Chapter 21
Lila twisted and turned beside Dixon while the walls caught the neon light that streamed through the closed window. As usual, he’d cranked up the heater, leaving the room hot and stuffy, the sheets damp underneath her back. The fabric scratched at her skin, and her shirt wrapped around her belly. The moans and groans next door sounded pleasant, at least for the occupants.
Lila finally kicked the sheets away, her head tilting to the dozing man beside her. She knew she should sleep on the couch. If she didn’t go now, Dixon wouldn’t get any sleep either.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She gripped the sheets between her fingers, squeezing. Katia and Tristan had been going at it for hours, harder than they’d gone at it before.
“Asshole,” she muttered, rolling to face the wall. She snatched her palm from the bedside table and checked the display, the light far too bright in the dark room. Her father had still not replied to her message.
Neither had Max.
Behind her, the light switched on with a soft click. Dixon grabbed her shoulder, rolling her onto her back.
“Sorry.”
Dixon yawned and wiped the sleep from his eyes. Propping his head up with his arm, he lay beside her, his expectant expression unsettling. He prodded her in the ribs.
“What?”
He pointed to his mouth.
“You’re hungry? I could heat up something for you.”
Dixon rolled his eyes. He pointed to his mouth again.
“I’ll go sleep on the couch. I’m keeping you awake, and I have work to do, anyway.”
Dixon shot over her, pinning her to the mattress with his smooth chest and belly, his ass raised as he fumbled with something on the floor. Clothes rustled. His abdomen pushed into her. Another yawn cut through the air.
He wiggled back, notepad and pencil in hand. Which one is keeping you up? Your father or the idiot?
Lila shrugged.
The prime minister hasn’t replied yet?
Lila shook her head.
He probably didn’t want to wake you.
“He’s never worried about that before. What if he’s in a holding cell?”
What if he’s not?
“What if he is? Isn’t this just like me? I have immunity. I slither through, and other people pay for my mistakes. If I had done my job, Mr. Shaw would still be chief and my father would be asleep in Falcon Home.”
If only she’d worked harder finding La Roux all those weeks ago instead playing house with Tristan. If only she’d slipped into Bullstow three nights ago after Shaw’s demotion instead of latching on to the oracle’s case. She should have made sure Shaw’s files had been destroyed.
She hadn’t even thought about them. Why had he kept the files in his office, anyway? Why not somewhere more secure, some place he could access if needed? A safe deposit box? His mattress? His fireplace?
This isn’t your fault.
“Isn’t it? My father is going to die because—”
Because Shaw kept records. He’s the one who made the mistake, not you.
“Perhaps, but—”
They made their choices, Lila. Perhaps the meeting has lasted so long because they’re prompting the senate to change. Maybe now the committee will realize now what has been done to protect it.
“They called Mr. Shaw incompetent. They said that it was his fault for not providing his men with adequate training. They’re not going to change their minds now.”
There’s nothing you can do until your father messages you.
“I know.” She peeked at her palm again.
Still nothing.
That’s not the only thing keeping you up. I saw Tristan’s face after Katia and I returned. Something happened between you two while we were gone, didn’t it?
Lila opened her mouth, then closed it. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
You haven’t wanted to talk about it for days.
Lila rolled away, turning back to the wall. “Blair is good for you. You’re writing a lot more now. You’re—”
His notepad smacked against the back of her head.
Lila winced, rubbing where it had struck. “I don’t want to—”
It’s adorable that you think you have a choice.
“What do you want me to say?”
I just want you to talk. We’re friends, aren’t we?
“You’re probably the best friend I have. Maybe the only friend.”
That’s not true. Mòr and Kenna and Connell like you.
“I hardly know them.”
Dixon turned the page, continuing to scribble. Tristan and Katia keep me up too.
“And Blair?” she whispered, spinning back around to catch his face.
A grin flitted across it.
“You and Tristan have people in your life, good people, while every part of my life feels like it’s been ripped into shreds. I can’t take anything else happening to me for a while. I just need to know that my father’s okay.”
It’ll get better.
“Did it get better for you? Is that why you keep wandering away from the shop?”
Is that what Tristan told you?
Lila nearly screamed. After she left the shop, she’d not miss this, both Dixon and Tristan endlessly asking questions about the other. “You should talk with him yourself.”
Dixon chewed on his lip. I like the oracle’s compound. It feels like I’m home again, but better. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m around you.
“I know what you mean.”
I’ve missed you. Don’t go away again.
“As long as you don’t drag me back here. You can come over to my place when I get one.”
You’re not going back to your mother’s compound?
“I’m not ready for that.”
Dixon considered her answer, but he did not press further. So what did you mean by good people? Do you think Blair is good, then?
Lila’s mouth twitched.
He prodded her in the ribs. I’m going to keep poking until you talk.
Lila batted his hand away when he nudged again. After she flinched and didn’t answer, he tossed away his notepad with a splat upon the floor, poking her in the same spot. At the last moment, his finger shot up and waggled under her armpit, twisting under her shirt. His skin skittered against hers, causing an involuntary tremor.
“Dixon, stop,” she squealed, giggling.
He shook his head, his finger aiming for the spot once more. Hopping atop her, he pinned her abdomen to the bed under his bare thighs, both hands tickling, careful not to sit upon her with his full weight.
She squealed again, thrashing on the bed, dodging him as she reached for his midsection. “Stop it, Dixon.” She laughed, her fingers skittering up his chest to his pits. “Stop it!”
“Ahhh,” he exclaimed, jumping off her when she touched a ticklish ridge on his side.
They stared at one another, a showdown, hands at the ready, fingers twitching. “I know where to touch you now.” She snickered. “Come here, grasshopper.”
He shook his head, the echo of a laugh still on his lips.
Suddenly he lunged.
Lila giggled and dodged.
She didn’t move fast enough.
Two fast hands sank under her arms, leaving her squealing and thrashing and gasping.
She kicked out, connecting with Dixon’s abdomen. His arms wheeled as she connected, and they both landed in a heap and a dull thump against the floor.
The hardwood cooled her skin. Her ass throbbed and ached. It was the second time she’d landed on her butt in several hours.
They turned their heads, each eyeing the other’s face.
Dixon lifted his hand in a pincer.
Lila erupted into fits, her side burning from laughter, her lungs not pulling in enough air for her to breathe.
Dixon wasn’t much better off. He sputtered alongside her, smacking the heel of his palm against the floor. The other flopped around his midsection as though trying to hold it inside.
The sounds in Tristan’s bedroom quieted.
Dixon realized it too. He let out a fake moan, mocking his brother’s, and shoved the empty bed three times against the wall, the booms echoing in the small room.
“Stop,” Lila hissed, sitting up. “What are you doing?”
He shoved the bed again.
Crawling to his notepad, he scribbled off a few lines. What happened that night at the Closing Ball? What happened between you and La Roux?
Her laughter died as quickly as it had lived. “I don’t want to talk about it, Dixon,” she whispered, folding her legs underneath her.
He gave her another poke and pointed again to his question.
“I chose the wrong person. Just drop it.”
Another poke.
“You have your secrets. Why can’t I have mine? Let’s just keep them, shall we? We’re highborn. It’s what we’re good at.”
Dixon licked his lips and fiddled with his shamrock bracelet. His eyes roved over her face, studying each feature in turn.
All except her eyes.
He wouldn’t meet them.
All at once, Dixon crossed his legs and bent over his notepad, his pencil skating over the page. No. I don’t want to keep secrets from you anymore. We’re not highborn. We’re exiles, and we’ve made one another into a family. We’re best friends, and best friends can tell each other everything.
Lila nodded. “I’ll always keep your secrets.”
Dixon turned back to his notepad. Tristan came to live on the Holguín estate in Beaulac when I was young. I remember him well, this odd slave boy from Bordeaux, following me around and asking me to sing, just like so many others. I didn’t care much about him until I was older and learned we shared a father. I hated him for that. I didn’t want a workborn sibling, especially one who was a slave. I was ashamed. I treated him terribly. In the end, Tristan forgave me. He did more than forgive me. I was an idiot, Lila. I ignored everything my highborn parents and tutors always taught me.
“What did you do?”
He smiled bitterly. I fell in love. Some girl from a rival family. Her name was Adelisa. She was blonde, beautiful, smart, and forever clad in the indigo dresses and boots of her family. I had never wanted anyone or anything so much in all my life. I was sixteen years old, and I thought I could trust her. I told her everything.
“You told her a secret. You told her something you shouldn’t have.”
Dixon looked in her eyes helplessly. I don’t know. They said I told her something, something that lost our family a great deal of money, but they wouldn’t even tell me what it was.
“Who wouldn’t tell you?”
Who do you think?
Lila sucked in a breath. “The Holguín blood squad?”
Dixon nodded. Adelisa and I had just come back from a movie. She stopped her car at the north gate, ready to drop me off at home, but the blackcoats had left it unattended. No one lifted the gate’s arm. I should have known that something was wrong, but it wasn’t until three trucks boxed in her car that I knew for sure. The blood squad snatched me from the passenger side and told her that our relationship was over. They told her she should enjoy her matron’s good graces while she still had them. Then they beat me on the hood of her car until I passed out. I just remember them asking her if it was worth it, over and over again. She didn’t even look that upset.
Lila slid her arm around his.
I woke up in a basement somewhere. I don’t even know everything that happened. I just remember them beating me and cutting my skin with knives and whips. Hot metal charred and scared my back. I kept asking what I’d done, but all they would say was that I had talked, that I had said things I shouldn’t have said, that I was a traitor to the family and had to pay.
On the last day, my matron came down. She ordered me to sing to her one last time. I thought if I sang well enough that she might let me go. I sang for hours until my throat burned with each note. When I could no longer sing clearly, she told them to cut out my tongue. Then she had them put it in a box and address it to Adelisa.
Lila squeezed him closer.
I don’t remember much after that. Just pain. The next time I came to, I found myself in a room. Tristan sat on the bed next to me. I remember my scalp felt so very cold and odd. They’d had to shave it to get at some of my wounds.
“They?”
He and Shirley and Doc.
“They broke you out?”
They tried. Their rescue attempt turned into a diversion. The blood squad was so distracted that when they loaded me up and dumped me in the river, they didn’t check my pulse so carefully. I was barely alive when Doc fished me from the water. He patched me up and fixed Shirley, too.
“That’s how she lost her fingers and her ear?”
Dixon nodded. The explosives she took had been mislabeled. She said her boss never did run a clean and orderly shop. After we were strong enough, we fled to New Bristol.
“And Tristan and Shirley went with you?”
They had to. Their boss noticed their absence and the loss of explosives. He ratted them out as thieves. They would have gotten another year in the auction house if they hadn’t run. Doc went with us, too. I think he’d grown sweet on Shirley. Besides, he’d been fired a few months before that and had no job and nowhere else to go. Tristan promised to help him.
“I don’t understand why your family called in their blood squad. You didn’t try to kill anyone or steal the family’s fortune. That’s all a blood squad is for.”
I suspect the Holguíns use them differently than most other families. I’m glad I do not belong to them any longer. Our family is better.
“It is,” Lila said, resting her chin against his shoulder.
Dixon shifted his weight, reaching for the shamrock bracelet on his wrist. He unclasped it and held it out to her. You keep this from now on.
Lila took it uncertainly.
Adelisa gave it to me. I’ve kept it all these years to remind me not to open my damn mouth, to keep my own secrets, to trust no one but myself. But I don’t want to live like that anymore, and I don’t want you to live like that either. Wear it and remember there’s always someone you can talk to if you want, someone who will keep your secrets and who will always tell you theirs.
Lila thumbed her belly, wondering if she should tell him her deepest secret. But what could she tell him, exactly? She still had no idea whom the baby belonged to. Perhaps when she knew more, she’d talk.
She just wasn’t ready.
When Lila did not accept the bracelet, he clasped it around her wrist. Lila played with the green shamrock charm, its unfamiliar weight odd against her skin. It shone in the light and paired well with her sapphire ring.
Lila cleared her throat. “Before I went to the Closing Ball, I found out more information about the snoop in the BIRD. It turned out that he had infected more than just that one application. He called himself the Baron. While I was at the ball, I found out that Senator La Roux might be the Baron.”
Dixon’s eyes bugged out.
“Yes, I know. That was my reaction too. I asked my sister’s fiancé to introduce us. They were cousins. I wanted a peek at his palm data, so I took him back to the great house. I got a look at his palm, all right, but what I found led me to believe he was innocent. I thought he was being set up.”
So you didn’t sleep with him?
“I thought the real Baron had him in their sights, Dixon. I thought that if I took him for the season, then I could protect him. The Randolphs needed an heir, anyway. So, yes, I did have sex with La Roux that night.” She sat up, pulling away from Dixon. “It wasn’t until he left the next morning that I realized the truth. He’d drugged my wine. He’d—”
Did he rape you? Dixon’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“No, he just wanted to make sure that I slept hard after we were through. While I dozed, he broke into my computer and copied files. He also bugged my room and my palm. I discovered it only a few moments after he left.” She ran her fingers over her legs, her skin now chilled to gooseflesh. “I should have let Mr. Shaw arrest him then, but I wanted to hear what he’d say without Bullstow hovering. When La Roux came over the next night, Mr. Shaw listened in.”
And?
“And La Roux flipped out when he realized he was caught. I didn’t have my gun in my reach. He nearly strangled me to death. He bruised a few of my ribs, and my face and throat were a mess.”
Dixon’s mouth hung open. That’s why you want to learn to fight.
“That’s why I must learn how to fight. I should have paid more attention during hand-to-hand training. Reaper almost killed me. La Roux nearly killed me. The person who vandalized my Firefly last month tried to kill me. Now the mole has taken their turn. Twice.” Lila rubbed her eyes. “Dixon, I’m tired of people putting their hands on me. I don’t have a dozen militia backing me up anymore. I don’t always have a tranq at my hip. I can’t always sprint away.”
You’ll always have me.
“You won’t always be there either. What’s wrong with me, Dixon? I took La Roux home that night because I thought he might be the Baron, but I’d already been interested. Out of all the senators in that ballroom, I chose the murderer.”
Tristan isn’t a murderer.
“No, but an hour ago, he claimed to have feelings for me. He kissed me,” she said, not willing to confess more. “Now he and his lover—”
He’s being an ass.
“Is he? I told him months ago that we weren’t right for one another. Katia is, though. They’re the same. He’s better off with her, and happier, too. Instead of accepting that, instead of getting over it and being the bigger person, I can’t stop wallowing.”
He’s not supposed to be with her.
“Why not?”
Because if he was supposed to be with her, they would have been together years ago.
“Then, by your logic, if Tristan and I were right for one another, we would never have broken up. Sometimes people aren’t right for another. They break up and become lovers once more after time has passed, after they’ve grown as people. Perhaps Tristan and Katia needed that time.”
Dixon shook his head.
“I can be your friend without being Tristan’s, you know. He and I were never really friends, anyway. Relationships aren’t supposed to be so hard.”
The thumps started again in the other room.
Dixon gritted his teeth, looking at the wall once more. Don’t get involved with Nico just to get over Tristan. He’s not right for you.
“I don’t have feelings for Nico, Dixon. Even if I did, I just can’t go there right now. I don’t think I want anything to do with men for a while.”
The moment she said it, she knew the truth of it. She needed to get a handle on her feelings. All of them.
You switching teams, then? Blair has a few hot cousins. I saw pictures.
Lila rolled her eyes and shoved him.
Dixon cackled over the moans coming from next door. The thumps died away, replaced with the creaks of two people falling into bed in frustration.
Lila and Dixon eyed the wall, grins locked on their faces.
For the first time, Katia and Tristan went to bed early.