Dante chose to ignore her teasing, looking her over from head to toe. “You look … different.”
“You mean because I’m wearing a uniform and they won’t even let me put on my own makeup here?” You could schedule a makeup application session at the spa, and many of the women did so every day, but the idea brought the stubborn out of her, and she decided to do without.
“I suppose,” he said, frowning.
Nadia wondered if what he was really reacting to was the stress and frustration that were eating away at her insides. She felt like someone had blindfolded her, shoved her into a minefield, and ordered her to walk. Every step could be her last, and she’d never see the danger coming. She shivered, hugging herself in a futile attempt to stay warm in the nippy air.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she said. “If nothing bad has happened, then why are you here?”
Dante reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a phone small enough that he could hide it in the palm of his hand if he wanted to. “Nate … Nathaniel … wanted you to have this.” He passed the phone through the bars, and Nadia grabbed it as if it were a life preserver and she was drowning.
“OhmyGod!” she cried. “Thank you!”
The sense of relief that surged through her was out of proportion. Thanks to Nate’s thoughtful gift, she was no longer wearing the blindfold, but the mines remained.
“What is going on with you two?” Dante asked, and he sounded exasperated. “I expected you to be back to your old selves now that Mosely’s gone, but you and Nathaniel both are acting like the world could end any moment.”
Nadia wished she could have heard the conversation between Dante and Nate. She suspected it had been colorful, and she was pleasantly surprised they were able to get along well enough to work together and smuggle her the phone. She was also pleasantly surprised that Dante didn’t seem to know the details of the trouble she was in. She hadn’t been sure Nate would be able to resist telling Bishop everything, and Bishop would have shared the information with the resistance, including Dante. Maybe Nate was finally learning discretion.
“I can’t tell you,” Nadia said regretfully.
“Because I’m a member of the resistance?” There was a spark of challenge in his eyes, and he lifted his chin ever so slightly.
That was certainly part of it, but she saw no reason to say so. “I can’t tell anyone. Not even my parents. Believe me, it’s better that way.” Maybe Dante would even agree, if he knew what she was hiding. He wanted to see Chairman Hayes out of power, and he was obviously willing to go to great lengths to help bring that to pass, but would he think it worth a potential civil war? Nadia didn’t know him well enough to answer that one way or the other.
“Better for who?” Dante asked sharply, still challenging her with his eyes. “Your people, or mine?”
He was deliberately goading her, she decided. Hoping she’d trip up and give him information in an effort to defend herself. “Better for everyone. And may I remind you that I stuck my neck out for Bishop more than once. I’m not the one who has trouble respecting people of different classes.” She shivered again, wishing she’d had the guts to go back to her room and grab a sweater.
To her surprise, Dante looked sheepish and backed down. “Sorry,” he mumbled, taking a moment to look down at his feet. “I didn’t mean to pick a fight.”
Yes, he had. But Nadia wasn’t going to call him on it.
“You look like you’re freezing,” he continued, looking up once more. “Here.” He slipped off the faux-leather jacket he was wearing and tried to hand it to her through the bars.
Nadia raised her hands in refusal. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, despite the serious appeal the idea held. “If one of us has to be cold, it should be the idiot who left her room without a sweater.”
“I’m not trying to make a class statement or anything,” Dante said, completely misinterpreting her refusal. “You’re shivering, and your lips are turning blue. Take the jacket.”
Now that he’d made it into a class issue by saying it wasn’t a class issue, there was no way Nadia could accept his jacket. She was not the pampered Executive who always looked out for her own comfort at the expense of others’. She never had been, no matter what Dante thought.
“I’m fine,” she said as she tried not to stare longingly at the jacket.
With a grunt of annoyance, Dante folded his jacket into as small a bundle as he could and hurled it over the top of the fence. It landed on the grass about five feet behind her.
“Just stop being difficult and put on the jacket already.”
Nadia thought of herself as having a pretty strong will, but it was hard to exercise that strong will when she wanted what he was offering so badly. She bit her lip in indecision. Dante crossed his arms and fixed her with a commanding stare. She didn’t like giving in to his high-handed tactics. However, there was no reason for both of them to be cold.
She picked up the jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Thanks to her playing hard-to-get, most of his body heat had dissipated from the inside, but it still felt deliciously warm. Best of all, it wasn’t spa-issued.
“Thank you,” she said, drinking in the warmth—and taking a moment to admire how Dante looked without the bulky jacket hiding his form. Even when she’d thought him an enemy spying on her for Dirk Mosely, she’d always been reluctantly aware of how nice he was to look at. He was unlike anyone Nadia knew, the complete opposite of the polished Executive teenager. His good looks had not sprung from a pampered life, an expert tailor, or a professional stylist. His skin was tanned, his nose freckled, his upper body solidly muscled, but with muscles that had been earned by hard work, not carved and cultivated in a gym. And yet the coarse appearance looked right on him, and Nadia suspected he’d lose a lot of his appeal if an Executive stylist tried to polish him.
Nadia realized she was staring and quickly looked away. She hoped Dante hadn’t noticed, but he was a spy. He didn’t miss much. Luckily, he didn’t have Nate’s ego, so he didn’t start preening—or tease her.
“They won’t let you wear your own clothes here?” Dante asked.
Nadia clutched his jacket more tightly over her shoulders. “No. The place is a living hell, where everyone smiles and tells you to relax and have fun.” She gave a dramatic shudder. “If I don’t get out of here soon, they’re going to have to lock me in the mental ward.”
Nadia had meant her words to be flippant, but the terror she was expressing was very real and must have shown in her voice. Dante reached through the bars and took one of her hands, giving it a warm squeeze.
A proper Executive would have jerked her hand away and reminded him of his place. Even here, in the middle of the night, with no one to see, she should have demanded he respect her status and not do something so familiar as holding her hand. But instead of doing what she should, she curled her fingers around his and hung on.
“I’m scared, Dante,” she admitted. “I’ve been here less than a week, and I’m miserable already, and I know they might never let me out.”
Dante squeezed her hand again. “They won’t keep you here forever,” he assured her, though he had no way of knowing that. “The media storm is already beginning to die down. They’re starting to sniff around someone else’s skirts, and you know how much they love to jump on whatever’s newest.”
Nadia felt sorry for whomever the press had descended upon now, but she was grateful nonetheless. If someone else would make a big enough splash, the press would forget about Nadia altogether and she’d be able to get out of this godforsaken place.
“Who are they picking on now?” she asked. She wasn’t as fond of gossip as other Executive girls her age, but she had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity, especially when she was so cut off from the news. And she couldn’t help hoping the media’s victim would be someone she despised, like the Terrible Trio of Jewel, Cherry, and Blair.
Dante grinned at her, his eyes glinting with mis
chief, and she figured he knew exactly what she was thinking. To her knowledge, he’d never met Cherry, but he’d had to wait on Jewel and Blair before, so he knew exactly how much they deserved to be knocked down a peg.
“No one you know, I’m afraid. There’s a delegation from Synchrony making a state visit this week. Chairman Belinski brought the whole family, including his daughter, Agnes. Either the press in Synchrony isn’t as aggressive as ours, or poor Agnes doesn’t get out much. Let’s just say her answers to some reporters’ questions haven’t been terribly articulate.”
Nadia cocked her head. It sounded to her like Dante felt genuine sympathy for Agnes Belinski. “Let me get this straight: you’re cutting an Executive girl some slack instead of chortling about her misfortunes?”
“I do not chortle,” he replied in tones of offended dignity, but he quickly lost any sign of humor. “Yes, I feel sorry for her, even though she’s an Executive. She doesn’t seem to have the … advantages the rest of you have.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s not as polished, or as self-assured.” He met her eyes, and his voice dropped lower. “And she’s not beautiful, either.”
The words traveled through her like an electric shock, raising goose bumps on her skin. For the first time, she realized that she was still holding Dante’s hand, and that his thumb was rubbing back and forth over her knuckles. Her breath froze in her lungs as she met his gaze. For a fraction of a second, she thought perhaps she was reading things into his words, misinterpreting the cues. But no. The look in his eyes told her quite plainly what he meant.
“You think I’m beautiful?” she asked in a breathless whisper.
One corner of his mouth tugged up in a small smile. “You know you are.”
Nadia shook her head. She couldn’t count how many times she’d been told she was beautiful or read a rhapsodic description of herself in the society columns, but those were just empty words, meant to flatter the daughter of a powerful Executive family. Nate had called her beautiful more than once, but it didn’t mean much coming from him, either, since he wasn’t that interested in female beauty. Hearing the words from Dante was something altogether different, and she didn’t know what to say. She did know she should let go of his hand and put a little distance between them, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do it.
Dante reached through the bars and took her other hand, and she let him. Her heart was beating double time, and she couldn’t seem to take in enough oxygen.
“When I heard you’d been arrested—” he started to say, then had to stop to clear his throat. “I’m sorry I had such a chip on my shoulder when we first met. It didn’t take me long to realize you weren’t like the rest of the Executive girls, but it wasn’t until you were arrested that I realized how much I’d come to … admire you. I told myself that if I ever saw you again, I’d let you know. So here I am. Letting you know.”
She couldn’t tell in the darkness, but Nadia suspected he was now blushing. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, and she worried that her silence was giving him the impression she was offended or uncomfortable. She was neither.
“Thank you,” she said, and it was her turn to squeeze his hands. “It means the world to me that you came all the way out here to see me, even if it was just to bring me the phone. I feel a lot less alone now than I did before I got your note.”
Dante smiled at her, but he let go of her hands. She tried not to let her disappointment show. It was certainly for the best. If someone were to catch her holding hands with a servant in the middle of the night, it would be just the kind of scandal that could land her in a retreat permanently.
“The phone is secure and untraceable,” he said, turning businesslike. “Nate has a secure phone, too, so he can call you if there’s trouble. You only want to use it in case of emergency, though. Don’t call him because you feel blue.”
She had no trouble reading between the lines, and she laughed a little. “I’ll assume your resistance leaders are listening to every word I say if I ever use the phone.”
This time, she was sure he was blushing, but he didn’t tell her she was wrong. “I’m sure you’ll be getting out soon, but just in case you need to see a friendly face, I’ll come hang out here at midnight every night. You don’t have to come meet me, but I’m here if you need me.”
Nadia’s eyes widened. “You don’t have to do that!”
“But I will anyway.”
Because his resistance bosses wanted him to? Or because he wanted to? Nadia didn’t have the guts to ask.
“You’ll waste almost three hours driving back and forth from Manhattan,” she protested. “And you still have a job to go to, don’t you?”
“I’m still acting as your father’s ‘assistant,’ if that’s what you’re asking. But he doesn’t trust me, so it’s not like he gives me anything important to do. I won’t collapse of exhaustion if I lose a little sleep each night.”
There were other protests Nadia could have tried. She could have pointed out that someone might notice him leaving his room in the servants’ quarters every night and wonder what he was up to. Or that every time he visited the retreat was another chance of getting caught. Obviously, he had to be borrowing someone’s car to get out here, because an Employee of his rank would have to scrimp and save for years to afford one. Which meant there was yet another chance of getting caught, one more person in the loop who might talk.
But the idea of having a lifeline waiting outside the fence for her every night, the idea of having someone to talk to, of having a familiar face who could keep her up-to-date on what was going on in the world, was too much to resist.
“Thank you,” she said for what felt like the millionth time.
Her eyes got misty when she finally had to leave and get back to her bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
On Wednesday morning, Nate received his first ever message on the secure phone Dante had acquired for him. It was a photograph of Nadia, holding a similar phone. Proof that Dante had held up his end of the bargain. Nate should have found the photo reassuring. Nadia was no longer so completely cut off from the outside world. But instead, the photo made Nate wish he could ride in there on a white horse and sweep her away.
The girl who would one day be the Chairman Spouse of Paxco stood behind bars, dressed in a shapeless tunic and pants that were obviously a uniform of some sort. Better than a prison jumpsuit, to be sure, but still strangely ominous to his eyes. She was smiling for the camera, but she wasn’t putting much effort into it. She knew how to paste on a smile for the public to see no matter what she was feeling inside, but for this photo, she wasn’t bothering. It made her seem even smaller and more vulnerable, but maybe that was just Nate’s guilty conscience dragging him down. If it weren’t for him and his stubborn insistence on carrying out a secret rebellion at a very public wedding reception, none of this would have happened.
Of course, if none of this had happened, Thea would still be operating on “expendable” victims in the basement of the Fortress, vivisecting them in an attempt to understand the connection between a person’s body and mind. The A.I. had learned how to re-create a human body and a brain with all its personality and stored memories—Nate was living proof of that—but that hadn’t satisfied her. Her ultimate goal was to re-create a human mind in a body of her choosing, so that she could make the Chairman—her protector and benefactor—quasi-immortal by re-creating his mind in a younger body whenever old age started to degrade his current one. In the grand scheme of things, destroying Thea had been for the greater good—certainly the helpless Basement-dwellers and prisoners Thea had used as test subjects would say so—but it remained to be seen how brutal and far-reaching the consequences would be, especially if the Chairman ever found the recordings.
Nate frowned at the photo when he noticed for the first time that the jacket draped over Nadia’s shoulders wasn’t part of her uniform. At first, the dark jacket had blended in with the
dark background of a nighttime shot, but when Nate stared at it more closely, he could clearly see it was much too large to be Nadia’s own, and its design was unmistakably masculine.
“Dante,” Nate muttered with a muffled curse, fighting the surge of territorial aggression that made him want to throw the phone across the room. He closed his eyes and mentally shook himself by the scruff of the neck. He had already established that he had no right to feel possessive toward Nadia. She would never be more than a friend to him, even when she was his wife. She had never liked Kurt, but it had never seemed to bother her that her husband-to-be was in love with someone else, and Nate wanted to be just as mature and accepting of her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to make himself feel the way he wanted to feel, and he didn’t like the idea of Dante taking a special interest in Nadia.
Shaking his head, Nate turned off the phone and tucked it into his pocket so he didn’t have to see the offending photo anymore. He was making something out of nothing, even if he had had the right to be jealous. So Dante had given Nadia his jacket. So what? He was just being a gentleman when Nadia was cold. Harmless and inoffensive.
And yet he had chosen to take the photo while Nadia was wearing the jacket. Nate couldn’t help suspecting it had been a deliberate attempt to get under his skin.
“And you’re letting him get away with it,” Nate admonished himself with another surge of annoyance.
It was time to stop thinking about what designs Dante might have on Nadia and start concentrating on getting through what was sure to be a tough day. Any day that included being in the same room with his father was a tough day, but today would be worse than most, because his father had demanded a meeting first thing in the morning. Nate suspected it had something to do with the ad for Replica technology he had shot the previous week. Obviously, the ad was now obsolete, but since the public didn’t know that, it was still airing on the net. Nate had been in rough shape when he’d shot it, and he’d done a terrible job—he cringed and hit the mute button whenever it came on—and he suspected his father wanted him to do a new and improved version. Kind of a waste of money, except Nate was beginning to think his public image needed some serious rehabbing. The fact that he was a Replica made people uneasy, and there was more than one crackpot on the net trying to convince everyone he was some kind of danger to society. Getting some positive images out there might help.