Alone, her mind drifted to Colin, and whether or not he’d found his brother. She hoped so, more for Colin’s sake than Hayden’s. He was a worrier, always trying to keep track of too many moving parts. His family. Work. Cherish. She thought of the look on his face when they’d left Bakerstown and blew out a heavy breath. There was nothing to be done about that, but maybe she could talk to Hayden. Convince him to clean up his act. Colin had called him out more than once, but if Hayden heard it from someone else he might listen. Normally she’d say it wasn’t her business, but it was different with Colin. The things that hurt him, they hurt her, too.
She made up her mind to do it the next time she saw him, and immediately felt something loosen in her chest. Imagining Colin’s grin, she smiled, and then quickly wiped the look off her face, feeling like an idiot.
* * *
A heavy hand fumbled over her chest and she bit back a scream. Like a shot she was up, scanning the darkness to see who’d had the stones to touch her. One of her knives was knocked to the floor with a clatter. When she dove for it, something hit her hard against the side of the head. Bright white stars burst in the darkness. A slimy hand clutched around her mouth. She bit down hard, drawing a muffled scream from her attacker.
She was thrown down on the thin mattress and it squeaked and groaned beneath her weight. Her mind was reeling. Fight, fight, fight. She kicked, opening her mouth to bite again, but a putrid sock gagged her as it was shoved inside. Her arms were pinned overhead, locked in place by a strong grasp.
She began to panic. Not this time. Not again.
Hands on her shins, her thighs. More than one pair. Two. Three. Pulling at her waistband, trying to get past her belt. She squeezed her knees together as the tears burned her eyes.
Fight.
People were getting up—she could hear them shifting on their nearby cots. But no one came to help. Two bodies laid across her to pin her down.
“Hold her,” one spat. She could smell the corn whiskey on his breath. Fury broke loose inside of her, burning down her limbs. She bucked back, knocking one of them against the wall. Again she was hit. Her eyes felt like they would pop out of her skull. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream. But she didn’t stop. She would not stop.
The clothes she wore twisted around her, but this was why she wore so much. They might get through one layer, but then they’d find a second, and a third. Finally, somehow, she twisted, and with a thud, landed on her back on the floor.
She spat out the gag, and a second later was out the door, running through the entryway, past the snoring patrons in the other rooms. Running. Running, and no one was ever going to catch her.
9
LENA
Lena sat at the table in her bedroom, surrounded by neat stacks of paper, staring at her wall monitor with tired, blinking eyes.
“Miss Hampton, it’s time for bed.” Darcy was perched beside her, on a stool Lena often used during her singing lessons. The fatigue was heavy in her tone.
How late was it? Midnight? No, Lena realized, several hours past.
“I had no idea how ill prepared I would be,” Lena said, straightening her back. She was still wearing the slim-cut evening gown that she’d performed in, but it was now wrinkled and losing its shape. Her satin-gloved fingertips pressed against her temples.
“You’ll do fine,” assured Darcy. “No one will expect you to know any of this.” She motioned to the electronic files on the screen displaying countless facts and figures that defined the rise of Hampton Industries, and the history of Lena’s family.
“I expect myself to know it,” said Lena. “And if people are going to do business with me, I’ll expect them to know that I know it.”
Darcy turned to face the dark window, her expression hidden by shadows. “Very well, then. What exactly have you learned?”
Lena looked at her a moment, the sudden wave of relief washing away some of the tension between her shoulder blades. Sometimes she forgot she wasn’t alone in this massive house, that Darcy was here beside her.
“The company was started by my great-grandfather before the war,” Lena began. “It was just a small arms shop then, with a firing range attached to the back of the building.” Shooting had once been a recreational activity, an activity for stress relief, or hunting practice, as the game still ran thick in the mountains surrounding the Tri-City area. But the droughts changed everything. Season after season passed with little or no rain, and the farmland in the center of the country dried up, forcing a mass migration into the already packed cities.
“The famine brought a surge of business as people began to quarrel,” Lena continued. “Hampton Ammunition, as it was then called, was able to expand. Neighbors wanted guns for protection from each other, and increased violence led to increased sales. The statistics from that time show that one out of every three people in the Tri-City had a weapon. Orders were being shipped from the northern border to the small farming communities south of the Yalan Mountains.”
“South?” said Darcy, a wry smile quirking her mouth. “But everything south of the Yalans belongs to the Eastern Federation.”
Lena changed wall screens to a map of the Silah Peninsula, finger trailing down the eastern coast to a series of bays on the southern tip. Darcy was testing her, but she was glad for it. “It was before the Federations were formed,” she told her tutor.
From their history lessons, she knew that the fishing industry had survived only a little while after the start of the famine. Overfishing and pollution from the congested coastal cities had turned people back inland to farm the last viable crop: corn. Scientists developed chemicals to increase the harvests and prolong the growing seasons, not knowing that they were actually creating the first strains of the deadly corn flu, a disease that would kill hundreds of thousands. People were starving, too desperate to think of the consequences. They fought over control of the fields and how to distribute the rations, forming alliances. Those in the East used their Hampton Industries weapons to defend the southern crops, defeating the Northern troops that retreated behind the protection of the Yalan Mountains. There, the Northern Federation became self-sufficient, withdrawing trade agreements with the East, who ended up with nothing but dry fishing ports and deadly fields of corn.
Her grandfather, Kolten Hampton, had taken over the company as soon as he turned eighteen, only a year older than she was now. He’d died when she was three—a hunting accident in the Yalans—and her memories were only what her father had told her of him, mostly that he was stern and hard-working. She’d found a picture of Kolten on the stone steps in front of Division I, surrounded by smiling workers and cutting a fat red ribbon with a comically large pair of scissors. Though he looked like he could have been Otto’s twin, Kolten’s drive was far greater.
“My grandfather made the company what it is today,” Lena said. “He branched out from the small munitions orders and purchased similar businesses, putting them all under the Hampton name.” After the Northern Federation was established, the companies in other nearby cities were closed, and moved to a more manageable, central location in the capital, later known as the factory district. “The various focuses were organized into divisions—everything from handheld weaponry to military-grade arsenals, including explosives—and now, thanks to my father, Hampton Industries is the exclusive provider for the Northern Federation’s military.”
And Otto was next in line to take control.
She slumped in her chair, as much as the dress would allow. The men in her family had worked too hard to have a spoiled playboy lose it all.
“That’s very good.” Darcy rose to stretch her back. When she leaned closer to the desk, her gaze landed on a small scrap of paper bearing an address. She squinted at it, but before she could ask, Lena tucked it beneath the stack of papers. Perhaps too tired to care, her tutor turned away and walked the length of the room.
It was a good start, but there was still so much Lena didn’t understand. She looked back down
at the statements, brows drawing together.
“I didn’t even know that we owned a medical division,” she said. “I mean, the Medical Division. It oversees the hospital, the medical school in the River District, the clinics in practically every town, even research facilities. Basically everything that involves a pill or a bandage in this entire Federation belongs to Hampton Industries, and I can’t even find any contract outlining the transfer of ownership.”
“Oh?” asked Darcy.
“The branch’s income is noted on every quarterly report for the last decade. It constitutes half of our earnings.”
“Once upon a time it was a lot more than half,” Darcy said.
Lena glanced up, surprised that Darcy knew this. “It was?”
“Once upon a time saving lives was more important than ending them.” Her tutor rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “I mean, there wasn’t so much need for the weapons divisions because we weren’t at war. I’m sure the contract is in there somewhere,” she finished quickly.
Lena returned to the screen, sliding through the documents with the sweep of her finger. Darcy was probably right; healthcare would take priority in times of peace. But this was wartime, and it was still earning a substantial chunk.
“I bet Otto lost the documents,” she muttered. “I’m sure the previous owners will be ecstatic to hear that we’ve been profiting off a company we don’t even hold the title to.”
“The owners died,” said Darcy, and Lena again met her gaze with curiosity. Her tutor sighed, looking away. “You were talking about the Medical Division, correct?”
Lena nodded.
“Yes, I believe the family that owned it all died of the corn flu. Ironic, isn’t it? The people dedicated to finding the cure succumb to the illness.” She blinked away a rare jaded expression. “Their heir disappeared. It was all the gossip at the time.”
“What if this heir still lives?” Lena asked, thinking of the earnings on the quarterly income statements she’d seen. How much would Hampton Industries owe them? The losses would be devastating.
“If such a person existed, they would have claimed their family’s fortune by now, don’t you think?”
Yes, Lena supposed so.
“Besides, your father had people looking into it, and when they didn’t find a lead, the company was absorbed. I believe the people across the river call it the food testing division now. Something like that.” Darcy stood, putting the stool back against the wall. “Better to leave the past in the past. You have more pressing things with which to concern yourself. Now, if you’re not going to go to bed, Miss Hampton, I’ll have to say goodnight.”
“That’s fine, Darcy,” said Lena absently. Her thoughts were still on the hit the company would take if they ever lost the Medical Division—the hit the entire Federation would take. Beyond the economic implications, it absorbed a huge amount of responsibility. Research facilities within that division had created the quality standards that deemed foods safe, hazardous, or consumed at one’s own risk. They were researching a cure to the most devastating epidemic the world had ever known: the corn flu.
It was not the sort of business one wanted to misplace the title paperwork to.
Her concentration was broken by footsteps on the stairs, and her father’s voice from the landing below. “Is this humorous to you? You don’t cancel important business meetings just so you can go gallivanting with pretty young women.”
The footsteps stopped. Both Darcy and Lena froze, listening as her brother answered.
“She was very pretty.”
He spoke too slowly. Drunk, Lena realized. Drunk and in trouble. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last.
The click of hard-soled shoes on wooden floors, and then a slam that made both Lena and her tutor jump. Near the door, her framed pictures rattled, and in his cage, her bird fluttered his yellow wings and jumped from one dowel to the next.
The next words were low, and too muffled to make out. A few moments later, she heard the quiet click of Otto’s bedroom door, and her father’s steps descending down the stairs.
“Well,” said Darcy. “I suppose it’s time for me to go to bed.”
Lena nodded. Whatever her father had done, her brother deserved, but that didn’t stop her stomach from twisting.
Locking the door behind Darcy, she turned off the wall screen and walked to her dresser. There, she removed her satin gloves and placed them neatly beside her hairbrush. With effort, she unzipped her dress, and slowly peeled out of it, wincing at the purple welt Otto had left on the right side of her rib cage. She touched it gingerly, biting down against the responding ache, and looking again to the door where a nearby picture frame still hung crooked from her father and brother’s argument on the stairs. The house was quiet now; Otto was probably already passed out.
The dress went in the hamper, and she hesitated, as she always did, before opening the tall mahogany bureau. She had to check to make sure the lock was still broken, that the metal bar would not emerge with the twist of a key. Only when she was satisfied at its defectiveness—the only imperfection she allowed in her life—did she open the double doors.
“Now, Mr. Bird, what shall I wear tomorrow, hm?”
* * *
An hour after dawn, Lena paced in the foyer, a storm cloud brewing over her head. She’d learned from the house staff that Otto had left only minutes earlier to breakfast with a Ms. Dwyer, the young daughter of one of the Hamptons’ investors. It was hardly a shock—expecting Otto to follow through on anything was like expecting a rabid dog not to bite—but it still surprised her after their father had chastised him for gallivanting only last night.
It was possible she’d misunderstood their fight, that the bang against the wall hadn’t been a manifestation of Josef’s anger. For hours she’d lain in her bed, staring at the ceiling, listening for any sign that Otto might be creeping across the hall to make her suffer for his own transgressions—he only ever pinched her or said nasty things when her father had first done something of the like to him. But the house had remained still. She hadn’t even heard him sneak out.
Unwilling to let him ruin her plans, she asked Aja, their driver, to transport her to Otto’s division in Metaltown so that she could await his arrival.
With Aja in the driver’s seat, Lena slid across the padded bench in the back of the electric carriage. She disliked car travel—the passenger compartment was much too small and the bumps gave her motion sickness, but the factory was several miles upriver, and it was too cold to have Aja pull her in a handcart.
“Are you ready, Miss Hampton?” came his low, polite voice from the front. He was a big man, with skin the color of red mud and hair as black and thick as hers. He barely fit in his singular driver’s seat, and was forced to drive with the window open to have someplace to stash his elbow. For this, he wore a long, heavy trench coat, and a thick wool scarf.
“Yes, Aja, thank you,” Lena answered. The engine wound to life, and they pulled out of her family’s circular cobblestone driveway. Away from the main house with its three sprawling stories and landscaped grounds. Past the coach house, where the help lived, and the driving range where her father took his associates to golf.
By the time they hit the main street, Lena’s heels were tapping hard enough to dent the floorboards.
She didn’t know why she was nervous. She was a Hampton, and no one crossed a Hampton. But her father had taught her at a young age that a hungry dog will bite the hand that feeds him, and these people, though grateful for their employ, were unpredictable. Lena didn’t do unpredictable well.
What she did do well was organize, and that was what she intended to do, starting today. First with Otto’s division, to show her father her capabilities, and then with the rest of Hampton Industries. She’d be the first woman to run the company. A legacy, like the line of men before her.
She’d dressed professionally, in fitted black pants that disappeared into knee-high boots, and a cream-colored
button-up blouse topped by a short, rib-hugging coat the color of cherries. Her black hair was tucked in a bun at the nape of her neck, and she’d worn leather gloves, to show the workers that she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.
In her breast pocket was a scrap of paper, and on it, an address she’d looked up from the payroll department. It was from an old file—a domestic worker who had taken care of her as a child. Lena hadn’t seen the woman since she’d left the Hamptons all those years ago, but she thought of her often. For more than a year, she’d held on to this address, convincing herself that it was probably no longer good. But now that she was heading across the beltway, there was no reason not to check it out. Once the work was done, anyway.
She was just going to shadow her brother for a little while. Nothing was going to go wrong. But in case something did, she’d tucked a defuser—an electroshock weapon meant to incapacitate an attacker without fatal damage—into the back of her waistband. She’d been trained to use one when she was five, and felt more than competent to defend herself should the need arise.
They passed through Bakerstown, where most of the Hamptons’ extra staff who didn’t stay on the grounds lived. It was a rundown place, but there were pockets of good shopping, including the markets where the cookstaff bought their groceries. Only a few electric cars, like hers, were on the street. Mostly people traveled by bike cart, or handcart, or walked among the homeless.
She shivered at the thought, glad for the firm feel of her defuser against her lower back.
A few miles farther and the way cleared of all traffic, car and pedestrian alike. The sky, which had been glowing with a hint of morning light, grew heavy with a sweet, suffocating kind of fog as they continued on a desolate beltway. Below were the train yards, and the chug and high-pitched whine of steel penetrated the car’s thin windows. They’d been driving less than an hour, but she had the distinct impression they’d traveled a world away.