“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.
In the old days, there was a good chance he would have blown the meeting off and weathered the storm of his father’s temper later. Pissing off his father had been one of his favorite pastimes, after all. That was before he knew his father could murder him in cold blood without missing a beat. And before Nate realized how badly he was shirking his duties as the Chairman Heir.
Long habit had Nate arriving at the Paxco Headquarters Building—formerly known as the Empire State Building—about a half hour late, despite what had started out as reasonably good intentions. Nate had vowed to himself that he would start being a more responsible heir and spend more time at work, learning the ropes so that he’d have a clue what he was doing when he became Chairman. He hadn’t quite lived up to that vow yet, but he was still reeling from everything he had learned about his father’s secret activities and about his own murder.
Nate didn’t feel like prolonging the inevitable, so he didn’t even stop by his own office before heading up to the top floor. He fully expected to be kept waiting even though he was already late, and when his father’s secretary told him to go right in, a chill of unease traveled down his spine. Maybe his father had decided to dispense with the mind games, now that he and Nate had all their cards on the table.
Nate dismissed the possibility as soon as it crossed his mind. The day the Chairman stopped playing mind games would be the day he died. Letting Nate come in immediately when he was used to having to wait was just one more, designed to put him off balance from the start.
The Chairman was standing in front of his floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand while gazing out at the city majestically. The Empire State Building had once been the tallest building in the world, and though many other buildings had eclipsed it in size, the view from the top was still spectacular. Not that the Chairman was really admiring the view; he was just posing for effect.