Entropy

by Jess Anastasi

  Qae stared at him balefully. “You’re an asshole. And I really need my head examined, because it’s the main reason I love you, bro.”

  He sent Qae a flat look. He’d gotten somewhat used to Qae’s particular brand of charming talk, cynical affection for everyone and everything, and the fact he flirted with anything that breathed. Didn’t mean he was going to encourage the guy, though.

  “Can I leave you two and trust you’re not going to kill each other now?” Varean was already backing up like he expected the answer to be yes. “I’ve got to go catch up with Ella.”

  “We’re good,” Qae replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  Varean sent them a nod and then jogged out through the patio doors that opened onto the villa’s inner courtyard.

  He’d barely left before Rian’s comm started trilling where he’d left it on a bench along the wall with his weapon’s belt. He went over and pulled it out to see Kelvin Amari calling him.

  Kelvin was Blackstone’s right-hand man. While that meant Kelvin thought his shite didn’t stink, anyone with half a brain could see Blackstone kept him around because he was an easy bitch who said “yes” to anything and everything Blackstone demanded. Kelvin’s only redeemable feature was his ability to get anything done. Literally anything. And the guy only ever called when Blackstone wanted a favor or had a special run he needed Rian or Qae to take care of his usual lackeys couldn’t accomplish. However, they’d only gotten back from their last outing the day before yesterday. Blackstone had never sent them out twice in one week before.

  He tabbed the answer icon. “What do you need?”

  “Blackstone wants to see you and Forster right now. He’s seriously pissed.”

  When Blackstone got pissed, usually people got dead.

  So whatever the pirate lord’s problem, Rian doubted he or Qae were the cause of it. Blackstone wasn’t dumb enough to make an enemy out of them.

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  “Problem?” Qae asked as Rian slipped the comm into his pocket and then reached down to pick up his weapons belt.

  “Isn’t there always?” he muttered, strapping the belt around his hips. Truthfully, the last thing he wanted to do was deal with Blackstone and whatever mood he was in. A bottle of Violaine sounded like a better idea. At least that might have fixed his aching head from where Varean had slammed it into the mat. And the wall. And the mat again.

  Qae’s expression darkened, the huff he’d been in when he’d entered the room swiftly returning. “Dealing with Blackstone is the last thing I want to be doing.”

  “Join the club,” he tossed at his cousin as he brushed by him and headed for the door.

  “Oh good, we can get T-shirts made up,” Qae muttered as he followed.

  Qae had ridden his wheeled autobike over to the villa. His cousin didn’t say a word as Rian slung a leg over and gripped the handles. The machine was sleek and mean looking, and handled like a streaking panther, low and deadly. He had to admit, Qae had good taste in toys. He revved the bike as Qae climbed on behind him—managing to leave enough distance between them that they weren’t touching all that much. His cousin knew him well. Ever since that whole Reidar-torture-lab thing, he hated people touching him unexpectedly. People had lost limbs…the few times he hadn’t outright killed them for it.

  As soon as Qae had both feet off the ground, Rian juiced the throttle and they took off with a squeal of tires. He pushed the speed up as they wove through the thick traffic of the city until they got to the outskirts of Tripoli and started heading up the hill to Blackstone’s manse overlooking his domain like some ancient king.

  When he pulled up in the circular driveway, surrounded by meticulously maintained tropical gardens, the double doors opened and Kelvin came striding out. Usually the guy looked smug with a side of asshole, but today his expression was pinched and harried. In all the dealings he’d had with Blackstone, he couldn’t remember one time when Kelvin had bothered coming out to meet him.

  This couldn’t be good.

  “What took you so long?” Kelvin all but spat as he stopped in front of them.

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” He swung a leg off the bike and then made a point of re-settling his weapons belt low on his hips. “Last time I checked, I wasn’t Blackstone’s bitch. Unlike some of us here.”

  Kelvin gave him little more than the briefest frown before turning his attention to Qae.

  “Forster, I knew you were a cocky son of a bitch, but I didn’t think you were stupid.”

  Qae’s already set glare deepened, palm landing on the handle of a sheathed knife in his belt. “I’d rethink that sentiment, dickbag. And I’d choose my next words a little more carefully.”

  Kelvin didn’t seem the least bit fazed by Qae’s threat. But he did shake his head, almost in sympathy. “You can’t touch me. You’re a dead man walking. Enjoy your last taste of life, because there’s no way you’re leaving here breathing.”

  Temper snapping from simmer to boil in a flash, Rian stepped forward and grabbed a handful of Kelvin’s shirt, yanking him forward.

  “What are you talking about? Blackstone isn’t dumb enough to lay a hand on my cousin.”

  Kelvin’s smile was brittle. “In this case, all bets are off. Forster crossed a line, and even the infamous Rian Sherron isn’t going to save him from it.”

  “What did he do?” he demanded right over Qae, who asked the same question.

  Kelvin’s eyes slid to Qae, a note of awe in his gaze. “Last night, he slept with Blackstone’s daughter.”

  Chapter Five

  Camille Blackstone usually wasn’t one for avoiding things, but after leaving the Ebony Winter the night before, she’d snuck into the house—which hadn’t been hard since her father had been entertaining—to shower and change. She’d planned on confronting her father about the failed run, but had decided to leave it until morning, not needing an audience for however that conversation went down.

  But this morning she’d woken up in some kind of morose mood. And gotten all philosophical and wondered what the hell she was doing with her life. She couldn’t go anywhere else in the universe, couldn’t live a normal life.

  She was Rene Blackstone’s daughter. Many people would want to capture her to use her against her father, while others would simply want to kill her to get revenge on him. At the age of twelve, she’d experienced life in the outer systems—the treatment she could expect as the pirate lord’s offspring—and it was definitely something she never wanted to repeat. The reoccurring nightmares were enough to remind her that if she wanted even a little freedom, then living on Tripoli, in her father’s house like a teenager, was the best she could hope for.

  But something about last night had made her thoughts start turning over. Not something. Someone.

  Qaelan Forster, to be exact. The freedom she’d felt in knowing he had no clue who she was, leaving her able to pretend for a short time she was someone else.

  What would she do if she weren’t Rene Blackstone’s daughter? Have a normal relationship? Do some mundane job where she was satisfied with the small contribution she was making to her tiny slice of society? It was pointless to speculate, because she would never be that person. She would never be safe anywhere except right here.

  So, yes, she’d gone out for breakfast and then wandered around the bazaar. People had greeted her like royalty, as usual. Offering her free gifts and asking her to put a good word in with her father. It had been exhausting, not the escape she’d been looking for. And after returning home and then procrastinating over coffee, she’d finally resurrected her courage and usual tough exterior to go face to her father.

  He was in his “receiving room.”

  It was an office-like space where he conducted business whenever he needed to meet with anyone. Today, he stood in the middle of the room, features set in a hard mask. His salt-and-pepper hair was short-cut and neat, apart from a single long, thin braid that hung down the left side of his face, deco
rated with silver beads. His beard was similarly clipped short and immaculate, not a hair out of place. He wore what she called business-casual. Not a tailored suit like some stuffed-shirt CEO, but his own individual combination of boots, pants, shirt, and jacket. He probably wasn’t what anyone expected when imagining the ruthless and callous Rene Blackstone.

  No drinks or food had been set out on the sideboard, which told her he’d either finished up a meeting in which someone had been on the receiving end of his temper, or that meeting was about to happen.

  “Father.” She stepped around the door, clasping her hands behind her back.

  “Camille.” His features softened, but not much. Uh-oh. Maybe he was more pissed about her failed run than she’d guessed. Or maybe the fact that she’d avoided him until now had put him in a mood. Either way, she was now kicking herself for her uncharacteristic cowardice.

  “You’ve heard about—”

  “I’ve heard about a lot of things.” He paced forward with measured steps. “Things which I will see rectified.”

  Uh, okay. This was taking an unexpected direction.

  “Rectified? Is there something I can do?”

  Footsteps and low voices echoed in the hallway outside, and he turned his back on her to resume his position. “Yes, there is. But we’ll get to that.”

  Whatever that meant.

  She stepped toward the door, but it swung inward, revealing her father’s assistant, Kelvin, followed by a man she’d never met before, but knew by reputation alone—Rian Sherron. Her heart flipped over in her chest a second before Qaelan Forster followed his cousin inside.

  Their gazes met, clashed. Her breath caught in her chest as the blue of his eyes darkened a touch, yanking her right into the extremely vivid recollection of him on top of her, hand on her breast and rough groan in her ear.

  Oh crap.

  She spun to look at her father who was glaring at Qaelan like he wanted the guy to simply drop dead and save him the trouble.

  “Father—”

  “Leave, Camille. I’ll deal with you after I’m finished here.” His voice was like shards of ice.

  “No!” She hurried over to stand in front of Qaelan, forcing her father to focus on her. “If this is what I think it is, then I’m not leaving.”

  “You really want to be here, have this out in front of everyone?”

  His icy anger only sparked her own temper hotter. “You know what? I don’t care. We could broadcast it to all of the Belt and I still wouldn’t care. Because I’m sick of this!” Her voice had gone up about ten octaves, and distantly she realized she was reverting right back to hysterical-teenage-girl status, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I’m an adult, for god’s sake. It’s none of your business who I have sex with. You can’t keep killing people for touching me.”

  Qaelan made some kind of strangled noise behind her, but she didn’t turn to look at him, too busy staring her father down.

  “I didn’t plan on killing him,” her father finally conceded. But there was something in his tone, like a snake who knew it had prey in its sight, even though the poor animal didn’t realize it yet. “But I do expect to have my due paid. Kissing you in front of an entire bar full of people, tainting our family name—”

  “Are all things I did.”

  Her father’s gaze sparked with ire, giving her some clue she was getting to him. “And I will address your behavior in due course. But he should have had some sense, some caution—”

  “He didn’t know who I was.”

  “And for the record”—Qaelan stepped around her, cutting her a quick sideways glare—“we didn’t have sex.”

  She elbowed him, because that was so not helping.

  Her father crossed his arms, and she got the feeling that if he were the type of person to roll his eyes, he would have done so. “You expect me to believe he didn’t know who you were?”

  “Usually I’d avoid any situation that makes me look like a moron,” Qae said before she could reply. “But in this case, I’ll wear it. I promise you, Corsair Blackstone, if I’d had any clue that she was your daughter, I wouldn’t have touched her. In fact, I probably would have escorted her home just to make sure she was safe.”

  She turned to face Qaelan square on, her temper arcing out in all directions now. Treating her like she was some helpless female. “Escorted me home? Like I’m some brainless damsel in distress. I can take care of myself, Forster. I’ve been negotiating the streets of Tripoli ten times longer than you. If anyone needed to be escorted home for their safety, it was probably you.”

  Qae’s brows lowered. “I’d rather take my chances alone in the back alleys with the scummiest pirates on the Belt than—”

  “Enough.”

  The single, menacing word from her father took her aback. For a second there, she’d almost forgotten anyone else was in the room apart from Forster.

  “What did or didn’t happen isn’t my concern.” Her father passed a stern look between the two of them. “What matters is perceptions. After kissing him in public and leaving the bar with him, people have formed their own opinions on what happened. And if I am not seen to respond, then those same people will start thinking they can use you to get to me. That, I cannot allow.”

  Her heart pinched, and this time she didn’t have anything to come back with. Like always, this wasn’t really about her, it was about power, about maintaining control and his reputation. As if she would ever come before her father’s ambition for complete supremacy.

  “Lucky for you, Forster, your cousin once earned my unending respect, a life debt I will never seek to repay.”

  Her gaze slid over to Rian, standing back and to the side. He was tall and leanly muscled. There was something understated yet completely formidable about him. What had he done for her father? Rene Blackstone didn’t like owing anyone anything. Ever. For him to wear the debt without seeking recompense, it must have been huge.

  “So I’m not going to banish you, punish you, or kill you to make an example.”

  Though several steps separated them, she could have sworn she sensed Qaelan relax a fraction at her father’s announcement. He probably should have realized he wasn’t off the hook yet because—

  “But,” her father continued, just as she’d expected. “I do wish to be compensated. If you’re successful, I’ll be willing to forget this little indiscretion ever happened.”

  Qaelan inclined his head, seeming wary but somewhat relieved. He probably should have just been wary and not wasted his time on the relief, because only god knew what kind of “job” her father had in mind for him.

  “I need eighty thousand untraceable hard creds available to me two weeks from now. I don’t care how you get it or where it comes from.”

  And there was the catch. Eighty thousand hard creds was a small fortune. Her father was obscenely rich, but whatever he needed the creds for, whatever he was going to purchase, he didn’t want it traced back to him. To get that amount of untraceable currency in two weeks? It was pretty much impossible.

  “That’s—” Qaelan’s voice came out tight over the word.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard for you, Forster, not with your reputation.”

  “And if I fail?” Qaelan’s body tensed, clearly realizing he was being cornered.

  Her father’s smile was nothing but cold vengeance and death. “You don’t want to fail, Forster. And I know you’re smart enough not to question the reasons why.”

  Jezus. Her father was laying an inescapable snare. Qaelan had quite the reputation as a marauder, but there was a fine line between success and flouting the law to the point he might as well have been flashing his, admittedly very nice, ass at the IPC and waiting for them to come kick it for him. Anything he did to acquire that amount of untraceable hard creds in such a short amount of time was likely to attract attention from all the wrong places. He’d be just as likely to be captured by the IPC or UAFA—the Universal Armed Forces Agency that was like an independent con
tractor for militaries or law enforcement—as make it back here. And if he didn’t return with the full amount of funds, then her father would take payment in the only other valuable things Qae possessed—his ship or even his life.

  “Father, you can’t—”

  “Can’t I?” Her father’s voice was quiet, which was far scarier than when he yelled. “Since you played a part in this, Camille, perhaps you’d like to take on some of the debt. Forster can bring me fifty thousand, and you can go out in the Dark Echo to bring me the other thirty thousand. I’ll even be generous and won’t bring your last failed run into the tally.”

  Damn him. The only thing worse than when he treated her like an errant child was when he treated her like an errant child who was also his employee. “What if I refuse?”

  “Then the price goes up. Forster will need to bring me a hundred thousand hard creds.”

  Qaelan muttered a string of curses under his breath, not loud enough for her father to hear, but since she was standing so close to him, she caught every colorful word.

  She wanted to yell at her father that it wasn’t fair, or negotiate some other terms, but she could see from the determined set to his expression that it was no use. When he made up his mind so fiercely, trying to talk him around would only result in him digging in deeper and deeper, making the price steeper and steeper.

  “Fine, you want me to do this, then at least make it fair. Half the creds each, fifty-fifty right down the line.”

  Her father crossed his arms, looking like he wasn’t even willing to concede this point, acting through sheer stubborn will to be in control of the situation.

  “I told you, Forster brings me fifty and you bring me thirty.”

  “You said it yourself, I was half responsible for this. More than half, if you want to know the truth. I practically dragged him out of the bar by his belt buckle—”