by Jenna Black
“You thought that? Or your resistance buddies did?”
“Does it matter?”
Actually, it did. Nate was all for opposing Paxco’s oppressive governmental practices, as long as that opposition was nonviolent. The problem was that Nate didn’t know much about the resistance movement and what they were up to. He had high hopes that when he eventually became the Chairman, he’d be able to make Paxco into a better, more just state, but that would be a lot harder to achieve if the resistance staged some kind of coup in the meantime.
“Probably not,” Nate said with what he hoped was a careless shrug. “I can’t tell you much anyway. Nadia and I … actually, mostly Nadia … negotiated a deal with my father. In return for us keeping our mouths shut, he granted you full amnesty.”
“He granted me amnesty for something he knows perfectly well I didn’t do?” Kurt shook his head, and Nate couldn’t blame him. “Your father is a tool, and a crooked one at that.”
Kurt didn’t know the half of it. “It’s not legal amnesty,” Nate clarified. “Legally, you were cleared of all charges. I mean he’s promised not to come after you off the books.”
Kurt frowned. “Why would he do that, anyway? I didn’t do anything to him.”
“He’d do it because I pissed him off and he knows how much it would hurt me if something happened to you.”
Kurt pondered that a moment without comment. “Okay. So I’m free to show my face in public again.”
“Yes.”
“Do I still have a job?”
Nate ached to say yes. He missed having Kurt so close, missed the opportunities for stolen kisses and shared secrets. But no matter what his father had promised, Nate’s gut told him Kurt would present too tempting a target.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said, “but no. I don’t trust my father, and it’s not safe for you here.”
A muscle ticked in Kurt’s jaw, and there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. “You mean you don’t want me here now that you know the truth about me. At least have the balls to say it.”
Nate jerked back in surprise. Kurt’s involvement with the resistance had nothing to do with it. Nate was near the top of the Executive establishment the resistance wished to topple, but he refused to think of Kurt as any kind of enemy. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he disagreed with Kurt’s cause, though he suspected he was in a better position to effect eventual change than the resistance ever would be.
“That’s not why you can’t stay here,” Nate said, his voice rising only because Kurt’s had. “My father knows about us.” Kurt’s eyes widened with shock. “Knows, and doesn’t care as long as we’re discreet. But he also knows how much you mean to me. He can’t afford to do anything to me.” Not when he hadn’t had the foresight to follow the old British adage of producing an heir and a “spare.” “But I can’t tell you how ugly it got between us. He never really loved me, but now he hates me.” And it was a damn good thing Nadia had forced the Chairman to destroy Thea. Otherwise, he’d have killed Nate again and animated a new Replica, one who knew none of his secrets and would continue his career as a spoiled playboy without ever getting in the way. “Having you close to me is too risky.”
Kurt’s face said he wasn’t entirely convinced by Nate’s argument, but he let the issue drop. “So what exactly did happen when Nadia was arrested? How did you and Nadia get the Chairman to agree to anything?”
“I told you: we agreed not to talk.”
“That’s bullshit. If you and Nadia throwing around wild murder accusations had a chance in hell of making him back down, you’d have been singing to the skies an hour after I told you what happened on the night of your murder.”
Nate shuddered, his mind still having trouble dealing with the reality that his father had been present and had ordered Mosely to kill him. It was one thing to believe your father hated you, another to know it.
“I said we agreed not to talk. I didn’t say what we agreed not to talk about, and it’s not the murder.” His long habit of trusting Kurt made Nate want to blurt out the whole truth, but this particular truth was like an infectious disease. Nate didn’t like the idea that he was helping his father cover up his crimes, but there was enough unrest in Paxco already. He wanted his father out of power, but not at the cost of starting a civil war.
“Well, what then?” Kurt prompted.
“I’m sticking to the agreement and not talking.” Nate’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. At least I’m not lying about it, he tried telling himself, but that didn’t make the secret sit any better.
Kurt stared at him with a combination of anger and suspicion in his eyes. “And that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a member of the resistance.”
Nate wanted to blurt out a quick denial, but Kurt deserved more honesty than that, so he sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I’d tell you if I knew for sure it wouldn’t go any further. I’d sure as hell think about it long and hard before I decided. I wish I didn’t know.”
He thought Kurt would get angry over his refusal to talk, but Kurt surprised him by patting his thigh.
“I’ll leave it alone,” he promised. “For now, at least. I can’t throw stones about keeping secrets. And I need to get out of here before people start waking up, anyway. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the job.”
Nate shook his head, sure he was making the right decision about that, at least. “You’ve already gone through hell because of me. I won’t let that happen again.” He wished he were more certain that was a promise he could keep. “Where will you go?”
Kurt shrugged. “Back to Debasement, I guess. Where else?”
It was the obvious answer, but it was one Nate refused to accept. “You are not going back to the Basement.” The Basement might be Kurt’s natural habitat, and he’d managed to take care of himself there for years before Nate had met him, but there was no such thing as safety there. “I might not be able to give you a job, but I can give you money.”
Nate was prepared for Kurt to put up the obligatory argument—no Executive or Employee would accept charity without protest. Apparently, Basement-dwellers had no such social convention.
“Money would be good,” Kurt said easily. “Dollars would be best, if you’re trying to keep your father from finding out. Scrip can be traced to you.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Nate said drily, rolling stiffly out of bed. “Someone stole all of my dollars not so long ago.”
Kurt laughed. “I’d tell you I’d pay you back, but, you know…”
Nate wasn’t awake enough to think of a good comeback, so instead he trudged out of the room to collect the few dollars he had left to give to Kurt.
“How can I contact you?” he asked when he returned and handed the money over.
Kurt stuffed the bills into his pocket. “If you want to keep me off Daddy’s radar, you don’t. It’s too easy for a guy like him to tap phones.”
Nate fought a spike of panic, hating the thought that he wouldn’t know where Kurt was and wouldn’t be able to contact him. “But I will see you again, won’t I?” He sounded needy and pathetic, but he couldn’t help it.
Kurt gave him a crooked smile and stroked the side of his face. “’Course you will. And I’ll see if I can get you a black market phone your dad won’t be able to tap.”
Grateful beyond words, Nate hugged him tight.
* * *
Nate supposed there were people he was less eager to sit down and have a private chat with than Robert Dante, but off the top of his head, he couldn’t think of one. Dante was a resistance spy who had infiltrated the Paxco security department. He’d then been sent by Mosely to spy on Nadia, pretending to be her father’s personal assistant/general servant, so he was a spy times two. As if that weren’t bad enough, the asshole was way too familiar with Nadia, and had planted the tracker on her, marking her for death. Somehow, it was a lot easier to forgive Kurt for that than it was to forgive Dante.
Ho
wever, much as he hated to admit it, Nate needed Dante, or at least his contacts, right now. The tricky part was arranging a meeting without an audience. After Kurt’s comment about bugged phones, Nate knew better than to call. But if he showed up at the Lake Towers asking to speak to Dante, he would draw way too much attention to both of them—there was absolutely no legitimate reason why the Chairman Heir would need to talk to a servant in the Lake family’s household—so he had to get creative.
Which was how he found himself in the foyer of the Lakes’ apartment, making a scene that was drawing the attention of every person in the household.
“Nadia doesn’t deserve this!” he bellowed in Esmeralda’s face, sure his own face was flushed red with anger. He’d been pissed off at Nadia’s mother from the moment he’d received Nadia’s message yesterday. An Executive who gave a crap about etiquette would never have stormed in here like this, but as Chairman Heir, he could get away with it.
Esmeralda’s face had gone pale the moment he’d started yelling at her, but he wasn’t sure whether it was from distress or fury. He’d always been polite to her in the past, and she was always painfully proper. She appeared to be at a loss for how to handle his outburst.
“Bring her home, Esmeralda!” he demanded at the same ear-splitting volume, watching out of the corner of his eye as the peanut gallery of servants continued to grow in size. If he were anyone else, she probably would have had him tossed out by now, but she didn’t dare antagonize the Chairman Heir.
“The press—” she started weakly.
“I don’t give a damn about the press!”
Finally, Nate caught a glimpse of Dante joining the crowd of observers. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to draw Dante closer, but it turned out he didn’t have to, because Dante waded right in, his fierce scowl saying he was more than happy to volunteer to throw Nate out. He was supposedly just a household servant, not a bodyguard, but he was imposing as hell.
“May I be of any assistance, Mrs. Lake?” he asked, still glaring at Nate while he parked himself between the two as if to shield Esmeralda with his body.
Nice of the arrogant prick to present Nate with just the opening he needed. “This is none of your business,” Nate snapped at him while carefully palming the little slip of paper he’d tucked into his pants pocket. The paper that told Dante to meet him in the garage of Nate’s building at 1:00 A.M.
“Perhaps you’d like to take a moment to compose yourself, Mr. Hayes,” Dante said, before a sputtering Esmeralda could get a word in.
It was the first time in Nate’s memory Dante had ever addressed him properly, and it almost startled Nate into losing his head of steam. The asshole usually liked to call him by first name just to get under Nate’s skin. He recovered quickly.
“I don’t take orders from servants,” Nate said with a sneer. “Mind your manners or I’ll have you fired.”
There was a spark of anger in Dante’s eyes. He didn’t know Nate well enough to realize how out of character the threat was. Nate had never been half as class-conscious as someone of his rank was expected to be, but now was not the time to clarify.
“It’s all right, Dante,” Esmeralda said. She was holding on to her composure by a thread, and a hint of unease had found its way into her voice. She was far too politically savvy to risk offending the Chairman Heir, but Nate knew it cost her to keep from telling him off. “I’m sure I’m not in need of protection.”
Dante didn’t respond, staying stubbornly between Esmeralda and Nate, doing a fine impression of an intimidating bruiser. Mentally crossing his fingers, Nate reached out and grabbed Dante’s collar, yanking him forward until he could growl in his face.
“You are being insubordinate,” he said as he shoved the little piece of paper under Dante’s collar. The servant’s livery had no convenient pockets Nate could slip the note into, but he hoped the neatly tucked-in shirt would keep the note in place until Dante had a chance to retrieve it.
They were practically nose to nose, so Nate could see by the slight widening of his eyes that Dante had felt the brush of the paper against his skin. Nate could only hope no one else had noticed.
Nate gave Dante a shove away from him. It didn’t exactly break his heart to give Dante a hard time—it had been Dante who had once inspired Nate to throw the first punch of his adult life—and the shove was just barely short of hard enough to knock Dante down. Face red with anger, jaws clenched, Dante fussed with his starched collar, trying to make it lie flat after Nate had rumpled it.
“That will be all, Dante,” Esmeralda said sharply.
Still plucking at his wrinkled shirt, Dante made a short bow and left with what Nate thought was exaggerated dignity.
* * *
Nate leaned against the hood of his car—the car he almost never got to drive, because the Chairman Heir was supposed to travel by limo and leave such plebeian pursuits as driving to the lower classes—trying not to check his watch every thirty seconds. He’d been quite clear in his terse note to Dante, and he was sure Dante had felt it slipping under his collar. Of course, just because the bastard got the message didn’t mean he would show up. He probably felt like Nate was ordering him around, demanding a meeting when he could have politely asked. Too bad Nate hadn’t thought of that before writing his little summons.
At 1:35, just as Nate was deciding it was time to give up, the door to the stairwell finally opened and Dante stepped out. Nate was used to seeing him in servant’s livery; the only time he’d seen him in anything else was when they’d rendezvoused with Kurt in the Basement, at which time Dante had been disguised as a Basement-dweller. Tonight, he was wearing battered blue jeans and a faded shirt, and for the first time he actually looked comfortable in his clothes. His muscular build had always looked odd for a house servant, and when he’d dressed for the Basement, he’d looked very much like a man in disguise. Nate had no idea what Dante’s background was, but the choice of clothes suggested that he was from a lower-class Employee family. He might have built up all those fancy muscles of his doing manual labor.
“You’re lucky I’m still here,” Nate said, though being antagonistic when he was about to ask for help probably wasn’t wise. He should have known Dante would be unruffled.
“And you’re lucky I’m here at all. That was quite a scene you caused. Thanks for almost costing me my job.”
No, Nate and Dante were never going to be the best of friends. Nate wasn’t about to apologize, not when he’d put time and consideration into how to get a message to Dante without costing him either one of his jobs.
“Maybe if I were a professional spy like you, I’d have been able to find another way to get you a message,” he said. “I figured you might not like it if I called you on the phone or showed up at the Lake Towers and asked to speak to you.”
“Very thoughtful of you. Now what is so urgent that you had to make a total ass of yourself to set up a meeting?”
How did Dante manage to pass as a servant in an Executive household when he had such an enormous chip on his shoulder? It had to take some serious acting skills to act subservient to a family of top Executives when he held Executives in such contempt. Nate wondered if he was being overly optimistic in hoping that Dante would be interested in helping Nadia. After all, she was a top Executive. Maybe he should be hoping to get help from Kurt instead. But he didn’t know how to contact Kurt, and he couldn’t afford to wait until Kurt contacted him again. If he wanted to help Nadia, Dante was his best chance.
“Nadia’s in danger,” Nate said, watching Dante’s face carefully for a reaction, which, naturally, Dante didn’t give him.
“Mosely’s dead. She’s been cleared of all charges. And as far as I know, she’s no threat to the resistance. So what’s the problem?”
Nate swallowed hard at the reminder that the resistance had been willing to kill Nadia to keep her from blowing Dante’s cover. These were dangerous people, and they weren’t exactly concerned with Nadia’s best interests. Dante
seemed to like Nadia, but liking someone and being willing to stick your neck out to help them were two different things.
“I can’t tell you,” Nate said, because if he wasn’t going to trust Kurt with the full truth, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to trust Dante. “You’re just going to have to take my word for it. She’s in danger, and that bitch mother of hers has her locked up in a retreat where she’s cut off from the outside world and completely helpless.”
Dante blinked a couple of times and shook his head. “You want me to take your word for it? You’re not actually under the impression that I trust you, are you? Teaming up against a mutual enemy doesn’t make us friends.”
Nate laughed tightly. “When did I give you the impression I thought we were friends? If I weren’t worried you’d finger—” Nate stopped himself from using Kurt’s first name just in time. Even someone as casual as he was didn’t refer to servants by first name, and doing so would betray an inappropriate level of intimacy. Nate covered his almost-slip with a cough before continuing. “—Bishop during questioning, I’d have turned you in by now.”
It wasn’t actually true. Nate didn’t like Dante and didn’t trust his resistance, but there was no way in hell he would turn anyone he knew over for treason. Dirk Mosely might be dead, but Nate had no doubt that whomever the Chairman hired to replace him would be just as brutal and just as morally bankrupt. If Dante were arrested for treason, he’d be tortured until he gave up every resistance contact he knew, and then he’d be executed. Nate had enough black marks on his conscience already without adding one more.
“This is how you’re planning to persuade me to help you?” Dante asked. “Your technique could use some work. But I suppose you’re used to ordering people to help you and this whole asking thing is a new experience.”
The remark bit a little deeper than Nate would have liked. “You’re right,” Nate said, and he could see that his words startled Dante. “I suck at asking for help. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, and none of that matters. Nadia’s in trouble, and we both played a part in getting her there. I’m going to do everything in my power to help her, and I’m hoping you have enough of a conscience to want to help, too. If that’s too much to ask for, then just say so and get out of my face.”