Black Collar Empire

by A. N. Latro

  His offer bounces among them, rings louder than any funeral bell or gunshot could. Now, now, they know that Seth is a breed higher than they. Now they know that he owns the pomp he presents. And now they know that the changes he heralds are real. Everything is about to get crazy, and just when it had been calming from the raucousness caused by Caleb's death.

  Mikie's trigger finger twitches, Seth can feel rather than see it. Anticipation swims around them like the current of a shark on the hunt, so thick that even Seth finds it difficult to draw an entire breath. His shaded eyes slide sidelong, like those of the waiting, hidden shark about to defend his territory from a foreign hunter. He walks around the table, and Emma slips from her seat. With one arm around her protectively, he heads for the door. Pauses only to murmur near Mikie’s ear, “Meeting adjourned.”

  x x x

  Tinney curses as a taxi cuts in front of the black Nissan Altima he is driving. The aggravation in his voice punctuates the loaded silence that precedes it. Seth sits behind him, Emma at the other backseat window. Both stare out the heavily tinted windows in varying states of introspection. The weight of the present situation, and the exchange that brought them here, is heavy on them all.

  Seth's expression is painfully stoic, smooth, firm, unreadable. His hands are folded in his lap, his shoulders are pressed against the seat, and he hasn't moved since he settled against the leather. Beside him, Emma is a ball of frantic energy. Her foot taps against the floor to the beat of the road, and her hands slowly wring together. Her lovely summer dress is wrinkled, smudged from her constant fiddling with it. Her eyes are huge, and she has grown pale, more than usual.

  Finally, she turns to him, her mouth tight and eyes hard. Her regard bears such a fierceness that Seth cannot help but answer her call for attention. She must have been practicing this technique, he thinks, and he readies himself for the response that he can see brewing in her eyes. She lets him sit there for a moment. Definitely practicing. Then, she softly, but harshly says, “What the fuck, Seth?”

  He almost winces. He expected something along those lines, but he could not have anticipated the sting; she’s the one who had to suffer as a consequence of his agenda.

  He had told her nothing, so he understands her fury. He has been her, been the one who was left ignorant for a reason. He has been the child. And despite all her pleas, and his promises, he still shields her. So he tries the most alternate route of his usual nature, and he says, “I'm sorry, Em.”

  Although part of him expects his honesty to melt the rage in her glare, the other part of him is not surprised when her expression takes on an incredulous set. “You're sorry? You couldn't have warned me that you planned to set the whole goddamn world on fire?”

  Now, he does wince. He turns his eyes back to the passing city, the details of which he doesn't see. Of all the forces in his world, he must shield himself from the intensity of her conviction. His grief rises to share his soul with his own rage at Mikie. Shards of the moments that have passed into the last several days assault his thoughts. He says, “There wasn't time.” She scoffs indignantly, but her anger falters as he turns back on her. She hasn't seen his eyes this bright in weeks. He says, “Don't you trust me?”

  “I’m not the one who is short on trust, Seth.”

  The edges of her expression soften as she is taken by some other emotion. He watches her demeanor change to the other reaction that he hates to see in her—hurt. Of course she trusts him, that's not the point, but how could he have relayed everything to her before the meeting? How can he expect her to understand what he doesn’t want to understand?

  He wants to release a string of profanity, but he knows it would only come around to shoot him in the back, so he bites down. A dam is about to break within his darling and dangerously adept little cousin. She is about to shatter the shell of that little girl into oblivion, he can feel it.

  “I have lain my entire future at your feet,” she continues, and her voice is as low and steady as the cock of a gun. “I have put every single strand of my faith in you, for if you fail, my fate is absolutely determined. There is no salvation but you, and still you refuse to trust me. How dare you say such a thing to me? How dare you shove me away from you and try to blame me? You brought me in to be your support, but you try to protect me from it. Which is it? Can I have the room to step up, or will you suffocate me forever?”

  Seth lets every single word dig deep into his flesh, lets each one rip a tiny hole in his facade. He vows to feel the remorse that she wants him to feel. His tattered resolve waivers, but he knows this is a step to the destruction of self that will finally lead to his rebirth as a true leader. He also knows he cannot dawdle on her fragility, or all the shitty things from which he would keep her, so he says, “Ok.”

  Her head jerks up, and he says, “Fine. It's go time. I have protected you my whole life, just as Caleb protected me, but that instinct must die in me. Are you ready, Emma, really ready?”

  She stares dumbly at him for a stretch, no doubt processing the immensity of his words. She spits, “I've always been ready! All I've ever needed was a little faith from you. Instead I was everyone's fucking little princess.”

  He lets the silence make another play, all the while very aware that Tinney is a tentative third and silent party. Emma seems to have forgotten him, one of so many lessons that her fast education has not yet taught her. He lets the stare-down linger just a little longer so she can mull over her words, the claim she has made. Then he makes a cold, one-sided smirk—a whisper of a demon that he must conjure to keep himself from going easy on her.

  He says, “During my absence, Caleb was working with your new boyfriend, with whom he was probably in love, on a plan that would incorporate the Thai's empire into the weave of ours. The entire idea was Caleb's inception, and our uncle fully backed it. All the while, the move to get me out of the city—hell—out of the country became an all too convenient chance for Mikie to do his own redecorating of the syndicate's goal structure.”

  “I know that,” she says, frowning.

  He takes a breath, and forces out the words. “The kicker of it all is that Caleb never betrayed anyone, and he died because of his insolence toward the interim king. Our uncle, your mother, they betrayed us, for the sake of money and power. My dad, and our grandfather, built our way of life so that we could take care of each other, and instead we've grown up as spoiled rich kids. This, Emma, has become a life or death stand for me. I would never make that decision for you. You're all I have left of the family that my dad held so dear.”

  Tears strike Emma before she can even register the magnitude of Seth's words. Her memories take her back to when her brother died, so long before the relevance of the event could ever be obvious to her or her cousins. From that catastrophe came another death, and another, until it became routine, almost expected. No wonder, she realizes, no wonder the whole outfit began to rot at some point. The dream became the monster, and the monster eventually became exactly what Gabe and those before him had tried to avoid. Emma had been sheltered from all of it, just as Seth had been in his day, and both of them had been robbed of their brothers as sacrifice to the so-called success of the family. She blurts, “I don't want you to die! I don't want anyone else to die!”

  Seth watches Emma's disillusionment wash over her in a moment of stunned helplessness. He knows such moments well, remembers the series of them that have shaped his personal armor. The tears that stream down her cheeks contain the last tiny remnants of her youth, and, again, he is sorely familiar with her current trauma.

  Then, she makes a tiny sniff that snaps him out of his paralysis, and he does what no one ever could really do for him: he scoots over in the seat and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She sniffs again, but her head comes to rest against him. He wants to tell her that it's ok, that it will be over soon and that no one will die, but beneath the comfort he has to offer he can feel a cold mass of hatred incubating. Though he has not taken the time to consider
his next step, an inevitable truth has already solidified in the back of his mind. There will be at least one more death. There will be retribution, and the takeover will be hostile. And if he fails, then he will be the one to die, for death is the only force that can stop him.

  Another sniff from Emma brings Seth back around, so that he must bury the anger that tries to rise in him. He can feel her shoulders gently shaking against him, and it threatens to shake loose his grief from the hold into which he finally managed to cage it. Emma whispers, “Caleb didn't have to die,” and Seth must bite down to keep from groaning in the agony caused by her words. He squeezes her shoulders so hard he knows it must hurt, but she makes no protest.

  “Caleb was betrayed,” he answers as steadily as he can manage. Still, his voice cracks, and his head drops to rest on her silky hair. “Just as I was betrayed. We all were.” Her tears redouble, and her breath hitches as she tries her damnedest to keep herself in check. He continues, “I don't know what's going to happen, Emma. Just promise me that no matter what comes, if fates chooses me, don't follow me to the grave. You must become the hope that my father once saw in me.”

  She rips herself away to stare at him in wild disbelief. He can see the defiance in her eyes, despite the wet upon her cheeks. She makes a swipe at her tears with the back of her hand and says, “You are still that hope, Seth. Don't say shit like that. I refuse to lose you. I can't do it.”

  He sighs, and it is full of his weariness, his apprehension, and an undeniable sorrow. Again, he wants to lie just to ease her pain, but he knows he can't do it to her. Chances are, she would call him on a lie anyway, for he has no heart for deception. He touches her cheek, gently, as he says, “You're a Morgan. You can take anything this world throws at you. Don't ever forget that, and don't ever doubt it.”

  Emma makes an indignant sniff, but she settles back against him in silence. He rubs her arm in a calming motion. He glances up to find Tinney's eyes on him through the rear view mirror. He is taken off guard by the contact, surprised by the look in the old man's eyes—pride, an expression so reminiscent of Gabe that Seth cannot hold the connection.

  Would his dad be proud of him right now? Or would he see the failure that crushes the air out of Seth's lungs, the failure that he could not save his brother from bitterness? His raw emotion smothers his voice, and so he squanders silently in it, retreating to the impersonal view of the city as a series of blurs that creep by as the car presses through traffic.

  As they leave the city behind, Emma stirs, blearily asks, “Where are we going now?”

  “The Hamptons,” answers Seth, and his voice is so hollow.

  X x x

  By the time the Altima arrives at its destination, the sun has begun to set. The long rays are buffered by the tinted windows, but still they seem to give Seth just a breath of warmth to prove that he is not completely numb. He watches huge, embellished wrought iron gates swing mechanically open to let them pass, and his vision crawls over the huge, ridiculously expensive house with its two stories. Manicured shrubbery and gilded statues of cherubim roll across his vision as Tinney eases the car along the driveway to the back of the house. An expanse of green lawn stretches into the back yard, and a stylish redwood deck cradles, of course, an in-ground pool.

  The property belongs to an old friend of Gabriel's that Seth didn't even know existed. The Morgans have their own, highly-coveted house in the Hamptons, but Tinney has insisted that they should drop off the grid for a little while as the dust and debris of Seth's latest move settles. By now, Mikie has most certainly put out the word among his subordinates to find his niece and nephew, for he realizes the threat of losing their heat signatures from his radar. And surely by now, he has begun to wonder where his chief of security has gone.

  Seth has mulled over Emma's words the whole trip. Caleb didn't have to die.

  It is the slow but painful truth to which Seth's digging for answers has led him, and it is the conclusion that not even he had put so succinctly into spoken word. The entirety of the rest of the drive had been in silence, so that Emma's voice haunted the foundation of Seth's internal calm. He had suffered every strained tenth of a mile so that when the car finally stops, the air feels too thin to breath and highly explosive, despite Emma sleeping slumped against him.

  Before Tinney can fully throw the transmission into park, Seth flings open his door and propels himself into the expansive air of upper crust society. The spring temperature has dropped so that his summer clothes are a little too thin, and chills spread across his skin. He hardly notices as he throws his attention to the clarity above him, to the stars he can never see inside the city. Cocaine traces race through his veins, and his memory is tempted by a faraway beach where he wandered, mostly naked and without a soul to care for him.

  Perversely, he longs for the isolation, for the stores of his family's ghosts are nearly too heavy for him to hold just now. Cuba seems so far away now, he can hardly believe it is a real place, that he was actually there. Is it just another myth that his previous superiors would have him believe?

  No. Cuba was real, and Caleb didn't have to die.

  He hears the car doors open then gently close. He hears Tinney pop the trunk, and he hears Emma's tentative footsteps growing closer to him. He makes his voice rough and commanding as he says, “Go inside, Emma.”

  She pauses, and he can feel her heart break just a little more. He knows she feels like she is being pushed away from him, and maybe, just for the moment, that is exactly what he's doing. So he adds, softer, “I'll be right there, Em. Just . . . please, go inside.”

  More moments pass, and he is alone. It's dark enough here that he can actually feel his solitude. His legs shake, not from the chill, but from the weight of his world, and he finds himself sitting in the grass before he realizes he is moving. The only natural path, he also finds, is that his upper half follows, and then he is lying on his back in the cold grass, staring at the stars. He can almost pretend that he is nowhere, with no cares, but then Rama's honest eyes, so full of pain, creep into his thoughts.

  The Thai mystery who was his brother's solace may prove to be a valuable ally after all; the Thai prince who almost stole Emma's heart from her own empire, just as he had with Caleb. How the momentum of Seth's game had changed so dramatically over the course of one night.

  He has no idea how long he stays there, letting all his thoughts play, like watching a movie drunk. He stops trying to guide them, stops avoiding them, and just as he had on that fantastical beach of his past, he resolves to stay there until some immeasurable force makes him move. Surely his twisted world will cease its movement if he removes himself from it.

  He knows now, though, that it will not stop, and it will definitely collapse. Finally, he hears footsteps approaching lightly. His usual defensiveness doesn't rise, and he thinks that if someone's come to put a gun to his head, he'd probably let them.

  Instead: “Seth, you're going to make yourself sick. It's getting cold.” It's Emma. Then she appears in his field of vision, and she reaches out a hand to him. “Please come inside,” she whispers.

  There, the hand to pull him out of the quicksand and make him breathe again. The hand that never came during his education. His body moves, still without his will, and he reaches to accept. Her fingers are so warm against his chilled ones, and her grip is strong when she pulls him out of the grass. He stands like an emotionless machine, and she slips an arm around his thin waist. Again, she is so warm against him, and the ice that has been forming around his heart begins to melt.

  He cannot give up now. There are people who need him. There are people he needs. She says nothing, merely holds fast to him, as if she has taken the time to understand his stress.

  Before they begin to walk, he says, “I'm not angry at you for seeing Rama. You just need to be more careful.”

  She stiffens against him. She couldn't have expected him to say such a thing, but she doesn't answer. Just urges him forward, and he holds her against
him as they go.

  Mikie’s Apartment, New York City. August 7th.

  The only sound in the room for several long moments is the hiss of artificial temperature control, and the only movement is from Nicolette's eyes as they rove her side of the chess board. Despite the comfortable sixty-eight degrees, her demeanor is frigid, her poker face impenetrable. And despite the air conditioning, Michael Morgan is sweating.

  A cigar idly smokes in a crystal ashtray, where Mikie left it several minutes before. A sifter of brandy sits as equally neglected beside the ashtray. For all his experience in hard-ball situations, there is still something about this woman’s subtle ferocity that puts him sorely ill at ease.

  He has faced down rooms full of the most dangerous men in the country. He has strong-armed some of the most difficult allies the family has ever had. He has even gone nose-to-nose with the unscrupulous Remi Oliver. Yet still there is something about facing Nicolette alone while she's wearing that hard game face.

  Maybe it's her achingly devastating beauty, the way she moves like a midnight dancer, and broods like a summer thunderstorm. But more likely—he thinks to keep himself from hanging on every twitch of her gaze—yes, it's her hunger that unsettles him. Two years ago when he sent Seth away, he never could have realized that Nicolette's drive and lust for the top very nearly matched his own.

  “Knight takes bishop,” she finally says, definitively, and Mikie's remaining bishop makes a 'tink' sound when she knocks it over and off of the space she has conquered.

  Mikie lets loose his frustrated sigh.

  He should have known she would devastate him on the board, especially with his mind so frayed from fielding the heat after Seth's ballsy rebellion at yesterday's meeting. The rest of the board members are furious. Mikie's lawyers can't seem to find a loophole to counteract Seth's play. And Mikie's chief of security has apparently taken up Seth's banner, at the most inconvenient time.