations. Besides, it had been a polite, empty gesture. Decebal had extended it, and Helias walked back on it the moment he and Atlas left the study. Helias’s concerns had been surprisingly practical and focused on Atlas’s needs, rather than logistical ease. After learning how many people stayed in the subterranean living quarters, Atlas doubted the pace of the house ever slowed down. His insomnia was bad enough and, with his sensory overload, he’d never be able to get to sleep if people walked past his room. Worse, if he did, waking up from one of his nightmares to unfamiliar surroundings, to unfamiliar faces coming to see what was wrong, would cause other problems. Just the thought of it made his skin crawl.
“Most of Father’s employees stay with us,” Cristian pressed.
“Well, I’m not most of them.”
“Where do you live?” Cristian asked.
Atlas slowed to a stop at a red light. He gestured down one of the crossing side streets. “Down that way.”
Cristian leaned toward the window to take in the awkward sprawl of Scarsdale’s suburban neighborhoods. Atlas knew what Cristian would see, but he staunchly reminded himself to not feel shame. It wasn’t easy.
The townhouses and apartment buildings were testaments to the city’s hope of becoming a bustling center of enterprise, a hope that disappeared when the logging and manufacturing industries collapsed and no tech companies could be coaxed to set up campuses in the semirural location. Some of the neighborhoods were completely devoid of life, used by squatters and avoided by everyone else. Others, like the area Atlas lived in, tried their best to limp along with some sense of community, but it wasn’t enough to erase the growing sense of limbo, as the gentrification of downtown Scarsdale crept closer and closer to their area. The medical personnel moving in now—wealthy or young, and sometimes both—wanted comfortable, nostalgic neighborhoods with modern amenities. The cost of housing kept rising, driven by the desire for a slice of suburban paradise within easy commuting distance to work.
He doubted Cristian, living in his bubble of wealth, would understand the impact his father’s business dealings were having on the financially strapped working class of Scarsdale, who couldn’t afford the newly flipped houses in nicer neighborhoods. He doubted he could explain it well enough to make Cristian care.
No, Cristian would simply see the surface picture of the area and its obvious neglect. Cracked sidewalks and overgrown planters that used to be maintained made the fading paint of the buildings look even shabbier. Small neighborhood businesses used their worn Christmas lights and flickering neon signs to illuminate the pools of darkness left from burned out streetlights.
“You’d rather live in some shitbox apartment than our house?” Atlas didn’t have to look in the mirror to see Cristian’s sneer. His incredulity colored every word.
Cristian had no right to know the conditions Atlas had grown up in. He had no right to know that Atlas was used to this kind of life, confident in his understanding of how to survive it. No, Cristian had no right to any of that, so Atlas scrounged around for some other excuse. The one he landed on was dumb, but maybe it would distract Cristian. “Snafu needs a place to live.”
“Snafu?”
“My succulent.” Well, dying succulent, but he didn’t need to share that. After his involuntary discharge, his therapist had suggested he buy the damn plant in an effort to “normalize his civilian life” and “take on low-level responsibilities” to help him feel more grounded. After funding for his visits to the VA changed, therapy hadn’t stuck, but the stupid plant had.
Atlas had never been able to give up on lost causes. So, yeah, the plant needed a place to stay.
The radio music gave way to a local news update. There weren’t a lot of construction projects going on, but a few might impact traffic patterns. Atlas filed that information away.
“You’re keeping your apartment because of a plant?” Cristian made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Sounds like a fucking dream, Mr. Kinkaid.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Atlas agreed, deadpan. “That’s the best description I’ve heard of my entire life, Mr. Slava.”
Traffic updates segued to a story about a homeless man killed in an animal attack near the riverfront. Atlas quickly turned down the volume, unwilling to let yet another story of death take residence in his head.
“What has your life been like, Mr. Kinkaid?”
He had no reason to avoid the question, not with Cristian’s careful phrasing. It was polite conversation, that was all. He gathered his thoughts and said, “Joined the Marines. Served overseas. Ended on a bad mission and got discharged. Bea hired me to work at Whitethorn.” He forced himself to shrug, as if his entire back hadn’t locked up in foolish preparation for flight or fight, and added lightly, “It’s been fine since.”
“You really don’t like talking about yourself, do you?” Cristian mused.
“Well, it’s not like I’ve heard you offering up your own sob story,” Atlas shot back.
Cristian chuckled. �
�True.”
A new silence fell between them, leaving Atlas on edge. Their conversation felt unbalanced, with Cristian taking without giving in return. He was so caught up in wondering how to coax some details out of Cristian that he jolted when a hand appeared suddenly by the side of his head, pointing at something down the road.
“Sorry,” Cristian whispered in his ear as he leaned forward between the seats. “But you’ll need to turn left at that intersection.”
He dutifully put on the blinker and moved to the correct lane, ignoring his speeding pulse. “I thought we were headed for Rapture.”
“Just a quick stop along the way,” Cristian said.
Cristian didn’t draw away like he expected. He stayed there at Atlas’s shoulder, offering quiet directions that led them farther and farther away from the newly civilized center of the dying industrial town and closer and closer to the shattered, abandoned warehouses bordering the sluggish river. Shadows moved in the cluttered alleys untouched by the dim lights in this section of town. His skin crawled and he reminded himself he was home, back in New York, and the moving shapes were probably just coyotes or something. There was no reason to freak out.
“Here,” Cristian ordered a moment later.
Atlas braked, but didn’t put the car in park. The former warehouse to their right was a dilapidated mess. Aged bricks bore rusted watermarks from too many storms, windows were shattered and boarded up, and industrial wreckage lay scattered in the scraped dirt yard out front.
“Here?” Atlas asked. He could go for the instinctual gruff command to not get out of the car, which Cristian would instantly try to buck, or he could try for something else. His sense of humor had died out in that battlefield, but he made an effort anyway. “If you’re a serial killer, I expect a pay raise to keep your secrets.”
The dry humor didn’t land perfectly, but it kept Cristian at his side. Atlas wasn’t prepared for him to lean forward even closer, watching him with amusement. “You think I’m a serial killer?”