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.