Jenna Black: Resistance

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.

Natesupposed 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.

However, 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.