Resistance

CHAPTER TWO

Nate awakened from a deep, exhausted sleep to a bedroom that was still dark. The first hints of feeble light peeked around the edges of his curtains, but Nate wasn’t an early riser under the best of circumstances, and after the day he’d had yesterday, he was sure he could sleep for a week. He groaned and let his eyes blink shut for a moment before his sleep-fogged mind remembered that something had woken him up. A change of pressure, and the soft squeak of mattress springs.

Nate was lying facedown on top of the covers, having fallen into bed last night without even bothering to get undressed. The aftermath of Nadia’s arrest and their subsequent standoff with his father was draining the life out of him, and he fantasized about banning all reporters from the planet. They’d been after him all his life, but they were positively hounding him now. His neck was stiff as hell from lying in one position too long, but he slowly and painfully cranked it around to the other side.

Without the light on, Nate could only see a shadowy form sitting on the bed beside him, but something deeper than his conscious mind knew exactly who it was, as impossible as it might be.

“Kurt?” he asked in a hoarse croak, blinking a few times to try to force his boyfriend’s features to come clear.

Kurt reached out and brushed away a lock of hair that was plastered to the side of Nate’s face, a gentle, familiar touch that immediately made Nate’s heart—and other parts of him—ache with longing.

“You look like shit,” Kurt said with a shake of his now-bald head. “Your new valet allowed you to go to bed with your clothes on?”

Nate let out a soft snort. The idea that a valet could “let” the Chairman Heir do anything was laughable, though he had to admit, if Kurt had still held the position, he would have undressed Nate by force, if necessary. He was the bossiest valet Nate had ever met. And he was irreplaceable.

“I didn’t hire a new valet,” Nate admitted. He sat up slowly, wincing from the lingering effects of the beating he’d taken a few days ago. A beating that Kurt had ordered, though he’d paradoxically done it in an attempt to protect Nate. “What are you doing here? And how did you get in? Please tell me nobody saw you.”

The deal Nadia had negotiated with the Chairman had included complete amnesty for Kurt, but Nate didn’t trust it. When Kurt had been accused of murdering the original Nate Hayes, Nate—who, though he was a Replica, had all the knowledge and memories and feelings of his original—had made it dangerously clear to his father how much Kurt meant to him. If the Chairman could find a way to hurt Nate through Kurt, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The old man was a vindictive son of a bitch, and he wouldn’t forgive Nate and Nadia for having won their battle of wills.

“How did I get in?” Kurt asked with an exasperated expression Nate could make out even in the darkness. “Do you really have to ask me that?”

Before he’d become Nate’s valet, Kurt had been a Basement-dweller. Basement-dwellers learned thievery, breaking and entering, and drug dealing when respectable citizens were learning reading and arithmetic. Breaking and entering when he already had a key to Nate’s apartment and knew exactly where guards and security cameras were located probably hadn’t been much of a challenge. Not to mention that the two of them had made a habit of sneaking in and out together for forbidden jaunts to the Basement.

“All right, skip that. Tell me why you’re here.”

Enough light from the rising sun filtered through the curtains that Nate could now see Kurt’s face more clearly, could see the little smile that curved his lips.

“Well, first of all, for this,” Kurt said, then put his hand behind Nate’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

Nate made a little sound of protest. His mouth had to taste disgusting right now, and he and Kurt had about a thousand unresolved issues between them. But Kurt didn’t seem to mind the taste of his mouth, nor did he seem to care much about the issues. With anyone but Kurt, Nate was too much of a take-charge kind of guy to give in on even the most trivial matter, at least not without a fight. But giving in to Kurt had always been frighteningly easy, and he did so now, abandoning his commonsense objections and losing himself in the moment. Kurt was the best kisser Nate had ever known, though there were other things he was equally good at.

The kiss ended way too soon, and the possibility of progressing to “other things” faded away. Kurt kept his hand on Nate’s neck, kneading the tight muscles there as he stayed intimately close.

“You gotta know that you came first,” Kurt said, looking intensely into Nate’s eyes. “I was already with you when the resistance asked me to take advantage of it.”

So much for ignoring the issues that lay between them. Nate’s chest hurt, and he dropped Kurt’s gaze, hardly able to swallow the truth that he had learned: Kurt—his valet, his friend, and his lover—had spied on him for some shadowy resistance movement Nate hadn’t even known existed.

“How can you expect me to believe that?” Nate asked, his hands clenching into fists in his lap. “You’ve obviously lied before.”

“You think I could have guessed where things would lead when I hooked up with you at Angel’s? I thought you were just some uptight Exec kid looking for a good time. No way I expected us to hit it off and that you’d actually hire me.”

Nate was glad for the semidarkness, which might help hide the redness of his cheeks. Theirs had not been what you’d call a storybook romance, and he wasn’t exactly proud of how it had begun. There was a time not that long ago when he’d treated the Basement—or Debasement, as its residents called it—as his own personal playground, taking advantage of the unfortunates who lived and worked there without really thinking about what their lives must be like. He’d never been cruel or unfair to any of them—at least, not that he knew of—but his well-meaning ignorance was a source of shame anyway. How could Kurt possibly have loved the privileged, self-centered bastard he had been before the rude awakening of his death?

“So you weren’t a member of the resistance when we met?”

Kurt looked away briefly before answering, and Nate braced himself for a lie. But Kurt was a master of not doing what was expected.

“I was,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t active. What’s a teenage whore going to do to help bring down a government?”

Nate flinched. “Don’t call yourself that!” He had no illusions as to what Kurt’s former profession had been, had known it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on him prowling the club, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“What? A teenager?” Kurt grinned at him. “I suppose I could be as much as twenty, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like eighteen.”

Just another indication of how different life in the Basement was from the life Nate had always known. He couldn’t imagine not knowing how old he was. “You know what I mean,” Nate said with a tired sigh.

Kurt patted his thigh. “Yeah. But I’m not ashamed of it, like you are.”

“Kurt—”

Kurt silenced him with a brief kiss. “It’s all right, Nate. I get it. Really, I do. But I stopped being a whore the day you hired me. And I came to your bed because I wanted to, not because it was part of a job. I love you, you idiot.”

Even in the midst of his turmoil, Nate couldn’t help laughing. “You’re such a charmer.”

“You want charm, marry Nadia. Oh, wait. You will. My bad.”

His words drained every drop of humor from Nate’s body. The fact that Kurt might have been using him all along had certainly bothered Nate, but it was a sin he was prepared to forgive, knowing that however things might have started, Kurt’s affection for him in the end had to be at least somewhat genuine. Other things he had done were far harder to forgive.

“Dante put a tracker on Nadia, and you knew,” Nate said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You set her up so your resistance buddies could kill her.” He wanted Kurt to deny having known, wanted it all to have been Dante’s idea, but he knew in his heart that wasn’t the case.

Kurt reached for him, and Nate slapped his hand away. He might never be able to love Nadia the way she deserved, but she’d been his friend long before Kurt had come into his life, and the idea that Kurt had been willing to sacrifice her like that …

Kurt didn’t even have the grace to look particularly guilty. “From what I understand, having that tracker on her probably saved her life.”

“That doesn’t make it right! But then, you knew that, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back.”

Kurt’s gray eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a sharp edge. “Uh-huh, couldn’t possibly be ’cause you would have pitched a fit if you knew. You’d never do a thing like that, right?”

Kurt’s words hurt more than the fading bruises. Both Kurt and Nadia had kept secrets from him. Big ones. And both for the same reason: they didn’t trust him. They thought of him as some impulsive, out-of-control child who’d fly off the handle and act without thinking. And the worst part about it, the part that hurt most, was that they’d been right.

“We couldn’t let her be interrogated,” Kurt said a little more gently. “She knew enough to bring down the entire resistance if she talked, and Mosely has … had … a way of making people talk. Besides, we thought that if she got caught, she was going to die anyway. We all thought that, even you.”

Nate closed his eyes, as if that could block out the memory. He had tried everything he could think of to stop Nadia from putting herself in danger. Respecting her decision had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and when he’d gotten the frantic call from Dante, telling him she’d been arrested …

“You could at least have told her about the tracker.” He opened his eyes to glare at Kurt.

Kurt shrugged. “Who knew how she would react under pressure? I thought knowing about the tracker might freak her out, so I told Dante to keep his mouth shut.”

Kurt had no idea what Nadia was really made of. If he’d seen her standing up to the Chairman and to Mosely under threat of death and torture …

“You don’t know her at all,” Nate said, shaking his head at Kurt. Not that he was surprised. Kurt and Nadia had never liked one another. Kurt saw Nadia as a stuck-up aristocrat, and Nadia saw Kurt as a bad influence. But Nadia had the insight to see past her dislike, which apparently Kurt didn’t. “She never once doubted you. Even after you had your friends beat the crap out of me and tell me you killed me, she was convinced you did it for a good reason.” Kurt had been trying to chase Nate away for his own good, but Nate wasn’t sure he could ever shake the memory of Angel jerking the locket off him and telling him Kurt never wanted to see him again.

“I’m not going to apologize for not trusting her,” Kurt said stubbornly. “If that makes her a better person than me, then I’m okay with that.”

Nate reminded himself that growing up in the Basement must have made it near impossible for Kurt to trust anyone. Despite his hard, sharp edges, Kurt was a good guy at heart, and that was an impressive accomplishment, considering his background.

“Her family sent her away to a retreat because of all the things she did to try to help you.” Just thinking about it made Nate’s blood pressure rise. How could her own family do that to her? She’d said in her phone message that it would only be for a week or two, but he’d heard the doubt in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s a real hardship.”

Nate struggled against his urge to snap back. He was hardly surprised at Kurt’s lack of sympathy. When your own life had included not knowing where your next meal was coming from and selling your body to make ends meet, being trapped in a luxurious spa where you were waited on hand and foot didn’t sound so bad. Even so, Nate bet Kurt wouldn’t like being imprisoned there much more than Nadia would, at least once the novelty wore off.

“So are you gonna stay pissed at me?” Kurt said. “Or are we gonna kiss and make up?”

“Can’t I do both?”

Kurt laughed softly. “Are you too pissed to want this back?” He reached into a pocket inside the ratty jacket he wore and pulled out the locket.

Nate’s heart squeezed in his chest. Angel had broken the chain when she’d yanked it off him, but Kurt had either repaired the damage or gotten a new one. Nate had worn that locket against his skin every day since Kurt had given it to him, and he’d missed its comforting weight since it had been taken from him. He held out his hand, and Kurt laid the locket in his palm.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Kurt said, curling Nate’s fingers around the locket.

“And I’m sorry I took you for granted,” Nate responded, his throat almost too tight to let the words out.

They sat like that for a long moment, their eyes locked, their hands clasped around the locket. Nate yearned to kiss Kurt and drag him down onto the bed, but too many things still lay between them.

Nate slipped the locket on over his head, pressing the skin-warmed gold against his chest. Then he straightened up and met Kurt’s eyes again, this time in a challenging stare.

“All right. Mushy time is over. Now tell me why you’re really here.”

Kurt rubbed a hand over his bald head. He’d shaved off his hair when he’d gone into hiding, and he looked older and more sinister without it. Nate hoped he’d let it grow back.

“I’m gonna guess that the news feeds have it all wrong about what happened,” Kurt said. “Except for the part about Mosely being a murderer, that is. Thought you might be able to clear some things up.”

“You thought that? Or your resistance buddies did?”

“Does it matter?”

Actually, it did. Nate was all for opposing Paxco’s oppressive governmental practices, as long as that opposition was nonviolent. The problem was that Nate didn’t know much about the resistance movement and what they were up to. He had high hopes that when he eventually became the Chairman, he’d be able to make Paxco into a better, more just state, but that would be a lot harder to achieve if the resistance staged some kind of coup in the meantime.

“Probably not,” Nate said with what he hoped was a careless shrug. “I can’t tell you much anyway. Nadia and I … actually, mostly Nadia … negotiated a deal with my father. In return for us keeping our mouths shut, he granted you full amnesty.”

“He granted me amnesty for something he knows perfectly well I didn’t do?” Kurt shook his head, and Nate couldn’t blame him. “Your father is a tool, and a crooked one at that.”

Kurt didn’t know the half of it. “It’s not legal amnesty,” Nate clarified. “Legally, you were cleared of all charges. I mean he’s promised not to come after you off the books.”

Kurt frowned. “Why would he do that, anyway? I didn’t do anything to him.”

“He’d do it because I pissed him off and he knows how much it would hurt me if something happened to you.”

Kurt pondered that a moment without comment. “Okay. So I’m free to show my face in public again.”

“Yes.”

“Do I still have a job?”

Nate ached to say yes. He missed having Kurt so close, missed the opportunities for stolen kisses and shared secrets. But no matter what his father had promised, Nate’s gut told him Kurt would present too tempting a target.

“I’m sorry,” Nate said, “but no. I don’t trust my father, and it’s not safe for you here.”

A muscle ticked in Kurt’s jaw, and there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. “You mean you don’t want me here now that you know the truth about me. At least have the balls to say it.”

Nate jerked back in surprise. Kurt’s involvement with the resistance had nothing to do with it. Nate was near the top of the Executive establishment the resistance wished to topple, but he refused to think of Kurt as any kind of enemy. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he disagreed with Kurt’s cause, though he suspected he was in a better position to effect eventual change than the resistance ever would be.

“That’s not why you can’t stay here,” Nate said, his voice rising only because Kurt’s had. “My father knows about us.” Kurt’s eyes widened with shock. “Knows, and doesn’t care as long as we’re discreet. But he also knows how much you mean to me. He can’t afford to do anything to me.” Not when he hadn’t had the foresight to follow the old British adage of producing an heir and a “spare.” “But I can’t tell you how ugly it got between us. He never really loved me, but now he hates me.” And it was a damn good thing Nadia had forced the Chairman to destroy Thea. Otherwise, he’d have killed Nate again and animated a new Replica, one who knew none of his secrets and would continue his career as a spoiled playboy without ever getting in the way. “Having you close to me is too risky.”

Kurt’s face said he wasn’t entirely convinced by Nate’s argument, but he let the issue drop. “So what exactly did happen when Nadia was arrested? How did you and Nadia get the Chairman to agree to anything?”

“I told you: we agreed not to talk.”

“That’s bullshit. If you and Nadia throwing around wild murder accusations had a chance in hell of making him back down, you’d have been singing to the skies an hour after I told you what happened on the night of your murder.”

Nate shuddered, his mind still having trouble dealing with the reality that his father had been present and had ordered Mosely to kill him. It was one thing to believe your father hated you, another to know it.

“I said we agreed not to talk. I didn’t say what we agreed not to talk about, and it’s not the murder.” His long habit of trusting Kurt made Nate want to blurt out the whole truth, but this particular truth was like an infectious disease. Nate didn’t like the idea that he was helping his father cover up his crimes, but there was enough unrest in Paxco already. He wanted his father out of power, but not at the cost of starting a civil war.

“Well, what then?” Kurt prompted.

“I’m sticking to the agreement and not talking.” Nate’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. At least I’m not lying about it, he tried telling himself, but that didn’t make the secret sit any better.

Kurt stared at him with a combination of anger and suspicion in his eyes. “And that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a member of the resistance.”

Nate wanted to blurt out a quick denial, but Kurt deserved more honesty than that, so he sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I’d tell you if I knew for sure it wouldn’t go any further. I’d sure as hell think about it long and hard before I decided. I wish I didn’t know.”

He thought Kurt would get angry over his refusal to talk, but Kurt surprised him by patting his thigh.

“I’ll leave it alone,” he promised. “For now, at least. I can’t throw stones about keeping secrets. And I need to get out of here before people start waking up, anyway. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the job.”

Nate shook his head, sure he was making the right decision about that, at least. “You’ve already gone through hell because of me. I won’t let that happen again.” He wished he were more certain that was a promise he could keep. “Where will you go?”

Kurt shrugged. “Back to Debasement, I guess. Where else?”

It was the obvious answer, but it was one Nate refused to accept. “You are not going back to the Basement.” The Basement might be Kurt’s natural habitat, and he’d managed to take care of himself there for years before Nate had met him, but there was no such thing as safety there. “I might not be able to give you a job, but I can give you money.”

Nate was prepared for Kurt to put up the obligatory argument—no Executive or Employee would accept charity without protest. Apparently, Basement-dwellers had no such social convention.

“Money would be good,” Kurt said easily. “Dollars would be best, if you’re trying to keep your father from finding out. Scrip can be traced to you.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Nate said drily, rolling stiffly out of bed. “Someone stole all of my dollars not so long ago.”

Kurt laughed. “I’d tell you I’d pay you back, but, you know…”

Nate wasn’t awake enough to think of a good comeback, so instead he trudged out of the room to collect the few dollars he had left to give to Kurt.

“How can I contact you?” he asked when he returned and handed the money over.

Kurt stuffed the bills into his pocket. “If you want to keep me off Daddy’s radar, you don’t. It’s too easy for a guy like him to tap phones.”

Nate fought a spike of panic, hating the thought that he wouldn’t know where Kurt was and wouldn’t be able to contact him. “But I will see you again, won’t I?” He sounded needy and pathetic, but he couldn’t help it.

Kurt gave him a crooked smile and stroked the side of his face. “’Course you will. And I’ll see if I can get you a black market phone your dad won’t be able to tap.”

Grateful beyond words, Nate hugged him tight.

Nate supposed there were people he was less eager to sit down and have a private chat with than Robert Dante, but off the top of his head, he couldn’t think of one. Dante was a resistance spy who had infiltrated the Paxco security department. He’d then been sent by Mosely to spy on Nadia, pretending to be her father’s personal assistant/general servant, so he was a spy times two. As if that weren’t bad enough, the asshole was way too familiar with Nadia, and had planted the tracker on her, marking her for death. Somehow, it was a lot easier to forgive Kurt for that than it was to forgive Dante.

However, much as he hated to admit it, Nate needed Dante, or at least his contacts, right now. The tricky part was arranging a meeting without an audience. After Kurt’s comment about bugged phones, Nate knew better than to call. But if he showed up at the Lake Towers asking to speak to Dante, he would draw way too much attention to both of them—there was absolutely no legitimate reason why the Chairman Heir would need to talk to a servant in the Lake family’s household—so he had to get creative.

Which was how he found himself in the foyer of the Lakes’ apartment, making a scene that was drawing the attention of every person in the household.

“Nadia doesn’t deserve this!” he bellowed in Esmeralda’s face, sure his own face was flushed red with anger. He’d been pissed off at Nadia’s mother from the moment he’d received Nadia’s message yesterday. An Executive who gave a crap about etiquette would never have stormed in here like this, but as Chairman Heir, he could get away with it.

Esmeralda’s face had gone pale the moment he’d started yelling at her, but he wasn’t sure whether it was from distress or fury. He’d always been polite to her in the past, and she was always painfully proper. She appeared to be at a loss for how to handle his outburst.

“Bring her home, Esmeralda!” he demanded at the same ear-splitting volume, watching out of the corner of his eye as the peanut gallery of servants continued to grow in size. If he were anyone else, she probably would have had him tossed out by now, but she didn’t dare antagonize the Chairman Heir.

“The press—” she started weakly.

“I don’t give a damn about the press!”

Finally, Nate caught a glimpse of Dante joining the crowd of observers. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to draw Dante closer, but it turned out he didn’t have to, because Dante waded right in, his fierce scowl saying he was more than happy to volunteer to throw Nate out. He was supposedly just a household servant, not a bodyguard, but he was imposing as hell.

“May I be of any assistance, Mrs. Lake?” he asked, still glaring at Nate while he parked himself between the two as if to shield Esmeralda with his body.

Nice of the arrogant prick to present Nate with just the opening he needed. “This is none of your business,” Nate snapped at him while carefully palming the little slip of paper he’d tucked into his pants pocket. The paper that told Dante to meet him in the garage of Nate’s building at 1:00 A.M.

“Perhaps you’d like to take a moment to compose yourself, Mr. Hayes,” Dante said, before a sputtering Esmeralda could get a word in.

It was the first time in Nate’s memory Dante had ever addressed him properly, and it almost startled Nate into losing his head of steam. The asshole usually liked to call him by first name just to get under Nate’s skin. He recovered quickly.

“I don’t take orders from servants,” Nate said with a sneer. “Mind your manners or I’ll have you fired.”

There was a spark of anger in Dante’s eyes. He didn’t know Nate well enough to realize how out of character the threat was. Nate had never been half as class-conscious as someone of his rank was expected to be, but now was not the time to clarify.

“It’s all right, Dante,” Esmeralda said. She was holding on to her composure by a thread, and a hint of unease had found its way into her voice. She was far too politically savvy to risk offending the Chairman Heir, but Nate knew it cost her to keep from telling him off. “I’m sure I’m not in need of protection.”

Dante didn’t respond, staying stubbornly between Esmeralda and Nate, doing a fine impression of an intimidating bruiser. Mentally crossing his fingers, Nate reached out and grabbed Dante’s collar, yanking him forward until he could growl in his face.

“You are being insubordinate,” he said as he shoved the little piece of paper under Dante’s collar. The servant’s livery had no convenient pockets Nate could slip the note into, but he hoped the neatly tucked-in shirt would keep the note in place until Dante had a chance to retrieve it.

They were practically nose to nose, so Nate could see by the slight widening of his eyes that Dante had felt the brush of the paper against his skin. Nate could only hope no one else had noticed.

Nate gave Dante a shove away from him. It didn’t exactly break his heart to give Dante a hard time—it had been Dante who had once inspired Nate to throw the first punch of his adult life—and the shove was just barely short of hard enough to knock Dante down. Face red with anger, jaws clenched, Dante fussed with his starched collar, trying to make it lie flat after Nate had rumpled it.

“That will be all, Dante,” Esmeralda said sharply.

Still plucking at his wrinkled shirt, Dante made a short bow and left with what Nate thought was exaggerated dignity.

Nate leaned against the hood of his car—the car he almost never got to drive, because the Chairman Heir was supposed to travel by limo and leave such plebeian pursuits as driving to the lower classes—trying not to check his watch every thirty seconds. He’d been quite clear in his terse note to Dante, and he was sure Dante had felt it slipping under his collar. Of course, just because the bastard got the message didn’t mean he would show up. He probably felt like Nate was ordering him around, demanding a meeting when he could have politely asked. Too bad Nate hadn’t thought of that before writing his little summons.

At 1:35, just as Nate was deciding it was time to give up, the door to the stairwell finally opened and Dante stepped out. Nate was used to seeing him in servant’s livery; the only time he’d seen him in anything else was when they’d rendezvoused with Kurt in the Basement, at which time Dante had been disguised as a Basement-dweller. Tonight, he was wearing battered blue jeans and a faded shirt, and for the first time he actually looked comfortable in his clothes. His muscular build had always looked odd for a house servant, and when he’d dressed for the Basement, he’d looked very much like a man in disguise. Nate had no idea what Dante’s background was, but the choice of clothes suggested that he was from a lower-class Employee family. He might have built up all those fancy muscles of his doing manual labor.

“You’re lucky I’m still here,” Nate said, though being antagonistic when he was about to ask for help probably wasn’t wise. He should have known Dante would be unruffled.

“And you’re lucky I’m here at all. That was quite a scene you caused. Thanks for almost costing me my job.”

No, Nate and Dante were never going to be the best of friends. Nate wasn’t about to apologize, not when he’d put time and consideration into how to get a message to Dante without costing him either one of his jobs.

“Maybe if I were a professional spy like you, I’d have been able to find another way to get you a message,” he said. “I figured you might not like it if I called you on the phone or showed up at the Lake Towers and asked to speak to you.”

“Very thoughtful of you. Now what is so urgent that you had to make a total ass of yourself to set up a meeting?”

How did Dante manage to pass as a servant in an Executive household when he had such an enormous chip on his shoulder? It had to take some serious acting skills to act subservient to a family of top Executives when he held Executives in such contempt. Nate wondered if he was being overly optimistic in hoping that Dante would be interested in helping Nadia. After all, she was a top Executive. Maybe he should be hoping to get help from Kurt instead. But he didn’t know how to contact Kurt, and he couldn’t afford to wait until Kurt contacted him again. If he wanted to help Nadia, Dante was his best chance.

“Nadia’s in danger,” Nate said, watching Dante’s face carefully for a reaction, which, naturally, Dante didn’t give him.

“Mosely’s dead. She’s been cleared of all charges. And as far as I know, she’s no threat to the resistance. So what’s the problem?”

Nate swallowed hard at the reminder that the resistance had been willing to kill Nadia to keep her from blowing Dante’s cover. These were dangerous people, and they weren’t exactly concerned with Nadia’s best interests. Dante seemed to like Nadia, but liking someone and being willing to stick your neck out to help them were two different things.

“I can’t tell you,” Nate said, because if he wasn’t going to trust Kurt with the full truth, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to trust Dante. “You’re just going to have to take my word for it. She’s in danger, and that bitch mother of hers has her locked up in a retreat where she’s cut off from the outside world and completely helpless.”

Dante blinked a couple of times and shook his head. “You want me to take your word for it? You’re not actually under the impression that I trust you, are you? Teaming up against a mutual enemy doesn’t make us friends.”

Nate laughed tightly. “When did I give you the impression I thought we were friends? If I weren’t worried you’d finger—” Nate stopped himself from using Kurt’s first name just in time. Even someone as casual as he was didn’t refer to servants by first name, and doing so would betray an inappropriate level of intimacy. Nate covered his almost-slip with a cough before continuing. “—Bishop during questioning, I’d have turned you in by now.”

It wasn’t actually true. Nate didn’t like Dante and didn’t trust his resistance, but there was no way in hell he would turn anyone he knew over for treason. Dirk Mosely might be dead, but Nate had no doubt that whomever the Chairman hired to replace him would be just as brutal and just as morally bankrupt. If Dante were arrested for treason, he’d be tortured until he gave up every resistance contact he knew, and then he’d be executed. Nate had enough black marks on his conscience already without adding one more.

“This is how you’re planning to persuade me to help you?” Dante asked. “Your technique could use some work. But I suppose you’re used to ordering people to help you and this whole asking thing is a new experience.”

The remark bit a little deeper than Nate would have liked. “You’re right,” Nate said, and he could see that his words startled Dante. “I suck at asking for help. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, and none of that matters. Nadia’s in trouble, and we both played a part in getting her there. I’m going to do everything in my power to help her, and I’m hoping you have enough of a conscience to want to help, too. If that’s too much to ask for, then just say so and get out of my face.”

Dante scowled and looked like he was seriously considering turning around and heading for the exit. Nate wondered if he should have been a little less honest and a little more … conciliatory. But it was too late to change his tone now, so he merely held his breath and waited.

Dante let out a frustrated grunt and shook his head. “What is it you want me to do, exactly?”

Nate allowed himself to breathe again. “I was hoping you have or could get a contact inside the Tranquility Retreat. Someone who could get a phone to Nadia. I need a way to contact her, a way to warn her if … something goes wrong.”

Dante stared at him as if he was trying to read all of Nate’s secrets in his face. Nate kept his expression as bland as he could and made no effort to avoid eye contact. Sure, he was hiding things, but he had a good reason, and he didn’t feel guilty or apologetic about it. Ten to one Dante was hiding secrets of his own.

“I’m pretty sure I can get a phone to her,” Dante said after a long, silent standoff. “But you need to tell me what’s going on. What really happened when Nadia was arrested? How did she end up free and Mosely end up dead?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

Nate had hurt his own hand far more than he’d hurt Dante’s face when he’d punched him, but the memory did nothing to quell his desire to do it again. “You’d abandon Nadia to the wolves because there’s nothing in it for you? You’ll make a great spokesman for freedom and democracy, or whatever it is your resistance is hoping for.”

“I don’t personally know anyone at Tranquility,” Dante said patiently. “I’m sure the resistance leadership has someone there, what with all those Executives feeling relaxed and talkative out of the public eye, but they’re not going to help Nadia out of the goodness of their hearts. And believe me, they’re already far from happy about me having revealed our existence to the two of you. They won’t be looking to do you any favors. Unless doing you favors turns out to be beneficial to them. Like, for instance, if you give me some good inside information in return.”

Nate hated to admit it, but it made sense. Still, there was no way he was telling Dante and the rest of the resistance what he and Nadia had learned. It sure as hell wasn’t because he was protecting his father, but if news about Thea and the Basement experimentation program got out, there would be rioting at the very least, and very possibly a civil war. The government of Paxco needed an overhaul, big time, but that wasn’t the way to go about it. Still, there were plenty of things Nate knew that the resistance didn’t. There was a reason they’d planted a spy in his household, after all.

Nate wished the resistance weren’t so damn shadowy so he could know more about them—like who was in charge. Kurt seemed to think they were the good guys, and Nate trusted Kurt … But Kurt, like Dante, was just a foot soldier, and if the leaders of the resistance were preparing for some bloody coup, he wouldn’t necessarily know about it. And helping them in any way would be a bad idea. Not that that would stop him if it was the only way he could help Nadia.

“I can’t tell you what happened when Nadia was arrested,” he said, “but I do have information I’m sure your leaders would want. Give me proof that you’ve gotten a phone to Nadia, and I’ll make it worth your while. Their while.”

“You’re the Chairman Heir,” Dante said, regarding him suspiciously. “You’re really going to inform on the government you’re going to inherit someday?”

Nate searched inside of himself for moral qualms. This was out-and-out treason he was talking about. Surely it should bother him, at least a little bit. But how could he possibly feel bad about betraying his father when the man had had the original Nate Hayes killed? “You have no idea how much I hate my father right now. Anything I can do to make his life difficult is all right by me. If I thought your resistance would have me, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.”

Gee, he was just full of exaggerations today. He’d never been the most cautious person in the world, but that didn’t mean he was about to run out and join a resistance movement he knew so little about. But at least it sounded good, and Dante seemed satisfied with the response.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. But you’d better have something good for me.”

Or what? Nate wanted to ask, but for once he managed to keep the smart-ass comment to himself. He knew exactly what inside information he would give Dante if he succeeded in getting a phone to Nadia. Since Nadia had strong-armed his father into destroying Thea, there would be no more backup scans performed or Replicas made. Thanks to the exorbitant fees Paxco charged for the service that was available nowhere else in the world, the entire state was dependent on the income from the Replica technology. Eventually, the Chairman would have to go public with the news that the state’s primary source of income had dried up forever, but he was going to put it off as long as he could. Nate had no clue what the resistance would do with the information once they had it, but he was damn sure they would want it. And if his conscience woke up and gave him a hard time, Nate could console himself that the information would have gone public eventually anyway.

“Work fast,” Nate said out loud. “Please,” he amended when he saw Dante’s annoyance at what had come out sounding like an order. “You have no idea what she’s had to endure already, and she doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“She’s the only Executive I’ve met who I’ve actually liked,” Dante said. “I don’t want her to get hurt any more than you do.”

Nate swallowed a caustic remark, wondering if all this restraint was going to give him an ulcer. He might not have a romantic interest in Nadia, but he’d been unofficially engaged to her since he was six, and she had always been his best friend. There was no way Dante, who had known her for about a week, was even half as committed to her safety as Nate was.

“Don’t contact me again,” Dante continued. “You probably got away with the stunt this afternoon, but I wouldn’t count on getting away with it again.”

“If I can’t contact you, then how am I supposed to know when Nadia has the phone? Or to tell you state secrets?”

“Let me take care of that. I’m a professional.”

Nate couldn’t hold back a soft snort. Dante might be a professional spy, but he was no older than Nate, and if he had a year’s worth of experience at the job, Nate would be shocked.

Dante made a face. “I don’t know what the hell Bishop sees in you,” he muttered.

Nate tried not to squirm or otherwise look uncomfortable. There was no reason to assume from that comment that Dante knew more than he should about Nate’s relationship with Kurt. He could easily have said the same thing under the assumption that they were just friends. If Dante knew about them, then Nate would expect him to have played the blackmail card by now. But it wouldn’t be good to have him suspect it, either, even if he didn’t know.

Dante paused a beat, likely waiting for a comeback, but Nate didn’t have one.