Chapter 19

nineteen

A Slovakian businessmanis coming to the club this weekend, and we meet with the head of his private security on Wednesday in Mark’s office. Mark is there, along with myself, Goran, Nat, and Dinah. It’s ten in the morning, the mood is tense, and Mark is already drinking his customary gin on the rocks, which I can tell is irritating the Slovakian security lead.

The lead glances over to Mark, who’s sprawled in his office chair, swirling his glass so that the ice clinks along the sides. It’s the lazy persona he normally adopts in the club at night, and I don’t understand why he’s adopting it right now. This serves nothing except to ruffle Mr. Kulov’s feathers.

“I need more assurances that this open house will be safe for my client,” Kulov says, his eyes narrowed on Mark before he looks back to Goran and Nat. “We were not aware that the club opened itself to nonmembers.”

“Once a year, members are allowed to invite up to three guests of their choosing,” Dinah cuts in smoothly. “All the guests are background-checked by us and screened as they come in. Of course, it is unfortunate that Mr. Drobny is visiting on the same weekend—we couldn’t possibly tempt him to move his visit?”

“He will only be in the States for the next week,” Kulov says. “His business requires him elsewhere before and after. It must be this weekend.”

“Then let me assure you that we will endeavor to make his visit flawless,” promises Dinah. “His favorite room will be ready, and any club submissive of his choosing along with it, and we will make sure every security precaution is in place.”

“You are bringing in additional security for this open house, yes?” Kulov asks. “For the number of people? We will be with Mr. Drobny, of course, but even with three of us, I worry about the sufficiency of your resources.”

Goran nods, opening his mouth to explain, but Mark interrupts, leaning forward in his chair.

“There are a lot of Carpathian resistance sympathizers who are associated with your client, are there not, Mr. Kulov?”

It’s so unexpected—and Mark’s voice, with the slow, casual drawl of the drunk, is so incongruous with the pointed nature of the question—that the room falls silent.

Kulov’s hands flex over his knees and then curl into fists. “It is no business of yours who my client associates with.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Mark says sadly. “See, we have other guests to look out for, members who’d be very uncomfortable knowing Mr. Drobny brought in a security team that may or may not have a bone to pick with allies of Carpathia’s legitimate government.”

Kulov’s hands are still in fists, but I notice that the pulse at the base of his neck is steady. Almost as if he’s actually unbothered by this line of questioning. “Are you suggesting that Mr. Drobny’s team might behave unprofessionally?”

“I’m suggesting nothing of the sort,” Mark says and drains the last of his glass. He puts it on his desk clumsily, crookedly, so that it clunks and rattles. Goran winces. “I’m just saying that of course Mr. Drobny will understand we’ll need to be just as thorough with his team as we are with our open-house guests.”

“I will get you the names so you can do your checks, although you’ll find nothing.” He stands quickly, his posture hostile, although again, there’s a certain calm underneath it. It unnerves me more than outright aggression. “If that’s all you need, then I’ll be on my way.”

“See you Saturday, Mr. Kulov,” says Mark lightly. “Give Mr. Drobny my love.”

* * *

That evening,Mark is having dinner with his twin sister in his apartment, and he gives me the rest of the night off. Tacitly dismissed, I rattle around my own apartment for an hour or so and then decide to finally make use of some of the club’s non-sex amenities.

Namely, I go up to the bar on the fourth floor to drink until the obsessive ache in my chest stops hurting.

I’m sitting at the dark wooden bar—having just finished a pea soup with fresh cream and preserved lemon (and the Lyonesse signature of edible flowers)—when Goran sits next me.

“Mr. Trevena cloistered with Ms. Trevena?” he asks, reaching over and taking a slice of my bread without asking. The bartender sets a glass of clear golden beer next to him, and he winks at her.

I push the small ramekin of butter his way. “They’re having dinner.”

“The terror twins,” Goran says. “You know, they used to get sent out into the field together because they didn’t even need to speak to communicate. They say that the two of them used to be able to dismember and then dispose of bodies together without ever having to say a single word.”

“Are you saying Melody Trevena is as scary as Mr. Trevena?”

Goran gives me an incredulous look. “Dude, she’s scarier. She’s still in, you know, still at the agency. Except she’s the one who calls the shots now.”

I try to remember Melody from the wedding. Tall, I think, with the same blue eyes as her twin brother. A sleek, blond ponytail and a pantsuit. She had a pretty wife with big glasses who talked to anyone who’d listen about storing energy in molten salt.

“What do you think they’re talking about right now?” I ask.

Goran lifts a shoulder. “She’s probably trying to cajole him into divulging some Lyonesse tidbit or other. He’s undoubtedly trying to do the same in the opposite direction.”

I can picture it now, the two them facing off across the table, blue eyes against blue eyes, plates speckled with flowers and rich sauces and tiny bones between them.

I like the idea that someone can challenge him, resist him. God knows I can’t.

“I’m worried about Drobny,” Goran says abruptly and then takes a long drink of his beer. “Real worried.”

Same. “Yeah, me too.”

“The security assessments came back fine, which almost bothers me more,” he admits. “But they were thorough as fuck, so I don’t have anything to go on other than a gut feeling.”

“It’s something about Kulov,” I say. “He never got riled up. It’s like he was pretending to be offended that Mark didn’t trust him, but he expected it.”

“If it were any other day but Saturday,” Goran grumbles, and I nod. The logistics for the open house are complicated enough—that many guests, that many demonstrations, with rooms and booths booked solid?.?.?.?the place will be a zoo. And yes, the whole team will be there, and we’re bringing in additional security, and all the guests have been vetted in advance—but still.

Like most parties, it’ll be a lot more fun for the guests than the hosts.

“At least if it’s a clusterfuck, it’ll be a fun clusterfuck, eh?” Goran says with a wide grin as he tips his glass to my beer bottle. By this point in my life, I’ve seen people react to stress in every way imaginable. There are the types who get quiet, the types who get pissy, the types who—like me—get sad. And then there are the people who already have big, easy smiles, who slap you on the shoulder, who joke and joke and will probably die joking. Their smiles just get wider when they’re barely holding it together, their shoulder slaps harder.

I wave for the bartender and ask for a bourbon, neat.

Beer isn’t working fast enough.

Goran watches me take the first long swallow with his eyebrows raised. “You okay, kid?” he asks.

I look at him. His dark eyes are kind.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I’m surrounded by wood and leather and lighting pendants that have probably been featured in Architectural Digest. I’m making more money than I ever could have dreamed, doing a job that’s actually pretty easy, and once or twice a day, I’m fucked blind by a man so magnetic that people turn to look at him when he walks through a public park.

I should be okay. Being in love with someone who doesn’t love me back should be as familiar as the sunset behind the farmhouse. But this time it’s not okay at all, and I feel the loving of him like I felt the wax burning on my skin.

Dangerous, addictive.

Impossible to resist.

“I like you,” Goran says after a minute. “A lot of people who get out young—well, there’s usually a reason, and that reason can make them hard. Like they’ve grown an extra skin to protect themselves. Sometimes that skin is as heavy and rank as old body armor. But it’s like you’ve grown a shell of glass instead.”

A shell of glass.

Is that what it feels like to be Tristan Thomas now? Like the daydreaming prom king is still there, just in a translucent chrysalis now to keep him and his tender heart safe?

“I killed my best friend,” I blurt out. So that he knows. So that he can’t mistake my clear and pretty shell for something good, something nobly tragic or whatever. The shell, if it’s for anything, is to protect myself from what I have done.

“I know,” Goran says, and I guess he would. It isn’t a secret—the news stories about me saving the next prime minister of Carpathia are the first things to come up when you Google my name, all of them heavily layered with quotes and descriptions about the doomed friendship between me and Sims.

“But being here?.?.?.?” I let out a breath. There’s music playing from somewhere, a dark, elegant cello. “The shell feels different.”

“Because of Mr. Trevena?” Goran’s voice is gentle but direct, and I can’t help but be direct in return.

“I think I love him,” I say quietly.

There’s a pause, filled with cello notes and clinking glasses, and then Goran says, “I’m sorry.”

It probably means something that an apology is his first response.

“So you’re filling Strassburg’s shoes now?” he asks after we both take a drink.

Is that what I’m doing? Is that what Mark thinks I’m doing?

The idea of that is worse than jealousy, worse than unrequited love. I’m suddenly miserable. “Yes.”

“But you love him.”

“Yeah.”

He looks down at the bar and then over at me, like he’s trying to decide whether he should ask what he wants to ask. “What—” He pauses, tries again. “What will you do after the?.?.?.?” He makes a strange gesture with the fingers of his left hand, like I’m supposed to fill in the blank, but before I can ask him to elaborate, his phone rings.

He answers and then makes a face as he listens to the person on the other end. “A little fuckery happening downstairs with a Sybian a guest refuses to abandon,” he explains after he hangs up. “I better go handle it. But, Tristan, you can talk to me anytime.”

His hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and comforting. Not a fatherly gesture, necessarily, but something solid and reassuring all the same.

“Thanks, Goran,” I say. He smiles and then goes to rescue the Sybian, and I finish the rest of the bourbon and ask for another.

I think he really does mean it, about coming to him. And it’s nice to have a friend who gets it. All my friends are civilians from high school or from the same group of West Point cadets that McKenzie and Sims had also been in. And while I don’t think any of them truly judge me for what I did, it also makes casual conversation a little difficult. Hard to go to them with a problem like being in love with my boss when Sims will never have the chance to love anyone ever again, and I’m the reason why.

I drink until the room glows and it doesn’t hurt to breathe. I check my phone after every swig, every exhale, hoping—

I think I love him.

I’m sorry.

I go upstairs and get ready for bed, stumbling a little, my thoughts full of hot wax and flickering candle flames. And as I fall asleep, alone for the first time in weeks, I remind myself that I survived a war. Four times.

I can survive Mark Trevena.