Resistance

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Nadia’s costume was relatively simple, if uncomfortably revealing, and it appeared to be the same one she’d worn on her one and only previous foray into the Basement: a skintight catsuit, a pink wig, and a band of black face paint over her eyes. Agnes helped her out with the paint, but was twitchy enough that she managed to get as much paint on her pink gown as she did on Nadia’s face. Of course, ruining that gown was an act of mercy.

Agnes’s costume was more of a challenge, the first part of which was getting Agnes to agree to wear it.

“I can’t wear that!” she squeaked when she opened the package Kurt had brought her and found the neon-blue vinyl bodysuit with high-cut legs and enormous silver epaulets.

Nadia sympathized, but she kept her opinion to herself. “This is how people in the Basement dress,” she said firmly, as if she made a habit of sightseeing in the Basement in her spare time. “I’m sure it will look better on than it does in the bag.”

Agnes’s eyes pooled with tears. “You can’t be serious.”

Nadia couldn’t be sure in the dark, but she suspected Agnes’s cheeks were crimson with embarrassment. “Bishop knows what he’s doing,” she soothed. “The most important thing is to make it so people don’t recognize you, even if the outfit makes you feel uncomfortable. You don’t imagine I feel comfortable in this, do you?” She indicated the catsuit with a sweep of her hand. She’d been mortified the first time she’d put it on, though she’d felt better about it when Dante had looked at her as if she were the hottest girl in the universe.

Agnes was never going to be the hottest girl in the universe, but Nadia could clearly see where Bishop was going with the costume. The epaulets and the lack of Agnes’s habitual pleated pants or fluffy skirt would change her shape entirely, evening out her hips and shoulders. True, he could have just given her tightly fitted pants instead of the bodysuit, but Basement-dwellers did not go for subtlety.

Agnes picked the bodysuit up with two fingers as if afraid it would bite her. Shaking her head, she turned her back on Nadia and worked her way out of the pink monstrosity she’d worn to the opera. Nadia tactfully looked away while Agnes changed.

When she was ready, Agnes held the pink dress up against her as if to shield herself, and Nadia fought for patience. Getting this worked up over modesty when their lives were in danger was just plain silly. And the longer they took getting ready, the more risk that the authorities would show up to check out Dante’s apartment.

Agnes dropped the dress, and Nadia rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. Luckily, Agnes was too sunk in her own misery to notice.

“Sweetie, you can’t wear panties with that,” she said with as much patience as she could muster.

Agnes looked down at herself, startled, and saw that the edges of her panties were showing all around the high legs of the bodysuit. Nate had described her as acting brave and calm the night before, but whatever courage had seized her during the rescue had clearly been used up.

Agnes shuddered, but started to take the bodysuit off again. Nadia didn’t tap her foot, but she was sure her impatience was showing no matter how hard she was trying to hide it.

When next she turned around, Nadia found that Agnes had put the costume on properly and was now sticking her feet into the thigh-high platform boots that came with the outfit. The last item in her bag was a tube of blue gel, which neither of them knew what to do with. With Agnes as decent as she was going to get for the night, Nadia called Bishop in, and he explained the gel was for Agnes’s hair. He made Agnes sit down—which was clearly hard to do in the stiff bodysuit—and squirted the entire tube of gel into her hair, using it to plaster her hair to her head in a hard blue cap.

“Don’t worry,” he assured Agnes, holding up his bright blue hands, “it washes off.” He ducked into the bathroom to wash his hands, then displayed them for Agnes’s benefit.

She was still teary-eyed and uncertain-looking, but she nodded.

The blue-haired Amazon looked nothing like the Agnes Belinski Nadia had known. Agnes would never be beautiful, but right now she was strikingly exotic. Sexy even, though Nadia doubted Agnes would think of herself that way. “You could walk by your own father and he’d never recognize you,” Nadia told her.

“If you say so,” Agnes mumbled, rubbing her hands up and down the thin mesh sleeves of her bodysuit. “I’m just glad there’s no press to see me like this.”

Nadia smiled. “Ditto.”

“You both look great,” Bishop said, “now let’s get the fuck out of here before it’s too late.”

“Always such a gentleman,” Nadia said, but she had long ago developed an immunity to his foul mouth. And she was more than ready to get going.

The trip from Dante’s apartment to the Basement could only be described as harrowing. While the five of them were all dressed in their best imitation of Basement regalia, they didn’t fit in nearly as much as Nate would have liked. He—and presumably Dante, though Nate didn’t know for sure—had spent enough time in the Basement not to be struck by culture shock the moment they crossed its border, but the same could not be said of the girls. Nadia had only set foot in the Basement once in her life, and that had been in a secluded, disused underpass where there were no Basement-dwellers except Kurt in sight. And Agnes … Well, Agnes couldn’t have looked more screamingly uncomfortable and out of place if she were stark naked.

Agnes’s vulnerability was so great—and so obvious—that Kurt and Dante flanked her as they made their way through the Basement fringes. Whether because they feared she would bolt, or because they were afraid she would attract predators, Nate didn’t know.

The buildings in Debasement were all identical, bland concrete high-rises with cookie-cutter apartments that were available rent free. At least in theory. There was approximately zero security presence in Debasement, which left the gangs and other predators free to claim whatever territory they wanted and charge people whatever they wanted—whether in the form of money, goods, or services—for the privilege of living there.

The first few blocks of the Basement were a kind of borderland between polite society and the heart of Debasement. During the day, this was where respectable Executives and Employees went when they wanted to dabble in the black market. During the night, it was where respectable Executives and Employees who were too dumb to know better came as tourists to enjoy the bars, the clubs, the drugs, and the prostitutes. A chance to take a walk on the wild side and see how the “other half” lived. Nate knew because he’d been one of those dumb Executives himself, treating trips to the Basement as joyrides, completely blind to how he and others like him were exploiting the misery of their fellow human beings.

The apartment Kurt had claimed for his own was right at the edge of the neighborhood, perilously close to Debasement’s gang-controlled heart, where even the bravest of tourists knew better than to set foot. He led them all inside, where they had to climb five flights of fire stairs to reach his floor because the elevator was broken. Nate didn’t want to think about how people on the highest floors coped.

Nate had never been inside one of the buildings that was used as an actual residence before. He’d always stuck to the clubs, whose owners had gutted the interiors for their own purposes. Considering everything he knew about the Basement, Nate shouldn’t have been shocked that the building was such a pathetic dump, but knowing something and seeing it with your own eyes were two different things.

The enclosed stairway reeked of urine, old smoke, and sweaty bodies. There were several places where the walls were pockmarked with what Nate figured had to be bullet holes, and only one out of every three fluorescent light fixtures was working.

Kurt’s actual apartment wasn’t much better, though at least it looked relatively clean and didn’t stink. There was no furniture in the living room, only a scattering of sofa cushions that looked like they had been pillaged from the trash. The floor was covered in stained gray linoleum, which was peeling up in numerous places, and when Kurt switched on the lights, only a couple of the fluorescent bulbs overhead came on.

“You live here?” Nadia asked in amazement.

“You were expecting a palace?” Kurt countered as he closed the front door behind him. The array of shiny locks on the door, as well as the grid of metal reinforcements that crisscrossed it, were by far the newest and most sophisticated things in sight. Kurt saw Nate looking at them and gave him a crooked smile. “Security is priority number one around here,” he said, patting the door like it was a favored pet. “I’ll get shit like furniture and whatever eventually, but this had to come first.”

Nate would have felt ridiculous bugging Kurt about his language here, so he didn’t. He also tried really hard not to think about what Kurt was going to do if Nate’s grand plan failed. The dollars Nate had given him obviously didn’t stretch as far as Nate would have hoped if he was still at the point of considering furniture optional. And if Nate didn’t manage to have himself named the new Chairman of Paxco, he would most likely end up dead and unable to funnel any more money to Kurt. Which meant Kurt would have no choice but to take up his prior occupation.

The thought made Nate shudder.

“We need to record the video and get this over with as soon as possible,” he said.

“Agreed,” Dante said. “You and Nadia need to get washed up and back into normal clothes.”

“Those are normal clothes,” Kurt said in mock offense.

“Back into your normal clothes,” Dante corrected smoothly. “You need to look as respectable as possible for the video.”

Nate wasn’t sure how respectable either of them was going to look. He’d be wearing a stained, wrinkled, and generally worse-for-wear tux, and Nadia would be stuck wearing her retreat uniform. But if he wanted his father to take the threat seriously, they couldn’t record the video in their Basement disguises, so their rumpled, slept-in clothes were the next best thing.

“Bathroom’s down the hall to the right,” Kurt said. “You’re lucky to get five minutes’ worth of lukewarm water, so wash up quick if you don’t want to freeze your nuts off.”

Nate gave him his best dirty look, sure Kurt was actively trying to offend the girls with his language. Either that, or keeping his potty mouth tamed had been more of an effort than Kurt had ever let on when he’d been working as Nate’s valet.

“Why don’t you hit the shower first,” Nadia suggested to Nate, “since I don’t have any nuts to freeze off if you use too much hot water.”

Nate grinned. He should have known better than to think Nadia was that easily offended. And from the looks of her, Agnes was still too uncomfortable about her costume to pay much attention.

“I’ll hurry anyway,” he assured her, then headed toward the bathroom.

Debasement came alive at night, its streets teeming with forbidden pleasures and unseen dangers. Looking down at the crowded streets from Kurt’s fifth-floor window, Nate was filled with a guilty yearning for the nights when he had traveled those streets as the Ghost, his Basement alter ego, with Kurt by his side. Nights when he’d been willfully oblivious to the squalor around him, blinded by the exotic trappings and the sense of being someone other than the Chairman Heir of Paxco for just a few hours.

How different the world had looked to him then. And how different his future had looked. His life had changed so much in the last handful of weeks, he could hardly comprehend it.

Nate turned from the window at the sound of a door opening behind him. He suffered another pang of guilt as he looked at the mattress that lay on the floor, covered with a yellowed sheet and a ratty blanket. While Nate had bedded down in silk sheets with a mound of down pillows, this was where Kurt had been sleeping.

“I’ve lived like this all my life,” Kurt said from the doorway, naked except for the towel wrapped around his hips. “Doesn’t bother me near as much as it does you.”

Nate nodded, knowing it was true. But it didn’t make him feel any better. The sorriest fact of all was that Nate would be more comfortable tonight than Dante and the girls. The mattress was the only bed-like piece of “furniture” in the apartment, and the others had to make do with the collection of mismatched sofa cushions that were scattered on the living room floor. Nate would have joined them to share in the misery, except this could very well be the last time he and Kurt ever saw each other.

Tomorrow morning, he and Nadia were going to Paxco Headquarters to confront the Chairman with their ultimatum. There were about twelve zillion things that could go wrong, and some of them could happen before Nate and Nadia ever reached the Chairman’s office. Dante had checked the news feeds on his handheld after they’d made their video, and he’d seen that Nate was a wanted man, accused of having kidnapped Agnes Belinski. The chances that he would be spotted and arrested before he got in to see his father were way higher than he would like.

To reduce the risks as much as possible, Nate and Nadia planned to arrive at Headquarters well before business hours. There would be security officers on duty, but between the remnants of Nadia’s knockout gas and the four guns they had between them, Nate figured there was a reasonable chance he and Nadia could get past those guards. Then all they’d have to do was ride the elevator to the top floor—assuming his father hadn’t changed the access code, but Nate saw no reason why he would have. Surely he wouldn’t guess that Nate would be so bold as to march into Paxco Headquarters.

By the time he and Nadia got into the Chairman’s office, someone would have notified the Chairman of their presence, and it would turn into a wait-and-see situation.

Kurt dropped the towel, instantly pulling Nate back into the present. Tomorrow might turn out to be hell, but at least for the few short hours until dawn, he would lose himself in Kurt’s arms and try to forget the rest of the world existed. His heart quickened at the thought. And wouldn’t you know it, when he slipped under the ratty covers and lay on the lumpy mattress, it felt better than the finest bed when Kurt slid in beside him.

Nadia was way too wired—and too uncomfortable—to sleep. She’d never slept on the floor before, and she hoped she’d never have to do it again. The pair of mismatched sofa cushions she was using for her “bed” were woefully thin and harbored the faint scents of smoke and mildew.

Eventually, she gave up the effort, sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees. On one side of her, Agnes was fast asleep, her body curled into a protective ball on her nest of cushions. On the other side, Dante sprawled in what looked like total comfort, although he’d only taken one cushion for himself and most of his body lay on the hard floor. Sleep softened some of the harsher angles of his face, making him look warmer and more approachable, despite his Ninja-warrior-black outfit. Nadia wondered what it would feel like to curl up against his body, to let him wrap those powerful arms of his around her.

The temptation to find out was so strong she forced herself to her feet and moved away, tiptoeing to one of the windows on the far side of the room. Turning her back on Dante, she leaned against the sill and peered out.

It wasn’t what you’d call a picturesque view. The bland high-rises of the Basement formed a wall of solid gray that kept visibility to a minimum. The street below was crowded and noisy, despite the fact that it was well after midnight. From above, the Basement-dwellers in their colorful, outlandish regalia looked rather like a group of seedy circus clowns gathering for a block party. Except when she looked more closely, the resemblance to clowns faded. The clothing, both on the men and on the women, was way too revealing, for one thing. And no one seemed to be having any fun, despite the occasional raucous bursts of laughter. Everyone out there was doing business of one sort or another, and their eyes were always searching their surroundings for a hint of danger. Danger one unfortunate man seemed to have found, as three Basement-dwellers descended on him and started beating him. No one paid them any mind, stepping around the altercation without sparing it a glance.

“There but for the grace of God…” Dante whispered, and Nadia swallowed a yelp of surprise.

She put her hand to her chest as if the touch could calm her suddenly racing heart. “You scared me,” she said.

“Sorry,” he murmured, sidling up behind her and putting his arms around her waist.

Her heart thumped for a different reason as Dante’s body pressed up against hers and he nuzzled her neck. It had been a while since he’d shaved, and his whiskers scratched in a way that was surprisingly sexy. She glanced over her shoulder to reassure herself that Agnes was still asleep.

“Behave,” she told Dante breathlessly, as his lips brushed against her skin.

“Why?” he countered. “If tomorrow goes badly, we may never see each other again. You don’t suppose Nate and Bishop are ‘behaving’ in that bedroom, do you?”

Nadia had no desire to speculate about what Nate and Bishop were doing. “But they have a bedroom,” she said, though despite her halfhearted protest, she found herself leaning into his warmth and stretching her neck to give him better access. They had had so little time together, so little opportunity to explore. She’d experienced her first real kiss with Dante, and she very much wanted more. But not when they had an audience, even if that audience was currently asleep. There was no guarantee she’d stay that way. “With a door that closes.”

Dante nipped lightly on her earlobe, and her breath caught in her throat. “There is a second bedroom,” he murmured. “And its door closes, too.” She swallowed hard. “Of course, there’s no bed in it, but we can improvise.”

Nadia shivered and her skin prickled with goose bumps. It was very possible she might die tomorrow. Tonight might be the only chance she ever had.

Dante’s arms tightened around her. “I’m not trying to pressure you,” he assured her. “I just don’t want you to let Agnes get in the way of what you want. Er, if you want it, that is.”

Nadia smiled, glad to know Dante wasn’t quite as smooth and confident as he’d been making himself out to be. But at least he knew what he wanted, which was more than she could say for herself.

Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what she wanted, and it was something she didn’t have: time. Time to take things slowly and see where they led. Time to figure out just how she felt about Dante and ease into the kind of relationship she’d never allowed herself to think about having when she’d been promised to Nate. Time to make a decision based on mutual desire instead of desperation.

Dante turned her around and cupped her face in his hands. “Sorry,” he said, then pressed a light kiss to her lips. He sighed. “I’m pressuring you whether I mean to or not.”

“No—” she started, but he silenced her with another kiss.

“If suggesting tonight might be the last time we see each other isn’t pressuring you, I don’t know what is. I’m being an asshole.”

Nadia smiled up at him. He was the perfect antidote to all the pain and ugliness that surrounded her, someone strong and thoughtful and honorable. The warm glow in her chest told her she could easily find herself falling in love with him. Or maybe she’d done that already.

“I’ve known more than my fair share of assholes,” she said. “You’re not one of them.”

Dante took both her hands in his and squeezed so tight it almost hurt. “Promise me you’ll come back to me. Promise … Promise you’ll win.” His voice was choked. “You have no idea how hard it is for me not to beg you to let Nate go alone.”

“Would it make it any easier to resist if I told you nothing’s going to change my mind?”

He sighed. “I already knew that.”

“I have every intention of winning,” she told him, putting every ounce of confidence she could muster into her voice. “This is not the last time we’ll see each other. I won’t let it be.”

Dante enveloped her in a hug, and Nadia prayed with all her being that she would be able to keep her promise.