As if he felt her gaze upon him, Nate turned his head and opened his eyes. Her face must have looked awful, because he sat up quickly and held his arms out to her. The idea of crying in the bathroom lost its appeal, and Nadia quickly crossed the distance between them and practically flung herself into his arms. She tried her best to muffle her sobs against his chest while he held her tightly and rocked her back and forth, an anchor in her storm of emotion.
She cried until her throat was raw and her head felt swollen to twice its normal size. Her eyes burned and her chest ached. Mingled with the devastating grief was a rage so enormous she didn’t know how she could ever manage to hold it in, and if Chairman Hayes were to appear before her, she knew she would happily kill him with her own two hands.
“I’m so sorry, Nadia,” Nate said into her hair, his own voice choked with sympathy. “There’s nothing I can do to make this right, but I swear to you, if it’s in my power, I will make my father pay for what he did.”
Nadia squeezed him tightly, grateful for his steadfast support. Cold logic told her that their impromptu teen resistance movement was just a pretty fantasy to hang their faltering hopes on, but she didn’t voice her doubt.
“Thank you.”
And although she figured she should wash her face and get back to bed, Nadia found she needed the warmth of Nate’s friendship too much to go anywhere just now. She’d bask in it just a little longer before she made another attempt to sleep …
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nate’s foot was going numb, but he didn’t have the heart to move and risk waking Nadia. She had fallen asleep on the heels of her violent burst of emotion. He considered picking her up and carrying her back to her bed, but figured that if she’d found rest in his arms, he ought to leave her there. He closed his own eyes and hoped he’d drift off, but there was little chance of that. The couch hadn’t been that comfortable to start with, and it was even less so now that he was semi-sitting up and had Nadia sleeping on him.
In truth, Nate didn’t think there’d been much chance of him sleeping anyway. He was mentally and physically exhausted, but not enough to make his mind shut up.
It was all well and good for the four of them to run to the Basement and hide out with Kurt somewhere. Certainly it would lower the chances that they’d be apprehended by Paxco security officers. But it was hardly what you’d call a permanent solution. After all, even in the Basement, you needed money, and they didn’t have any. And how were three Executive teens and a Paxco security spy going to survive in the Basement? All well and good to declare they would set themselves up as their own resistance movement, but the real resistance movement had money and connections and resources … It was hard to put up much of a fight without any of that.
If Paxco security didn’t track them down and arrest them all for treason, then the more predatory of the Basement-dwellers would probably pick them off one by one as they tried to adapt to a life they weren’t suited for. Hell, for all he knew, Dante’s resistance buddies would be after them, too, wanting to eliminate the potential danger they could represent if they were arrested. Unless they could somehow, impossibly, beat the combined forces of his father and Thea, the future was looking far from bright.
Nate sighed and shifted around a bit on the couch, drawing a sleepy protest from Nadia.
No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see a way out. His father had all the resources and power of Paxco at his fingertips; Nate and his friends had nothing. How could they possibly hope to do battle with, or even hide from, the Chairman of the richest, most powerful state in the world?
As the day crawled endlessly by, Nate kept chewing the problem over, his mind going in endless circles until eventually, the pull of sleep became too strong.
* * *
Nate awoke to the feel of a warm hand resting on the side of his face and an even warmer pair of lips brushing against his. He blinked his eyes open to find the living room cloaked in darkness. Kurt was squatting on his heels next to the couch, a fond smile on his face barely illuminated by the streetlight that shone right outside the closed blinds.
“Time to wake up,” Kurt whispered.
Nate had to blink a couple more times to orient himself. He was still reclined on Dante’s couch, with Nadia lying half on top of him and deeply asleep. He could hardly feel the left side of his body, and his back and neck were throbbing steadily to the beat of his heart. He stifled the urge to explain away Nadia’s presence. Kurt’s smile and affectionate greeting made it clear he wasn’t subject to inappropriate jealousy like Nate was.
“What time is it?” Nate asked, wondering if he could move without accidentally dumping Nadia to the floor.
“A little after six,” Kurt replied, no longer whispering. “You all sleep like the dead. I knocked, but no one answered. I had to let myself in.”
Nadia stirred against Nate’s chest, trying to roll away from him, still half-asleep. There was nowhere for her to roll to, so Nate tightened his arms around her to keep her from falling to the floor. She jerked fully awake, and they might both have ended up on the floor if Kurt hadn’t reached out to steady her. She sat up with a groan.
In the dim light, she barely looked like the Nadia Nate had known for most of his life. Her hair was tangled and stuck to the leftover tear tracks on her face, and her eyes were sunken. Sleep had given her some respite from grief, but he could almost see the realization that Gerri was gone creeping over her face. She swallowed hard and started brushing her hair away from her face, subtly scrubbing at the crust around her eyes.
“I’m so sorry about your sister,” Kurt said to her with genuine sympathy.
She nodded a thanks but seemed unable to muster any words.
“Guess I’ll go roust Dante out of bed,” Kurt said, standing up. “I’ll leave the Executive chick to you guys, ’cause she’d probably run screaming if I was the first thing she saw waking up.”
Probably so, Nate thought with a smile. Kurt’s hair was definitely growing back, but it looked like he was cultivating a Mohawk. He was wearing a silver mesh shirt that showed off his tattoos, along with pleather pants cut so low you could probably see his butt crack when he bent over. Add to that the three tons of metal in his ears and the facial piercings, and he looked like an Executive girl’s version of the bogeyman.
“I’ll get Agnes,” Nadia said, her voice gravelly and rough, though Nate wasn’t sure if that was from sleep or the remnants of her tears.
“Don’t turn on any lights,” Kurt warned. “This apartment has been dark for months. We don’t want any neighbors noticing it’s not empty anymore.”
Nadia nodded, and she and Kurt headed toward the bedrooms to deliver their wake-up calls while Nate stretched and winced and shook his extremities in an effort to restore feeling to them. He was so stiff he felt about ninety years old, and his leg muscles were embarrassingly sore after last night’s run. His joints popped and crackled, and in that moment when he wasn’t really thinking about anything except his own physical discomfort, he finally realized what he had to do to protect himself and Nadia and their friends from his father’s wrath and malice.
This morning, he’d come to the conclusion that they couldn’t defeat or hide from a man who had all the resources of Paxco at his fingertips. The only reason Nathaniel Hayes Sr. had all that power at his fingertips was because he was the Chairman. Therefore, to remove the threat to himself and to his friends, Nate had to make it so his father wasn’t Chairman anymore.
Nate stood stock still and pursued that line of thought as the others shuffled into the living room, all except Kurt looking decidedly worse for wear. Agnes was still wearing her ridiculous pink evening gown, only now the ruffles were all wrinkled, making it even uglier. She recoiled when she caught sight of Kurt, and though she quickly gained control of herself, she was still visibly tense and ready to bolt when Nadia introduced them.
“I have an idea,” Nate announced, his heart pounding as he anticipated stating his idea
out loud. Somehow, he didn’t think anyone was going to like it very much. He couldn’t say he was all that fond of it himself, come to think of it. But even a bad idea seemed better than no idea.
“Glad to hear it,” Kurt said, “’cause this lot won’t last a week in Debasement. I could hide one of you, maybe even two, though that would be a stretch. But four?” He shook his head. “Not happening, least not for more than a day or two.”
Nate reached up and rubbed his still-stiff neck. Kurt was actually being more diplomatic now than he had been this morning when Nate had called. He’d been eager to help Nate, willing to help Dante, and grudgingly willing to help Nadia. Agnes—a highborn Executive he’d never met—had been a real sticking point, but Nate wasn’t about to abandon her now. He still couldn’t say he liked her, but he didn’t dislike her anymore, and it was his fault she’d gotten sucked into all this.
“I know hiding us is going to be hard and that it’s just temporary,” Nate said. “Why don’t you all sit down and I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”
He was greeted by expressions of polite skepticism, which he might have found insulting if he weren’t so aware of his own shortcomings. He had spent many years painting himself as the feckless playboy who was well short of a rocket scientist on the intelligence scale. He doubted even Kurt and Nadia, who knew him best, expected him to come up with a viable plan.
And maybe they were right. Maybe his was the stupidest idea in the universe. If so, he was sure the others—especially Dante—would be happy to let him know.
Nate remained standing while the others all sat. Dante, unable to resist the urge to be a prick, sat beside Nadia on the couch and put a possessive arm around her shoulders. Nate was predictably irritated—and Agnes looked like she might faint in shock at the impropriety—but he kept his irritation to himself. He had more important things to concentrate on, like how he was going to present his idea without the others thinking he was a dangerous lunatic.
Nate rubbed his hands together, then abruptly stopped when he realized it was a nervous gesture. “So, um…” Brilliant start. Way to fill everyone with confidence. “As long as my father is the Chairman of Paxco, we’re all basically screwed.” That was a fact no one could argue with. “Nadia and I know something that he would kill to keep from getting out.” He looked at Nadia’s pale face and gentled his voice. “Actually, he has killed for it.” More than once, in fact, seeing as he’d had the original Nate killed for discovering the truth. “Last night, he tried to have Nadia murdered in her sleep, and I doubt it would have been long before I met with some kind of ‘accident’ myself.”
So far, he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know, and they all watched him with varying degrees of interest—except for Dante, whose expression said he was just humoring the useless aristocrat who liked to hear himself talk.
“Because my father can’t be sure we haven’t told all of you what we know, he’ll want to eliminate you, too.”
“Eliminate, as in kill?” Agnes asked. “I’m the daughter of a foreign Chairman; surely—”
“He has no compunction about charging teenage girls with treason,” Nate interrupted. “You’re in Paxco, not Synchrony, and my father is in control here, not yours. Hell, he might even charge your parents with something just to get them out of the way.”
Agnes was deathly pale and seemed on the verge of tears. He felt bad for her, he really did. This was not the kind of trouble she’d bargained for when she’d come with him last night. But it was too late to go back now.
“So, like I said, as long as my father is Chairman, we’re screwed. Which means if we don’t want to live the rest of our short lives in miserable hiding, looking over our shoulders and waiting for the ax to fall, we have to make it so he’s not the Chairman anymore.”
That went over about as well as Nate expected. Lots of wide eyes and gaping mouths, and Agnes even gasped in shock.
Dante looked like he was fighting off laughter. “Man, when you said we should start our own resistance, you really weren’t kidding!”
Kurt recovered the fastest, cocking his head and regarding Nate as if he’d never seen him before. “Are you suggesting we assassinate your father?”
“No,” Nate answered quickly. He still had a lot of complicated feelings to work out about his father, but no matter how much he hated the man, he couldn’t see himself stooping to cold-blooded murder. “I’m likely the only one who can get close to him, and I don’t have it in me to just walk up to him and shoot him.” Not to mention that if he murdered his father, Dorothy would have a legitimate reason to contest any attempt he made to seize the Chairmanship himself. He knew next to nothing about Dorothy, but he did know he didn’t want her being the next Chairman of Paxco.
“So what do you mean when you say you want to make it so he’s not Chairman anymore?” Nadia asked.
And here was where it was going to get really dicey. “My father wants to kill us because he wants to make sure his secret doesn’t get out. He’ll do just about anything to prevent that from happening. We don’t have concrete proof in the form of recordings anymore, but we do have two eyewitnesses.”
“Oh!” Nadia exclaimed as the virtual lightbulb went on over her head.
“If Nadia and I were to reveal what really happened on the day she was arrested, there would probably be people who wouldn’t believe us without proof. But there would be a lot who would believe us, and the Chairman knows that. He wouldn’t be so anxious to silence us if he weren’t worried that we could do him damage.”
“You know you’re going to have to tell us what the hell this big secret is, right?” Dante said.
“Let me finish first,” Nate said, locking eyes with Nadia. “My plan involves telling you what we know, but I’m not going to do it unless Nadia agrees.”
“Go on,” Nadia said. Her expression was perfectly neutral, giving him no clue as to what she thought.
“My idea is that we make our own recording. A video of me and Nadia talking about exactly what happened on that day and what we found out. We make five copies of it, and each of us hides our copy. Then I go and confront my father and tell him that if he doesn’t step down, we’ll release the video. With five copies out there, each individually hidden, it would be damn near impossible for him to find them all before at least one of them got out.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and Nate felt like he was dreaming, everything taking on a blurry feeling of unreality. Could any of this really be happening? Could he really be talking about taking over the Chairmanship? He’d been irresponsible and negligent as a Chairman Heir. How could he possibly handle become a freaking head of state? He was obviously nuts.
Kurt shook his head and looked at Nate with open shock. “What the fuck is this secret you think is big enough to make your father resign?”
“Language,” Nate reminded him automatically, then wanted to kick himself. Kurt wasn’t his valet anymore, and it was no longer important that he learn to act socially acceptable in the Executive world. If he wanted to curse, he had every right to, despite the way it made Agnes squirm. Nadia, at least, had been around Kurt long enough to be inured to his fouler moments.
Kurt arched an eyebrow at him and affected an upper-crust accent. “I beg your pardon, Miss Belinski, Miss Lake.”
“Oh, stuff it!” Nadia said while Agnes looked around as if in search of a place to hide. Nadia spared Kurt only a brief scowl before turning her attention back to Nate. “Your plan is to take over as Chairman of Paxco.”
It sounded so … ridiculous when said out loud like that. Nate had to resist the urge to duck his head and hunch his shoulders in embarrassment.
“Um, basically, yes,” he said, no doubt cementing everyone’s opinion of him as a firm and decisive leader. He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t be much worse than my father right now. Especially if Thea’s still got her hooks in him, which she obviously does. And if I’m Chairman, I can make sure Thea is shut down permanent
ly.”
The loss of income Paxco would suffer without the Replica program would no doubt make Nate the most hated Chairman in his state’s history, but it was the right thing to do. And surely their economy would recover eventually. Maybe it would even become more healthy, no longer relying so heavily on a single source of revenue.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Nate said. “But if you accept what I said about us not being safe as long as he’s Chairman, then I think the rest naturally follows.”
A long, meditative silence followed. Kurt and Dante and Agnes were all obviously bursting with curiosity, dying to know what secret was so massive the Chairman might step down rather than letting it get out. And though it was Nate who was proposing he take over as Chairman, it was Nadia everyone looked to for a decision.
She thought about it for a long time, her brow creased with concentration. Nate kept expecting her to poke a hole in his plan, to point out something obvious that he’d overlooked, or even just to tell him that the idea of him being Chairman before he’d had at least another decade of training under his belt was too ridiculous to contemplate.
“Do you really think he’ll step down?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know,” Nate replied, because it was the only answer he could give. His father was convinced that if the truth about Thea got out, it could spell doom for all of Paxco. Basement-dwellers would riot; dissidents would revolt; anyone who had a friend or relative die in prison would wonder if they’d been one of Thea’s subjects. And possibly worst of all, other states that coveted their territory—and that already had serious moral qualms about the Replica program—might decide this was a good excuse to stage the kind of hostile takeover that left thousands of bodies in its wake. “If he thinks we’ll really follow through on the threat, then maybe.”