The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  I had a fantastic childhood. I can appreciate that now. Not for the reason people would assume, for all the money, but for my family. I think I blocked some of it so the separation from my father wouldn’t hurt as much, but tonight, I feel it. Dad was busier than I could even comprehend then, but I caught him once assembling our bikes himself so they’d be under the tree when we woke up. He stood there with my mom, bleary-eyed in his robe, grinning when we rode the bikes up and down the halls.

  I miss my parents. I miss my dad. I don’t allow myself to acknowledge that most days. The enmity has calcified between us—hardened into bone that might now prove too painful if we break it.

  “If you don’t call,” Grim says, pulling me away from past holiday mornings, “you’ll just keep thinking about it.”

  “And, God help us, talking about it,” David says. “So just call.”

  Dammit, they’re right. I step out onto the verandah overlooking a string of pearl-topped mountains. I dial the number, waiting while the cold pierces through my thick sweater.

  “Maxim!” my mom says, her voice breaking over my name.

  Maybe I’m a coward. This was the easier call to make.

  “Mom, hey.”

  “I was hoping you’d call. I planned to call you in a few minutes, so I’m . . .” A silence thick with emotion builds between us.

  “It’s good hearing your voice,” I say, forcing a lighter tone. “Those kids of Owen’s driving you crazy yet? They’re the loudest little monsters I’ve ever met. They drive me bonkers in DC.”

  “I’m pretty sure if I survived my own two little Kingsman monsters,” she says, her voice warm, “I can survive Owen’s.”

  I hadn’t thought of that in years, how she used to chase us around the house yelling, “I’m looking for all the king’s men!”

  “I’m so glad you’re with Owen while he’s running,” she continues. “He needs someone he can trust, and politics is a dirty game.”

  “One he’s been playing for ten years,” I remind her dryly.

  “Yes, but this is another level. It requires even more ruthlessness.” She pauses to laugh. “And we both know you’re ten times as ruthless as your brother.”

  “Not sure how I feel about that, Mom. Thanks?”

  “You get it from your father,” she says, humor and affection in her voice. “You both play dirty when you have to. I’m glad Owen has you at his back. Take care of your brother, son.”

  It should be an odd request considering I’m younger, but she’s right. Owen has a heart of gold, but I’ve always been the fighter of us two.

  “I will, Mom,” I promise. “I got him.”

  “Would you, um . . . like to speak with your father?” she asks, her voice trying to sound normal.

  I try for normal, too, as if my father and I talk every day instead of once every few years. “Sure.”

  It is Christmas.

  “Okay,” she says, clearly happy and relieved. “Let me get him. I love you, Maxim.”

  “Love you, too, Mom.”

  “Maxim.” My father’s deep voice booms over the phone, and I’m transported back to sunlit days standing in water past our knees, him yelling down the river while we cast lines fly fishing.

  “Dad,” I reply, keeping my voice even. “Merry Christmas.”

  I remind myself that I’m not that college kid he reamed for not being ruthless or focused enough. Not the one who wondered if my father was right when he said I’d never make it without the protection of his name. I’m the man who fled his father’s shadow and flew on his own.

  “Merry Christmas,” my father says. “I hope it’s been good for you so far.”

  “Yeah, great.”

  “You’re in Aspen?”

  How the hell does my father always know where I am? “Uh, yeah. With David and Grim.”

  “Be sure to give them our best.” A long pause neither of us seems to know how to fill follows before he continues. “It’s good you’re in DC with O.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, grabbing hold of something we can agree on. “I think he has a real shot. Actually, according to all the numbers, the best shot. He leads in every early poll.”

  “I don’t trust polls, and I don’t trust that girl he has running his campaign. Under the expensive clothes and fine education, she’s the same bothersome baggage who tried to stop my pipeline. And she keeps trying to stop them, little nuisance.”

  I clamp my teeth around the sharp edges of the words I want to hurl at him.

  “She’s the best in the business, Dad,” I say, my voice stiff as a mannequin. “They don’t call her the Kingmaker for nothing.”

  “You think I don’t know about the soft spot you have for Lennix Hunter?” he asks, a bitter note entering his voice. “That dick of yours is gonna lead you somewhere you don’t need to go one day. Oh, wait. It already has. Amsterdam, wasn’t it?”

  I grip the phone until I think it might snap in my fingers. “Stay out of my business, Dad.”

  “Tell her to stay out of mine.”

  “You know I can’t control Lennix. Every time you try to lay a pipeline on tribal ground, she’s coming for your ass.”

  “Well she better hope I never come for hers.”

  A block of ice solidifies in my chest. I know what my father’s vendettas look like. Ruined careers. Lost fortunes. Shattered lives.

  “Let me make something abundantly clear to you, Warren,” I say in a low rumble of danger I don’t even recognize as my own voice. “You think things have been bad between us the last fifteen years? Touch her and I will make the worst you’ve ever done look like child’s play. Do you understand me?”

  A frigid silence accumulates across the miles, as cold and densely dark as the Antarctic winter. Snow starts falling, huge crystalline flakes that land on my hand and melt before I can touch or appreciate them.

  “You’d choose that little bitch over your family?” my father asks, his voice tight and furious.

  “I’d choose her over you.”

  He replies with a disgusted huff of breath. “The only reason I’m tolerating her at the announcement is because Owen seems to believe she knows what she’s doing and won’t listen when I tell him to fire her ass.”

  “I don’t want to see you within ten feet of her on New Year’s Eve.”

  “You won’t see me within ten feet of her ever if I can help it,” he says, his voice taut with rage. “Goodbye, Maxim, and Merry Christmas.”

  The line goes as dead as any affection I thought I’d salvaged for him. Every time I think we might be able to fix all the things that have gone wrong between us, my father does something to remind me why I left in the first place.

  This isn’t how I saw Christmas going. Somewhere in my mind, I hoped Lennix and I would have worked things out by now. She said each Christmas she goes to the site where she whispered her mother’s name and laid her to some kind of rest. She probably sees the Cade Energy pipeline there and remembers all the reasons she shouldn’t trust me. My father. My family’s business. My lies.

  None of those are things I can fix or change. How I hurt her, deceived her, is in the past, but standing out here in the cold alone under a Yuletide moon and falling snow, I wonder if we’ll ever find our way to the future.

  46

  Lennix

  “Everything’s incredible, Mill,” I say. “And the house looks beautiful.”

  An army of servers circle the room carrying trays laden with champagne. Christmas lights sparkle overhead and along the stairwell bannister. The branches of a huge tree in the corner stretch toward the ceiling, its decorative cheer adding to the festive atmosphere.

  “Even more beautiful with all these students here.” Millicent scans the room, packed with so many young faces, with young leaders from all over the country. “This was such a great idea. Everyone’s excited, even though they don’t know what’s coming.”

  “I’m sure some suspect. CNN, MSNBC, Fox and every major news outlet is at this party.
They know we wouldn’t have them here just to ring in the New Year.”

  “After tonight, everything changes, huh?” Her blue eyes find mine, and they’re sober in this festive scene. “Once he makes it official, our lives change forever.”

  “We’re just announcing the exploratory committee tonight. He’ll announce he’s running in February, and then we’re off.”

  “You wouldn’t have taken him on if you didn’t think he’d win,” she says, her smile knowing. “You bet on the winners, don’t you?”

  I think of all the battles I’ve lost. All the pipelines that got built anyway. All the young men still languishing in prison despite Kimba’s and my best efforts.

  “Not always, no,” I reply, staring into my champagne. “I just fight for the ones I think should win.”

  “Hey,” Kimba says, appearing beside us. “CNN wants an interview after.”

  “Excuse me, ladies. I need to go find my children,” Millicent says by way of exit. “See you in a bit.”

  “What time do they want to do the interview?” I ask Kimba.

  “’Round midnight, and you know I don’t do that shit.”

  “Okay.” I laugh and roll my eyes. “But one day you’ll get shoved into the spotlight, so you better be ready.”

  “Not if I can help it.” She pulls an iPad from where it’s tucked under her arm. “So Owen starts his speech at eleven thirty. He makes the announcement. We do the countdown to midnight and then the interview.”

  “Right. I’ll be ready.”

  I search the crowd for Maxim. He’s been working the room all night. I know it’s for Owen, but he freely admits he has his own agenda, the same one he has been advancing for the last decade—to wean this country off fossil fuels and direct our resources to cleaner, more sustainable energy. He’s a single-minded man. It’s hard to remember how it feels having all that power and intensity focused on me since he hasn’t looked at me all night.

  He’s striking in black, perfectly tailored pants and a button-down shirt. There’s a satyr-like look to his dark hair and brows, the sensual curve of his mouth, the wild, wicked light in his eyes.

  “Who invited the Russian?” Kimba asks.

  I shift my attention from Maxim to the woman at his side. It’s the Russian ambassador’s daughter. The one who kissed him. He’s laughing down at her, easy affection in his expression. She reaches up to cup his face, the gesture familiar and intimate. My breath gets hung on irritation like a dress on a nail. A sharp, tiny thorn pricks my heart, but before the pain has time to take root, Maxim pulls her hand away from his face and shakes his head. His smile is gentle, but it’s a firm dismissal that reassures me. He said there had never been anyone else like me. I believe him because for me, there’s never been anyone like him.

  My father told me to want something, to take something for myself.

  I want Maxim. Will I take him tonight? After hiding so much about myself from myself, lying to myself, can I tell him the truth?

  “We’re thirty minutes from the announcement,” Kimba says, her face taking on a serious set.

  “I’ll go check on Owen. I think he went upstairs to review his speech.”

  With one last glance at Maxim, now laughing with a congressman from North Carolina, I make a dash for the stairs and toward the guest room where Owen is supposed to be. The two men who are always with him stand outside the door, wearing identical impassive expressions. I stride down the long hall, anxious to make sure he’s prepared for the biggest speech of his life to date. He has an excellent speechwriter, but he drafted most of it himself. Maxim, Kimba and I weighed in and offered suggestions. The speech is loaded to a teleprompter we brought in, so he should be set, but I want to make sure. I lift my fist to knock, but the door opens before I get the chance.

  Filling the doorway is the man who is almost the exact, albeit older, physical replica of Maxim. Our eyes narrow and our shoulders stiffen at the same time, the only things about us in synch. He closes the door behind him.

  “Miss Hunter,” Warren Cade drawls. “I wondered when you’d turn up.”

  Turn up like a bad penny if his disdainful look is any indication of how he feels about me.

  “I’ve been around,” I tell him, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. “There’s a lot riding on tonight. We all want Owen to do well.”

  Any polite pretense disintegrates from his face. “You better not ruin one damn thing for my boy.”

  “I want Owen to win. I’m willing to set aside our personal differences long enough to get your son elected because I believe he will take this country in a direction that benefits those most vulnerable among us.”

  “You’re so concerned about the most vulnerable, yet every time I turn around you’re ingratiating yourself with extremely powerful men, specifically my sons. Why is that, Miss Hunter? I think you’re as hungry for power as the ones you claim to hate.”

  “Your sons came to me, not the other way around. I don’t want power. I want what has been promised to my people for centuries. I only want what is ours to remain ours. What was stolen from us, where possible, to be returned. You’re the one constantly collecting things that aren’t yours as if you don’t already have enough.”

  “Enough?” His laugh is dark and twists between us. “What is this concept of enough? It sounds wholly un-American. There’s never enough. Ask my son if he ever gets enough.”

  He leans down to look directly into my eyes. “Not Owen. The other one. Maxim’s just like me. You do know that, right? Under all that clean, Greenpeace shit, he’s as ruthless and insatiable as I am, though he doesn’t like to admit it. You think some girl from the reservation will ever be enough for him?”

  Never be enough for Maxim? For the man who put himself between me and a pack of dogs before he even knew my name? Not enough for the man who shook me awake from my nightmares and held me all night? The man who begged for my forgiveness, admitted he was wrong and came back for me . . . just like he said he would?

  “You hate it, don’t you?” I ask, my voice low and taunting. “That I’m the one he wants?”

  His confident smile flickers, slips.

  “You know him so well,” I say. “Not Owen. The other one.”

  I take a bold step closer so my words have less space to travel.

  “You know Maxim well enough to see that he didn’t come back for Owen. He came back for me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Warren says with an ease belied by the hard glimmer in his eyes.

  “Am I? God, it must grate that your son wants . . . how did you put it? Some girl from the reservation? The girl who can’t stand you and gets in your way at every turn?”

  “You should be very careful,” Warren says, his voice a threat.

  “Or what? You’ll destroy my career? Come against my friends? My family? You don’t scare me.” I laugh with sudden realization. “I scare you. Because you know that if you hurt me, Maxim will never forgive you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” His laugh scoffs, but I see something in his eyes; the same thing Maxim doesn’t want me to see in his. Longing. He longs for a relationship with his son the way Maxim longs for him. He misses Maxim, but he can’t have him.

  And I can.

  “I know your secret, Mr. Cade.” I tip up on my toes and whisper in his ear. “You love Maxim most.”

  When I step back, a vein bisects his forehead like a lightning bolt. The anger swirls around him, cyclonic and forceful. If Maxim’s own words didn’t convince me how much he cares for me, his father’s response does.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” I say, keeping my voice low. “Your other son needs me.”

  I open the door, step inside the room, and close the door in Warren Cade’s face. A deep breath settles me and clears my mind of the unpleasant encounter before I approach Owen. He’s seated on the bed, iPad beside him, and he looks perfectly at ease. He’s a natural. He doesn’t just poll well; he is a good man. He’ll be good for our country. He’ll unite us,
but still be uncompromising for the people who deserve defending.

  “You ready?” I ask, stepping into the room.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” His smile is a little weary, but I’ve seen him in action enough to know when the lights come on, so does he. He’ll bring the energy we need.

  “Tonight has already been a huge success, and your announcement is gonna top it off in the best way possible. After this, it’s a whole new ballgame, and we’re ready to play.”

  Owen nods, smiles, but there’s a sobriety to his expression.

  “Sure you’re okay, Owen?” I touch his shoulder and frown.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” His smile is meant to reassure me. “It’s a tremendous amount of responsibility, and I’ve been preparing all my life for this, but tonight it’s more real than it’s ever been. I’ve seen how power corrupts, and I never want to be that. You know?”

  Still feeling the sting of his father’s barbs, I do know what power misused looks and feels like. “The fact that you even think about this means you won’t do it. Hold onto that and surround yourself with people who won’t let you get away with it.”

  “I’m glad I’ve surrounded myself with you and Kimba. Keep me accountable?”

  “That you don’t have to worry about.” I tell him with a smile.

  The door opens and Millicent and the twins stand there.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she says.

  “No, we’re just wrapping up.” I look to Owen. “Kimba and I and the whole team are here for you. Let us know if you need anything. We have about ten minutes before you’ll take the stage.”

  When I return to the main room, I check with our producer that the cameras are set up and ready to record Owen’s announcement. We’ll push it out on social media immediately.