by Jenna Black
She felt a pang of loss as she remembered that Nate would never again be this easy with her, either. She’d have rather lost the engagement to him than to have lost his friendship, and the pain was stunning.
“What’s wrong?” Dante asked, his brow furrowed in concern as he leaned forward in his chair. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him, stiffening her spine and telling herself to get over it.
“Spoken like a true Executive,” he muttered under his breath, though she was sure she was supposed to hear it. “Never admit weakness around the help.”
She’d have been annoyed at the jab, if she didn’t sense it was just a ploy to get her to admit what was bothering her. She didn’t think he was probing on Mosely’s behalf, but she couldn’t be sure. Still reeling from the fresh loss, she could easily find herself dropping her guard and revealing too much to someone who offered her so much as a modicum of kindness. She forced a brittle smile.
“Never admit anything in the presence of one of Dirk Mosely’s spies, you mean,” she corrected him, and was rewarded with a minute flinch.
“Good point,” he said, clasping his hands between his knees and looking away.
His obvious guilt made her like him better—again. “How did someone like you end up working for someone like Mosely?” she found herself asking, unable to reconcile the glimpses she’d gotten of the real him with the kind of sleazy individual who would voluntarily work for Mosely.
The open friendliness in Dante’s face suddenly shut down. “I’m afraid that’s a state secret,” he said. His smile said he was trying to make a joke of it, but it clearly wasn’t a joke. She might have pressed him on it, except he beat her to the punch. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something. I’m pretty sure my employment history isn’t it, so what is it?”
Nadia would have loved to delve more deeply into Dante’s secrets, intrigued by his contradictions, but she had far more important things to talk about, and her curiosity would have to take a backseat. As long as Dante was Mosely’s spy, he was the enemy, and she had to be careful not to reveal anything she shouldn’t.
“You slipped an envelope into the napkin on my breakfast tray this morning,” she said, watching his face closely for a reaction.
His brows drew together in a puzzled frown. “Excuse me?”
He almost managed to pull off the act. The facial expression was just right, as was the baffled-sounding tone of his voice. If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she’d have missed the way his eyes widened for a split second before he regained control of his expression.
“Do we have to go through this denial thing again?” she asked as her mind worried at the convoluted puzzle. Of all the people who worked in the Lake family household, Dante seemed like the least likely person for Bishop to approach for messenger duty. True, he might not know that Dante worked for Mosely, but still … If Nadia were trying to slip an illicit message to an Executive girl, she’d have tried to enlist someone who had easy access to that girl’s room, like a maid. She would not have chosen the girl’s father’s male personal assistant.
“Yeah, we do,” Dante said with a stubborn set to his chin. “I didn’t put anything on your tray.” He glanced over her shoulder at the refreshments table behind her. “I still have a lot of clean-up to do,” he said, starting to stand up, “so if you’ll excuse me—”
“Sit down!” she snapped, her tone so sharp it startled him into submission. She glared at him. “I don’t have the patience to play this game anymore. I know you put that message on my tray. You were seen, okay? So denying it just makes you look like a dumbass.”
His surprise at her unladylike language would have been comical if circumstances hadn’t banished Nadia’s sense of humor into a cold and lonely exile.
“I didn’t think Executive girls knew words like dumbass existed, much less let them drop from their pure and virginal mouths.” He said it like it was a joke, but there was an edge in his voice that belied any humor.
“Is it just Executive girls you hold in such contempt, or is it all Executives? Or all girls?” She knew jealousy made a lot of people in the lower classes look down their noses at Executives, but she’d never been so blatantly slapped in the face with it before. It was worse than silly, but Nadia actually felt stung by it. It shouldn’t matter to her what Mosely’s spy thought of her, but she’d had more than her fill of contempt in the last few days.
Dante sighed and settled back down in his chair. “Sorry,” he said, looking like he meant it. “I have a problem with girls like your lovely classmates, but you’re not like them.”
Since Nadia felt much the same way about Jewel and Blair, she let the subject drop. “So are you ready to admit you put the envelope on my tray so we can move on?”
“Move on to what?”
Good question. She wanted to know how a message from Bishop had found its way into Dante’s hands, but there was a chance Dante didn’t know who it was from, and if he didn’t know, Nadia wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t exactly seem fond of his boss, but she doubted his low opinion of Mosely would keep him from revealing any important information he learned.
“Who gave you the envelope?” she asked, deciding that was the safest tack to take.
“I don’t know what envelope you’re talking about.” He looked her straight in the eye when he said it, but the lack of conviction in his voice told her it was a pro forma protest. He knew she wasn’t going to buy it, and yet he wasn’t willing to admit the truth.
For about a quarter of a second, Nadia considered the possibility of letting it drop, but the very fact that Dante was being so cagey about it meant there was more to learn and that it was important. The question was, how could she break down his reserve and get him to talk? If she were Mosely, she’d resort to threats, but she wasn’t …
She let the thought trail off in her mind. There was no way she could cajole Dante into talking. She could try bribery, but her every instinct screamed at her that the attempt would be not only futile, but counterproductive. She didn’t want to stoop to the level of those who’d used threats and blackmail to bend her to their will, but there was too much at stake for her to indulge her moral ideals.
“I know you’re not really a servant,” she said, “and I know that in theory you shouldn’t be overly concerned about protecting your position, but somehow I suspect your real boss would be unhappy with you if you got fired.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed, and there was a flash of anger in his eyes. But behind that anger was fear, and Nadia’s conscience cringed. She managed to keep her expression cold and regal, keeping her disgust at her own words hidden behind her Executive mask.
“You wouldn’t,” Dante growled.
No, she wouldn’t. But Dante didn’t have to know that. “We’ve been down here alone in the schoolroom together for a good long time,” she said. “I know Mosely ordered my father to hire you, but if I make certain accusations…”
Dante’s hands clenched in his lap, and the way he was looking at her made her feel like the lowest scum on the face of the earth. Maybe she should just let him keep his secrets, whatever they were.
“And here I thought you were different from the rest of the Executive girls,” he sneered. “You may be nicer than they are when things are going your way, but as soon as someone doesn’t do what you want…” He shoved his chair back and leapt to his feet, then gave the chair an extra shove for good measure.
Nadia rose more slowly. She couldn’t blame Dante for being angry. She was acting exactly like a spoiled Executive girl who couldn’t accept the reality that not everything was going her way. She was threatening to ruin his career, maybe even his life, by fabricating a story about sexual misconduct. The fact that she knew she wouldn’t do it didn’t make her behavior any more palatable.
“This isn’t how I act when things don’t go my way,” Nadia said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. “This is how I act when I’m cornered and d
esperate and everything that’s good in my life is crumbling around me. This is how I act when your boss has got his hooks into me so deep I’m surprised I’m not bleeding.”
She managed to keep herself from crying, but it was a near thing. If she could somehow follow the trail of breadcrumbs from the message all the way back to Bishop, if she could be the one to bring him and Nate back together, then maybe someday Nate would find it in his heart to forgive her. And maybe she’d even find it in her heart to forgive herself.
She didn’t expect Dante to relent. After all, he already knew about the hell she was living through, had infiltrated her household to make sure she was as trapped as Mosely wanted her to be. He was part of the problem, certainly not part of the solution, even if he did have secrets she couldn’t yet fathom.
Dante apparently considered it his life’s mission to surprise her. Instead of telling her how little he thought of her excuses, he took a step toward her, reaching out to touch her shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. The expression in his eyes softened from anger to sympathy, perhaps tinged with a touch of guilt.
“I’m sorry, Nadia,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “I know you’re in a terrible position, and I know it’s really, really hard on you.”
Nadia’s breath caught in her throat as she met his gaze, trying to figure out what to make of his sudden change of heart. His hand remained on her shoulder, feeling inordinately warm through the fabric of her blouse. He was standing too close to her, gazing at her with too much intensity. He opened his mouth a couple of times as if to say more, each time thinking better of it.
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but whatever it was had brought a lost, unhappy look to his face. He broke eye contact and let his hand drop from her shoulder. She immediately missed the warmth of his touch. In those few seconds when he’d stood too close, when his hand had been on her shoulder, she’d caught a glimpse of a tortured soul buried deep inside, and for the first time, she wondered if he did Mosely’s dirty work any more willingly than she did.
Nadia took a step backward, putting a more comfortable distance between them. She couldn’t afford to be intrigued by Dante, nor could she afford to see him as anything but the enemy. She had to remain firm, use every method at her disposal to get him to spill whatever secret he was hiding from her, even if her methods left her feeling dirty and low.
“Even though you’re not really a servant,” she said, drawing herself up stiffly as if offended, “you should never address me by first name even in private.”
She expected the coldness in her tone to bring back the anger and the contempt she’d seen in him before. She didn’t like having those feelings directed at her, but at least they helped her keep her emotional distance, helped remind her who and what he was. Instead, he ran a frustrated hand through his hair and suddenly plopped back down in the chair he’d recently vacated.
“I am going to get in so much trouble for this,” he muttered under his breath. Then he squared his shoulders and looked up at her.
“For your information,” he said, his eyes a little wide as if what he was about to say frightened him, “you’ve been calling me by first name all along. My name isn’t Robert Dante, it’s Dante Sandoval. And the person who gave me that message to deliver to you was Bishop.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paxco headquarters was located in what most people still called the Empire State Building, despite its official renaming. Nate hadn’t set foot in the place since he’d awakened as a Replica, even though as Chairman Heir he was expected to spend most of his waking hours there.
The day after he’d had the crap beaten out of him didn’t seem like the best time to change that, but Nate wasn’t up to taking evasive action, so he was sitting around at home when his father finally reached the end of his fuse and sent one of Nate’s own bodyguards to fetch him—by force if necessary.
Nate fixed the bodyguard, Fischer, with a fierce glare. His whole body ached from the beating and his head was throbbing from too little sleep, too much stress, and too much to drink last night. All of which made him so not in the mood to have Fischer manhandle him. Fischer was unmoved by the glare, and Nate knew he had no choice but to go along.
He tried not to wince or gasp too much as he made his way downstairs to the limo with Fischer close at his heels. Getting into the limo was no fun, and Nate hoped he wouldn’t be expected to move around for the commercial he would no longer be able to avoid doing. His head ached even more as he thought about how many takes he would need to get it all right in his current condition.
The Empire State Building had once been a major tourist attraction, but now that it was Paxco Headquarters, tourists had to jump through enough security hoops to get in that they often didn’t bother, especially when so many parts of the historic building were off limits. The Chairman and his staff, including Nate, had their own private entrance on the far side of the building from where the tourists and office workers entered.
Nate had seen in the news that some protesters had set up shop around Headquarters, but since there was always somebody protesting something, he hadn’t paid much attention. Which meant that he was totally unprepared for the welcoming committee that awaited him outside the Chairman’s entrance, waving placards and chanting. There were more of them here than there had been when Nate had left the Fortress, and they seemed angrier.
Security was keeping the crowd well back. They’d set up sawhorses to make a generous perimeter, and they also formed a human wall, ready to beat back any overly enthusiastic demonstrators. Nate wasn’t surprised when a couple of the building’s security officers hurried over to the car to give him extra protection.
One of the security officers opened the door for him, letting in a wall of sound the glass and steel of the car had been muffling. The demonstrators were shouting, and they waved their placards more wildly when they caught sight of him. Those who didn’t have placards settled for shaking their fists in the air. Nate wasn’t sure how many people were out there, but they numbered in the hundreds, and they were stunningly loud.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” the security officer said, holding the door while his eyes continued to scan the crowd for threats.
Inconvenience. That was one word for it.
Nate stepped out of the limo, and the crowd went wild. Shouts turned into howls as people began to push and shove to get closer to the barriers. Then the howls turned into a chant: “Replicas aren’t people!”
The security officers and his bodyguard tried to hurry Nate along, but he couldn’t help stopping a moment, frozen in shock at the ferocity of the crowd, at their snarling anger, at their dismissal of him as a human being. “I am a person,” he wanted to shout at the crowd. Not that he could shout loudly enough to be heard over this roar, or that anyone would listen to him if he did.
The snippets he’d seen on the news had clued him in to the fact that the general public was wary and suspicious of Replicas, as had the protest outside the Fortress, but he’d never expected this level of hostility.
“Get down!” Fischer, suddenly yelled, pouncing on Nate’s back and knocking him to the ground.
Something zipped past his head and splatted on the open door of the limo. It was just an egg, not a deadly weapon, but the throwing of that single egg seemed to flip a switch. Until then, the security officers had been calmly controlling the crowd, holding them back but not ordering them to disperse. Now, they reached for their pepper spray. The egg thrower was hauled over the barricade as the others at the front of the line tried to retreat out of reach of the spray. One of the security officers started whaling on the egg thrower with his baton.
“No!” Nate yelled as he was hauled bodily to his feet.
The crowd was screaming now, placards dropping as those closest to the front saw the threat and tried to run. But those in the back didn’t know what was happening and kept trying to press forward, making retreat impossible as the security officers blasted peppe
r spray indiscriminately, not caring that the crowd was now trying to disperse. Those trapped between the officers and the wall of people behind them started fighting back because there was nothing else they could do. The egg thrower was curled up in fetal position, trying desperately to protect his head, but the security officer kept hitting him.
“Stop them!” Nate yelled again, but no one was listening to him. When he tried to move toward the melee, security officers grabbed each of his arms and hauled him forward, while Fischer grabbed hold of his collar and shoved on the small of his back for good measure.
Ignoring his repeated protests—and the screams of the crowd behind them—the officers forced Nate through the doorway and into Paxco Headquarters.
* * *
The interior of the Empire State Building had been almost entirely gutted when it had become Paxco Headquarters, but the architects had done their best to preserve the art deco lobby with its stunning ceiling mural and intricate glasswork. None of which was visible from the Chairman’s entrance, which sported a functional and ultramodern lobby with enough security measures to withstand the Apocalypse. The glass doors of the entrance were bulletproof, so thick that when they closed, the screaming and shouting from the riot was muted to almost nothing. No one inside seemed particularly alarmed at what was occurring on their doorstep, although a few people did look at Nate with open curiosity as Fischer and the security officers frog-marched him to the elevators. Adrenaline and horror had fueled him when he’d seen the start of the riot, but now that the immediate crisis had passed—at least for him if not the poor bastards outside—the adrenaline faded and his bruised and aching body shouted its own protests. The security officers seemed to sense his capitulation, and their hands dropped from his arms, but Fischer still had a hand on his back, right on one of his worst bruises.
“Let go of me,” he said in what he hoped was a level, rational-sounding tone. “I’m not going to try to go back out there.”
Fischer’s hand dropped away, but Nate was sure all three of his escorts were on high alert for any sign he was about to make a break for it.