by K. A. Linde
“What’s the party for?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“We have a new mayor.”
“A new mayor?” she asked, whipping around.
As soon as she did, she knew that she’d walked right into his hands.
“Mayor Sky recently passed away.”
Passed away. Read: murdered.
“Who is the new mayor?”
He smiled and she saw his lethal look return. “I believe you’re acquainted with his daughter: Penelope Sky.”
Chapter 5
Penny was the mayor.
Reyna couldn’t wrap her head around it. Penelope Sky, the mayor’s beautiful daughter who was in her last year of college, had been elected mayor? The human girl who was in love with Beckham, who had been his cover story for the underground rebellion, who was everything Reyna was not. Penelope, who had been severely burned in the Vault sex club fire a little over eight weeks ago was somehow mayor.
How the hell had that happened?
Harrington finished his second glass of champagne and waited expectantly. He wanted her to ask more. He knew she was starved for information. Even this little amount made her want to crawl out of her skin to get to the bottom of it.
But that look on his face—that slimy manipulative grin said it all. If she gave him an inch, he’d take a mile.
“Interesting,” she said instead. Then she returned her eyes to the party below.
“I have to mingle with the guests and congratulate our new mayor. In the meantime, feel free to partake in the food and drinks provided. If you need anything, there is a speaker by the door. You can request it from the man I positioned outside and he will bring you what you need.”
Then he was gone.
She released a long sigh of frustration.
She didn’t know what to think about Harrington’s plan. Of course, logically, she would much rather live in a prison that looks more like paradise than an insane asylum. But giving in to something like that had consequences as much as the alternative did. It meant that she didn’t believe there was a chance for escape. It meant she was okay living the life Harrington had forced on her. It meant she was a willing captive. And she was so fucking far from willing in any of this.
Her eyes scanned the party below as her mind continued to wander and process. Despite the conversation she’d had with Harrington and all the implications of her decision to follow, she was mesmerized by the ball. She hadn’t seen this many people in weeks. All the glittering dresses and sharp suits. The drinking, laughing, celebrating. It was all so much. Nearly overwhelming in its intensity after living such a whitewashed, dreary life.
Amazing to think that this had been the life she had lived with Beckham before being kidnapped. They had shown up at a ball just like this for the celebration of the Blood Census being passed through Congress.
She sighed. That felt like a lifetime ago.
Everyone’s attention drifted up to the stage as Harrington walked onto it. He was leaning more heavily on his cane than she had seen him do in weeks. Another game for him to play. She wondered how many people actually knew that he’d found a blood type match. If she knew him at all, and it was scary that she felt she was getting to, very few. And even less knew that the match was Reyna.
If he was putting on an act to stay the cripple she had first met, then he was doing it for a reason. Harrington always had a motive.
He finally made it to the microphone. She couldn’t hear what he was saying due to this wretched soundproof room but, whatever it was, he had everyone’s rapt attention. After a few minutes, the audience enthusiastically applauded and Harrington held out his hand to the back of the stage.
Out walked none other than Penelope Sky herself.
She wore a sleek sky-blue ball gown that was both alluring and demure. Her dark mane was piled up high on her head. Known for her perfect heart-shaped face, cute little button nose, and matching dimples, Penelope was one of the most beautiful humans Reyna had ever seen. And even from the distance, she could recognize that Penny looked gorgeous. Yet…different.
Something had definitely changed in her appearance. The burns had irrevocably shaped her. Technology was a miracle worker but even skin grafts couldn’t completely remake Penelope into what she had once been.
Not that her looks mattered. She was already rich and educated; two things that were nearly impossible for humans at this point. The income gap between the rich and poor was at an astronomical, unprecedented high. So money and intelligence went a long way. But her looks were a bonus. Still, Reyna couldn’t help, despite everything, thinking that she pitied Penny. She felt bad that Penny had been left in the fires. That Beckham had had to go into the club to retrieve her, and found her so marred.
Penelope wasn’t even supposed to have been there that night. And whatever else had happened, she didn’t deserve it. No one did.
As Penelope delivered her speech, Reyna’s eyes crawled over the rest of the room, searching out familiar faces. It only took her a minute to find one of Harrington’s most trusted advisors, Rowland, in the crowd. She shuddered at the sight of him. The man who had tried to force himself on her, who had been determined to have her no matter what Beckham thought. He’d almost succeeded too. If Beckham hadn’t shown up, Reyna didn’t know how she ever would have come back from that.
Rowland’s little escort, Sophie, was standing at his side, clad in virginal white as always. Sophie was everything that was wrong with the blood escort system. Most people would call her a blood whore, desperate for the next bite, a willing subject to vampires. But Reyna couldn’t hate her. Every escort in the system had a story and her reasons for joining were her own.
Next to Rowland and Sophie was the fiery redhead, Cassandra. She completed Harrington’s treasured trio—Beckham, Rowland, and Cassandra. She was manic and unpredictable and treated humans as if they were simply a food source. Her last escort, Felix, had been killed in the underground fires, but it looked as if she had a new play toy beside her.
Reyna kept searching.
Searching, searching, searching.
She didn’t want to admit who she was really looking for. She didn’t want to hope that he might be here. Or what it might mean if he wasn’t. Her heart couldn’t take the desire to see him, just to have it dashed. Hope was the death of the oppressed. It made you hunger, only to be crushed under the oppressor’s boots.
More applause brought her attention back to Penelope, and she gasped at the sight. Her hand flew to her mouth.
There he was.
Beckham.
Draped head to toe in a fuckable black suit. His dark hair, his obsidian eyes, scruff evident on his sharp jawline. She didn’t know if her mind was conjuring every minute detail, but it was all there. Right before her. Mere feet and a soundproof glass window separated them. It might as well have been a mile.
Yet, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. She drank him in like a person lost in the desert, seeing a mirage, and drinking the sand to satisfy an impossible, unquenchable thirst.
Beckham was even more than she had remembered. Her dreams, though tempting, didn’t even come close to doing him justice.
He took over the space. Shadowed the entire ballroom. He was menacing and terrifying and threatening in one glance. And the next he was devastatingly handsome. He could snap a neck in the blink of an eye and then cradle her in his arms in a loving embrace. She didn’t deny that he was vicious, that he may have done horrible things before her, before the rebellion, but she could see through the terror and past his mask, to the tortured soul beneath.
She wanted to reach out and end this atrocity. But he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t hear her. He couldn’t feel her. He didn’t even know that she was here.
He wrapped an arm around Penelope’s waist. He was there…with her.
Reyna felt like vomiting. This couldn’t be her
reality. This couldn’t possibly be what he had been doing while she had been suffering all these weeks. Parading around with Penelope and playing their parts for the crowd as the Saint and the Martyr, the nicknames the press had given them when Beckham had carried Penelope out of the fires. He couldn’t be at her side. He just couldn’t be.
Reyna closed her eyes against the blurry vision before her. This was a trick. It was a plot, a con, a setup.
Harrington had done this on purpose.
He knew.
He fucking knew.
She had been able to hold a lot back from Harrington. The real reason that Becks had never drank from her, only that he had still been drinking from Penelope. The extent of their relationship. Everything that Beckham had told her about the rebellion and his involvement with it. She had never betrayed him. But she couldn’t completely hide her feelings for him.
And he had wanted her to see Beckham tonight. He wanted her to see that he looked happy and prosperous and had moved on. He wanted her doubt and her unease. If he had those things then he could use them against her. He could make her realize that she was better off with him than Beckham. She’d be better living a life of luxury rather than miserable waiting around for something that could never be.
She forced herself to look down at the stage. To see Beckham there with Penelope fucking Sky of all people. To accept his happiness. To know what was really happening.
This was a mask. The one he had shown her over and over and over again while she had lived with him. He was showing Visage and his colleagues and the entire city that he was the same person he’d ever been. Showing them exactly what they wanted to see.
This meant one very important thing: his cover wasn’t blown.
No one knew that he was secretly part of Elle, the rebellion surge against Visage. No one knew that Penelope had gotten him involved with it in the first place. No one knew that he had been complicit in the underground fires or secretly working with the group to take down the company he worked for from the inside out. Everett turning Reyna over to Harrington hadn’t ruined everything that Beckham had been working toward. Even if it meant losing her.
Logically, Reyna knew all of this. She saw it for what it was. She trusted and believed in Beckham beyond reason, beyond thought, beyond her very existence. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to see him down there.
Even if miraculously she was able to make her escape plan work, she could never be with him like that.
Down there, he and Penelope looked like the perfect couple. A power couple. A blending of Visage and the government.
How could Reyna compare? She was a warehouse rat from the wrong side of the tracks who had stumbled into all of this. She was nothing and no one. She never had been. She valued her own life and the life she had created with her brothers and Beckham but she would never belong. Not like Penny. Not even like Becks.
It broke her heart. Even as she saw the trick and knew that Harrington had done this all on purpose, it still broke her heart.
Just as she had given up and been about to look away and say enough was enough, something miraculous happened. Beckham tilted his head and looked directly at her.
It was impossible.
Beyond impossible.
His head turned. His eyes lifted. His body tensed. A muscle in his jaw feathered. And then he was staring up into her eyes.
He couldn’t see her. He had no way of knowing that she was there. Nothing about it made sense. And yet…it happened.
She was lost. Utterly lost to him. As she had always been in his presence. For a moment, everything slipped away. There was no longer glass between them. No longer a room full of people. No longer Rowland or Harrington or Penelope. Just the two of them standing in a ballroom, besotted.
She couldn’t tear herself away. She was awash with all the memories of their time together. Her moment of terror when she had first seen him at the Visage hospital. The time when he had saved her life from a rogue vampire and carried her back to safety. Their first kiss in his apartment when she had finally seen his bravado thaw and the real Beckham shine through. She had been a goner probably from the beginning, but definitely from that moment on. She wanted to relive every kiss and every touch and every smile. She wanted him so much that it hurt.
She reached her hand out toward him wanting nothing more than to believe that this moment was real. To think that he could see her, really see her right now. That this wasn’t all her warped imagination. She didn’t want to wake up drenched in sweat again with his face the last thing she saw before waking. And yet, she’d dream this again and again to know if this one moment was real.
Her heart fluttered and her stomach was lodged in her throat. She waited with bated breath for the moment to break. But it lingered. It could have been a minute or an hour. She didn’t care. Because even though it made no sense, it felt so real.
Then Penelope tugged on his suit coat. His concentration yielded and he belonged to Penelope Sky once more.
Reyna’s heart shattered with his broken glance. For that second he had been hers once more. She didn’t know if she could ever come to terms with knowing he never would be again.
Chapter 6
After Harrington’s guard returned her to her cell, Reyna tossed and turned all night long. Sleep didn’t come easy the next day either. Worse yet, when Monday morning dawned, it was time to give blood again. She really wasn’t looking forward to it. Not that she ever had.
She was especially worried that Harrington might show up again to their session. He might lay on his charm and try to be the gentleman he most certainly was not. That he’d want an answer: Prison or paradise? Madness or luxury?
With a start, she pulled herself out of bed delirious from sleep deprivation and even more irritated than normal. Today would not be a good day.
Reyna was fighting to keep her eyes open when the nurse walked in the room pushing the breakfast cart. Except…it wasn’t the nurse.
“Morning,” the woman said with a smile.
She had on the same crisp white nursing outfit as the other nurse. But this woman was in her late twenties and almost seemed…friendly? What had happened to the other nurse?
“Who are you?” Reyna asked. “You’re not the normal nurse.”
“No, I’m not. Nancy is sick today.”
Nancy. So that was her name.
“I’m Meghan with an h. I’m filling in for today. Nancy came down with something. This bug has been going around and we’re attempting to contain it. We’d hate for it to get to our Specialty Residents.”
Specialty. Residents. Yeah, sure. Highly prized prisoners was more like it.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Pretty much never,” she admitted.
“Well, we should probably get the show on the road.” Meghan glanced down at the watch on her wrist as if to say the clock was ticking.
“Aren’t you going to force me to eat?”
“Are you hungry?”
Reyna eyed her skeptically. Nancy must not have prepped this nurse on the rundown.
“I get dizzy if I don’t eat before I get my blood drawn…”
“Grab a banana. You can eat as we go,” Meghan said, brokering no further response.
Okay new girl. Whatever you say.
Reyna grabbed a banana off of the tray and started to eat it as she followed Meghan out of the room. Instead of walking in front of her like Nancy always had, Meghan stood at her side. Her strides were long and confident, mirroring her features—shoulders pushed back, chin raised, stark red hair in a crisp ponytail, no makeup to accent her emerald-green eyes, and a secretive grin that said everything and nothing at all.
They entered the sterile hospital room a few short minutes later, and Meghan gestured for her to take a seat in the comfy chair. Reyna frowned. God, she hated this part.<
br />
At least she had a minute to stare at the chessboard before she had to sit. Her gaze rested on the board for longer than normal. After B and the ball, she felt like there had to be a clue in this chessboard. She needed a way to beat him. But her mind turned the subject over and over again and she didn’t see a way to end this. Eventually she moved a pawn forward and relented.
“You ready?” Meghan asked.
“Never.”
“I had a needle phobia once.” She swabbed Reyna’s arm and prepped her for the IV.
“You did?”
“Oh yeah. Just the thought of them going into my vein gave me the creeps. I’d throw up before donating blood. I was awful. Anything to get out of it.”
Reyna glanced up at her face. At how animated she was as she talked.
“Then one day I said to myself, why do I fear this tiny little thing? It helps millions of people and save lives and prevents diseases and keeps the population healthy. For some people, it even gets them high.”
Reyna laughed unexpectedly then winced. Meghan had put the needle in and Reyna hadn’t even been paying attention. She’d been so focused on Meghan’s story that the prick hadn’t even been a thing.
“See, that wasn’t so bad.”
“Well, it’s the second needle that gets me high,” Reyna said. “Have another story up your sleeve?”
“Why don’t you tell me one?” Meghan suggested, moving to the other arm.
Reyna clammed up. What the hell could she tell her? Nothing about Beckham or her life before. Nothing Visage could use. Nothing to incriminate her.
She shrugged. “No story.”
“Guess we do it the old-fashioned way.”
Meghan started to count to three, but stuck her with the needle when she got to two. Reyna winced, but it hadn’t been the worst she’d ever experienced.
They were almost finished with the blood when the door clicked. Reyna shuddered but when Meghan raised an eyebrow, she straightened her spine and prepared herself for what was to come.
Harrington stepped into the room. His cane was under his arm again and he surveyed Reyna in the same manner he’d looked at the crowd at the ball. Reyna could practically feel Meghan tense next to her. Well, at least she wasn’t immune to his presence. Reyna didn’t want her to do anything stupid to jeopardize herself.
