Jenna Black - Resistance

“You wanted to see me?” Nate said, hoping he sounded more nonchalant than he felt. His every instinct told him that something bad was about to happen, and the satisfied glint in the Chairman’s eyes reinforced those instincts.

“Yes,” the Chairman said with a predatory smile. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured toward the pair of chairs in front of his desk.

Nate didn’t want to sit, and if it weren’t nine o’clock in the morning, he might have invited himself over to his father’s liquor bar for a drink. Not that the delay would have gotten him anywhere. He forced his feet forward and lowered himself into a chair.

“What’s this about?” he asked. He tried not to stare at the pile of contracts, not wanting to give the Chairman any satisfaction.

Nate’s father leaned back in his chair and took a sip of coffee before answering. “You know that we’ve been hosting a delegation from Synchrony since Monday?”

Of course Nate knew that. He might be a little lax about his duties, but he wasn’t living in a cave. He frowned. “I think I heard about that in the news somewhere.”

Nate was pleasantly surprised to find he could still make wise-ass comments, considering what he now knew about his father. It felt almost normal, except for the way he tensed up on the inside after the words were out.

“I thought maybe it had escaped your attention, seeing as you failed to attend the dinner and cocktail party that were held in their honor. Did your majordomo misplace your invitation?”

Nate snorted in disdain. He attended at most one out of every five social events he was invited to, and most of those were only brief appearances, photo ops for the press. His father could hardly be surprised that he had chosen not to attend a dinner or cocktail party with a bunch of visiting dignitaries.

“If you called this meeting just to scold me for not coming to the party—” Nate started, leaning forward as if to rise to his feet.

“Of course not,” the Chairman said. “I know from experience that would be about as useful as scolding an infant for wetting its diaper.”

Nate gritted his teeth against the urge to defend himself. His father certainly had some justification for thinking of Nate as childish and irresponsible, and if he was going to turn over a new leaf, he would have to start getting more involved in both business and social politics. He settled back in his chair once more and waited for the Chairman to continue.

“As I’m sure you know—despite an astounding lack of firsthand experience—events of this sort are rarely the social occasions they appear to be to the general public. Chairman Belinski and I have had some very fruitful meetings about how to strengthen the bonds between our two states.”

Nothing surprising in that. Paxco had been courting Synchrony for some time, hoping to improve trade relations and gain better access to Synchrony’s low-cost, high-quality tech products. Paxco had sunk all of its R&D and manufacturing money into the Replica project, and now that Thea was gone, the Chairman must be desperately looking for new revenue streams to tap into. Most of the Synchrony tech was designed with military applications in mind, but it could easily be adapted to civilian use.

Of course, Paxco and Synchrony had already taken a significant step toward becoming bosom allies when Chairman Belinski’s niece had married into one of the top Paxco Executive families. It had been at the wedding reception for the happy couple that the Chairman had ordered his hatchet man to stab Nate to death because he’d overheard an incriminating conversation.

“You know,” Nate said, unable to keep his mouth wisely shut, “I don’t actually remember the wedding, seeing as you had me murdered and I only remember events up to my last backup, but I’m pretty sure one did actually take place and that it does create a bond between our states.”

His father’s smile was hard and cold.

“An apt observation,” the Chairman said. “There is nothing that unifies two states better than a marriage. And it just so happens that Chairman Belinski has a marriageable daughter. And I have a marriageable son.”

The blood drained from Nate’s face so fast it left him dizzy. He’d have leapt to his feet and shouted a protest, only he was afraid his knees wouldn’t hold him. The Chairman turned the stack of contracts around so that Nate could read them and see the words “marriage agreement” featured prominently at the top.

“I’m engaged to Nadia,” Nate said, but his voice came out sounding thin and tentative.

“Not by any legal definition of the term. Nadia Lake is too young to sign a legally binding marriage agreement. Agnes Belinski, however, will turn eighteen a week from Saturday. At 12:01 on that morning, she will sign her copy of the agreement, and your engagement will be official.”

Nate was shaking his head, his pulse racing. “You’ll destroy her,” he said, hardly able to absorb the cruelty of his father’s decision. Nate and Nadia had been unofficially engaged since he was six and she was four. Partially to scandalize people, and partially to help camouflage his sexual preferences, he’d given the press and the rest of Executive society the impression that he was already sleeping with her. And she’d just been a victim of a media storm that had her family hiding her away in the equivalent of a medieval convent. Everyone would assume she had done something terrible. Something so shameful that the Chairman could no longer countenance letting her marry his son. She would be seen as damaged goods, and no respectable Executive would be willing to marry her. Ever.

“Perhaps the two of you should have thought of that before you forced me to destroy the heart and soul of our economy,” the Chairman said acidly. “As long as we had the revenue from the Replica program, you could marry within our state. Now, however, I have no choice but to use your marriage in a more politically advantageous manner.”

The explanation was pure bullshit. The Chairman’s intention was to punish Nate and to ruin Nadia’s life.

“I won’t do it!” Nate said, mining the fury that lay beneath his dismay. He stood up and found that his knees would hold him after all as he glared down at his father. “You can’t drag me to the altar at gunpoint.”

The Chairman, unaffected by Nate’s declaration, rose from his seat. “You will marry Agnes Belinski, or I will have you put in reprogramming to correct your sexual deviance. I’ll make certain Miss Belinski will still be waiting for you when they’re done with you. And I will, of course, suggest to the public that your deviance is due to Nadia’s inability to inspire you to correct your behavior. I don’t think that will do her marriage prospects much good either, do you?”

It took everything Nate had to hold himself together. He felt like he was literally going to explode, and he wanted to ram his fist through his father’s face. He should have known something like this was up as soon as he’d heard the Belinskis were visiting.

“Shall I call security to take you to a reprogramming facility? Or will you sign the contract?”

Nate wished he could believe his father was bluffing. Wished he had the guts to storm out of the office without signing the papers. But the Chairman was right. If Nate’s sexual preference was revealed, it would destroy Nadia’s reputation as surely as breaking the marriage agreement would. And he would come out of reprogramming a changed person, his spirit crushed. The only person Nate had ever known who’d gone through reprogramming had come out the other end a shell of himself, a broken man who was no longer interested in men—or in life in general. It had been years ago, but if Nate remembered correctly, the guy had checked himself into an upstate retreat within three months of returning to society, and he’d been there ever since.