“Can you also tell him…” Nadia swallowed hard, past the sudden lump in her throat. “Tell him I had no choice. About the tracker, I mean.”
“I already told him that,” Dante said. “I know better than most what Mosely’s capable of.” He reached for her hand and gave it a firm squeeze.
That simple touch felt better than it had any right to. She barely knew him, and he obviously had an enormous chip on his shoulder about Executive girls, but right now it seemed as if he was the only person in her life who was being nice to her and wasn’t making demands.
“You told him, but he didn’t buy it,” she said. “If he weren’t so angry with me, he’d never have had you slip me the message. There was no point in it—except to let me know he knew about me. Not that I blame him.”
Dante squeezed her hand again, showing no sign that he was planning to let go anytime soon. “He’s never had to go head-to-head with Mosely, so he doesn’t understand.”
Nadia nodded. It shouldn’t matter to her if Bishop thought badly of her. They had never liked each other anyway. But his was another name on the list of people she’d disappointed over the last week, and the weight of it all was getting to her.
Still holding her hand, Dante moved his chair closer to hers until their knees were touching. He took her other hand and met her eyes. She was drowning in misery, but Dante’s hands were like a lifeline.
“Don’t blame yourself for any of this sh— er, mess. Mosely strong-arms people for a living, and he has the weight of all of Paxco behind him. It wouldn’t have done anyone any good if you’d called his bluff, because we both know whatever he threatened you with, it wasn’t a bluff. Your choices sucked, and you took the lesser of two evils.”
The warmth and earnestness of his expression was almost enough to make her cry. Why couldn’t
“It’s not really
Grateful as she was for Dante’s kindness, she had no desire to talk to him about Nate. “I just wish none of this had happened.”
He was still holding her hands, and one thumb brushed absently over her knuckles. She wasn’t sure if he even knew he’d done it, but the simple caress awakened a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.
Not that he had meant it as a caress, of course, she told herself. He was being nice to her because she was in distress and she needed the hint of kindness. It wasn’t anything personal. He’d already made it quite clear how he felt about Executive girls in general. And the butterflies didn’t mean anything except that she was feeling lonely and vulnerable after her fight with Nate.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the schoolroom, and Dante hastily let go of her hands and rose from his chair. One moment, he was warm and friendly and … comfortable. The next, he was stiff and upright, playing the ill-fitting role of the dutiful servant.
“Would you like another cup of tea before I clear the rest of the service?” he asked, standing at attention.
The footsteps continued past the doorway and faded into the distance, but Dante didn’t relax his posture. It was no doubt best for both of them if he kept up his act at all times anyway. Mosely wouldn’t appreciate him giving comfort to the enemy.
Already missing the precious few minutes of camaraderie they’d just shared, she rose to her feet.
“Thank you, Dante,” she said, taking pleasure in knowing she was addressing him by first name like an equal and no one else would know it, “but I don’t need any more tea right now.”
With a formal half bow, he turned away.
Inside Paxco Headquarters, life went on as if nothing had happened.
Nate, still badly shaken, reported to the private studio where the commercial was to be shot, and it was every bit as awful as he’d anticipated. The script made him want to gag, and he could only imagine what kind of sappy “inspirational” music they’d be playing in the background. He couldn’t remember his lines to save his life. The crew kept moving him into position like he was a doll—heedless of his bruises, of course, because they didn’t know about them. The lights were hot enough to make him sweat and bright enough to fuel his headache indefinitely. Usually, he was good in front of the camera, but this time he flat-out sucked.
The crew and the director eyed him warily, his ineptness no doubt making him seem very different from the Nate Hayes they thought they knew. He tried not to be snappish with them—the last thing he needed was more people thinking the Replication process created aggressive or even violent tendencies—but he knew he wasn’t exactly being easy to work with.
As soon as he escaped the shoot and holed up in his office, he couldn’t stop himself from looking for updated reports about the riot instead of wisely taking some aspirin and huddling in a dark corner until he felt better. As of five o’clock in the afternoon, there were no reported deaths, although one of the security officers had been severely trampled and was in critical condition. There was no definitive word on how many of the protesters had been injured or how badly, but a total of thirty-two people had been arrested and sent directly to Riker’s Island to await trial on a laundry list of charges that included treason.
The net had plenty of video coverage of the event, but what neither the videos nor the articles ever mentioned was exactly how the riot had started. The videos all showed the angry mob clashing with the security officers—failing to show the people who were desperately trying to flee the pepper spray—and the articles just said the protest “got out of hand.” Nowhere did Nate see it mentioned that the whole mess had started because someone had thrown a completely harmless
The knowledge that the protesters were going to be charged with treason, among other things, made Nate sick to his stomach. Despite the ugly things they’d been shouting at him, Nate couldn’t stand the thought of people serving life sentences or even being executed because of a riot they didn’t start, and he arranged a meeting with his father to give the Chairman a clear picture of what really happened.
The meeting was at five o’clock, but of course the Chairman made Nate wait while he finished a phone call that went a half hour long. Nate would have been pissed off, except he was so used to it that he couldn’t muster the energy to be pissed anymore. When he was a kid, Nate had sometimes sensed real paternal affection from his father. He even had a picture of himself as a small child, maybe four years old, riding on his laughing father’s shoulders. But the older he’d gotten, the less his father seemed to like him, and once he hit adolescence, they’d become more like embattled strangers than father and son.
Now that Nate was officially an adult and no longer dependent on his father, he found the best way to keep their relationship civil was to keep it on a strictly business level. His father agreed, which was why he played the make-the-subordinate-wait mind games.
It was just after 5:30 when Nate was finally admitted to the Chairman’s corner office. Even then, his father made him wait just a little longer, scanning over a document he probably wasn’t even reading as Nate helped himself to a tumbler of scotch from the bar.
“Want one?” he asked, holding up the bottle. It was as good a greeting as any.
The Chairman finally looked up from his document, setting it aside. “Please.”
Nate poured a second drink, then laid it on his father’s desk before lowering himself rather gingerly into the plush leather chair. He’d found he could almost forget about his injuries when he was either upright or seated; it was the transition between the two that smarted.
“I heard about your … ordeal this morning,” the Chairman said. “I should have had security disperse the crowd before you arrived. It didn’t occur to me that they’d get so out of hand.”
Nate took a sip of his scotch, forcing himself to slow down and think a moment before he made a surly response. Anything the Chairman had heard about the riot had no doubt been reported to him by security personnel, who had a vested interest in portraying the incident as a crowd turning into a rioting mob.
“Actually,” he said, with what he felt was admirable calm, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been looking at the news coverage. I saw that thirty-two people have been arrested and charged with treason.”
The Chairman’s eyes sharpened, and Nate figured his father sensed where he was going with this.
