Jenna Black - Resistance

“Maybe the crowd is thinner out on the porch,” Nadia suggested. If there were fewer people, maybe the two of them could hang out together and avoid the stilted and uncomfortable conversations Agnes’s shyness and Nadia’s disgrace brought on.

“My father will get mad at me for being ‘antisocial,’” Agnes said, making air quotes. “I’m already in for a lecture if he saw me standing in the corner earlier. I’m supposed to mingle.” She sighed heavily. “I’m not any good at mingling, but I need to at least pretend I’m making an effort.”

Nadia decided then and there that she didn’t much care for Chairman Belinski. There were ways to help draw Agnes out of her shell, but calling her antisocial and then ordering her to mingle wasn’t one of them.

“Well, stick with me,” Nadia said. “We can pretend to mingle together. And if we see your father, we can bend our heads together and pretend to be having an earnest, important conversation.”

That won her another of Agnes’s rare smiles. “You’re pretty cool.”

Nadia grinned back. “I’m glad someone thinks so.”

Nadia’s grin faded when she spotted her parents threading their way through the crowd, headed in her direction. She met her mother’s eyes across the distance and cringed internally. Esmeralda Lake was not happy with her, and Nadia suspected the two of them were about to have a pitched battle in the middle of a crowded room as they both smiled pleasantly so that no one would notice.

She was wrong.

Nadiahated to leave Agnes alone in the midst of the crowd that so clearly made her uncomfortable. However, her mother wasn’t about to give her a choice in the matter. Ignoring Agnes as if the girl didn’t exist, she marched up to Nadia and said, “We need to talk. In private.”

No hug, no kiss. Hell, no greeting of any kind. Nadia glanced at her father, who was trailing in her mother’s wake. He met her eyes only briefly before looking away.

This didn’t bode well.

Nadia was tempted to insist they have their private conversation right here and now. She was tired of being ordered around, and maybe if they talked in public, the conversation—or lecture, because Nadia knew that her mother would be the only one doing the talking—would be over sooner. The only thing that kept her from protesting was that she didn’t want to subject Agnes to the unpleasantness.

“Fine,” Nadia said, her voice no warmer than her mother’s. “If you’ll excuse me, Agnes?”

“Of course,” Agnes said with a resigned slump of her shoulders.

“There’s a place we can talk down this way,” her mother said, turning toward a hallway off to the side.

“What’s going on?” Nadia asked her father in a voice just barely loud enough to be heard over the chattering of the crowd.

This time, he wouldn’t even make brief eye contact. “We’ll talk when we have some privacy.”

There was a flutter of panic in Nadia’s stomach. Her father looked positively guilty, and she was struck by the premonition that he had lost his battle with her mother and she was to be sent away for good. Her chest tightened, and it was suddenly hard to draw a full breath.

Her mother led the way into a small sitting room, just big enough for a sofa, a couple of chairs, and a coffee table. There were a handful of retreat brochures on the coffee table, along with a box of tissues.

The sitting room door closed with a solid thunk, and Nadia noticed there was a second door located on the opposite side of the room. A door that had a discreet electronic card reader set into the frame.

“Sit down, Nadia,” her mother said, putting her arm around Nadia’s shoulders and trying to guide her to the sofa.

Nadia refused to budge. Her father was fidgety, his gaze darting nervously around the room, and her mother was stiffly dignified. The kind of dignity that felt forced and artificial.

“Tell me you’re not sending me away,” Nadia begged. Her voice was shaking, and there was nothing she could do to control it.

Her mother sighed heavily, and she lowered herself onto the sofa as if she were afraid the impact would break her. She blinked a couple of times, as if holding off tears. The only time Nadia had seen her mother show more emotion was when Mosely and his men had burst into their home to arrest her.

“We have to, sweetheart,” her mother said, confirming Nadia’s worst fear.

“No!” Nadia held back a scream of frustration and anger. “I’ve only been in Tranquility a little over a week, and I already feel like I’ve been buried alive. I need to come home. I can’t live like this!”

Esmeralda firmed up her dignified veneer. “When the Chairman announces Nathaniel’s new marriage agreement, you’ll be ruined. Completely ruined.”

Her father winced and made a calming gesture, as if that would somehow help the situation. “It’s not your fault, and it’s not even remotely fair, but your mother is right.”

Nadia felt like she was holding herself together with little bits of tape and maybe a staple or two. “I know I’m going to be ruined,” she said with as much calm as she could muster. “And I know it’s going to be awful. But I will literally go insane if I have to stay locked up in a retreat much longer.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” her mother scolded. “A retreat is hardly a prison, and—”

“Yes, it is a prison,” Nadia retorted. “At least for me it is. You know there isn’t a single other teenager at Tranquility? I think the person closest to my age there is some woman who’s about thirty and weighs about three thousand pounds. Her favorite activities are eating and sitting around staring into space, so we have a lot in common.”

“Stop it, Nadia!” her mother said, standing once more. “I’m sorry you’re not enjoying your time in the retreat, but there’s no place for you in polite society anymore.”

Nadia shivered and hugged herself. “I can live at home even if I don’t have a place in polite society. So I won’t go out to parties or have a social life. At least I’ll be free! I can … I don’t know, go shopping, or go to museums.” Spend time with Dante. “Keep myself busy.”

“And every time you set foot out of the house, the press will be there to capture it on film and dredge up the dirt all over again.”

“I don’t care!”

“Well, I do!” There were twin spots of color high on her mother’s cheeks, and for a moment Nadia thought her mother was going to slap her she was so angry. “It’s not all about you, so stop acting like a spoiled child. Your father and I are going to be put through hell. So will your sister and your niece and your nephew. And the more you show up in public, the more photos the press prints, the more active and fresh they can keep the story, the longer that hell is going to last. Maybe you’d rather go through all that than stay in a retreat, but think about the rest of us.”

Nadia was so angry she was shaking. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking about the rest of you, doing what you think is best. I never would have been in this position in the first place if I hadn’t. So don’t you dare make me into some kind of villain who’s too selfish to live.”

“Your mother isn’t the villain, either,” her father suddenly interjected.

Nadia turned to him, and there were tears burning in her eyes. “How could you?” Her father had always been the kind and nurturing parent, had always comforted her when her mother criticized, had always both told and shown her that he loved her. And yet he was going to allow her mother to lock her away.

Her father tried to give her a hug, but Nadia would have none of it. He lowered his arms, then wiped one hand over his whole face. “We’re trying to do what’s best. For everyone. Including you, whether you believe that or not. If I had it all to do over again, I never would have agreed to the match with Nathaniel in the first place. I knew it was a potential minefield, but I thought we’d be able to navigate it.”