The Rule of Luck, page 30
I amused myself by watching the programming available on the cruiser’s CN-net, reading novels I’d never had time to investigate before, running my cards, or just watching the fading view of Earth. By day five, it was only a speck in the upper corner, a few inches across. The Consortium had set me up well, covering all my shipboard expenses, so I ordered endless room service and had everything I needed—except a shower. That, I missed as I made due with the sonic-cleaners. My understanding was water usage on Mars was fairly restricted, unless you were among the ultra-rich. So no lovely showers for me, although the cards held out hope. Yes, I ran the cards on whether or not I’d have a decent shower in the future. What of it?
I knew why I hid. It wasn’t that I was in denial over my situation—Roy, the whole trip to Mars, my uncertain future, or everything that had happened in the past few months. I just needed to gather myself for the next battle. If I wasn’t mentally prepared for whatever I might face on Mars, I may as well have stayed on Earth.
Day six, I had the outlines of a plan. I needed to make contacts on this trip and use whatever ounce of charisma and luck I’d gained from my Romani heritage to make these people love me. I would have to lay on the mysterious Tarot card reader persona so thick, they’d be helpless to resist. If things went well, I could use my new cruiser contacts to establish a client base and build from there.
To that end, I booked dinner at the captain’s table that night. The Consortium’s connections guaranteed me a seat that should get me rubbing shoulders with the most influential people onboard. I spent the rest of the day getting ready. It was as if my entire life of loving clothes, makeup, and accessories had been a dress rehearsal for this one dinner. Hair down, but braided with gemstones I’d sometimes worn in my shop. Makeup just this side of too much with lots of blue-green to bring out my eyes. I’d been playing at being mysterious for years so even if I looked a little tired and gaunt thanks to the past few months, I could pull drama out of my ass with my hands tied behind my back. Lastly, a flowing white dress that fastened at the shoulders, plunged deeply between my breasts at the neckline, hit mid-thigh, and had a gold braided waist. Black would have been better, but I didn’t want to look like I peddled sex. Women would hate me and they were the ones I needed to impress. White said innocence, even if everything else didn’t.
Dinner was at eight. I was ready half an hour early. I paced my room, nerves eating at me. I knew I looked perfect, but was it enough? I practiced smiles and poses in the mirror and imagined conversations I might have. I made up witty answers, then groaned when I knew I sounded like a dolt in the imaginary conversations I had with imaginary guests. Gods, it wasn’t like I’d never made small talk before! But this was important. This night could make or break my future on Mars.
Before I left for dinner, I burned a stick of incense at the makeshift altar in my room, praying for success and good fortune. Then I clapped, bowed, and went out to wow my legion of waiting and, as of yet, unknown fans.
I’d memorized the ship’s layout and found the dining room easily. I frowned as I approached, and checked my c-tex bracelet. Yes, I was on time but…Shouldn’t there be other people milling about? Dinner was at eight. Why was I the only one there?
The maître d’ slipped out from behind the closed door. “Ms. Sevigny, I’m sorry but there’s been a change. The dining room is reserved for a private function. Please follow me.”
I frowned. “How can the whole room be reserved? Where will everyone else eat?”
“Please, follow me,” he said again.
My gut kicked me forward. I knew better than to ignore it despite my misgivings, and followed the maître d’. A glass of something, champagne maybe, found its way into my hand. I walked a handful of paces. Stopped. Looked around the massive room filled with empty tables and chairs, elaborate chandeliers, gorgeous blue up-lighting, windows with a panoramic view of space and winking starlight, and no people. No, that wasn’t true. There was one person seated at a table, drinking what was probably vodka, and watching me, watching him.
My gut gave me another hard kick forward, but I couldn’t move. Shock had stolen my ability to put one foot in front of the other. Instead, I took a shuddering breath, tried to drink my champagne—which I’d dropped on the floor based on the shattering sound beside me, so that wasn’t happening—and said the most ridiculous thing in the world, which I had not spent a single lick of time practicing in front of my mirror.
“You’re supposed to be dead. Why aren’t you dead?”
Alexei Petriv rose from the table and moved toward me with all the grace of a hunter stalking its prey. My eyes widened, drinking in the details as he advanced. So much time had passed and while he looked the same, he didn’t. His dark hair was longer, almost to his shoulders. He also seemed wilder and not so rigidly controlled, if that was possible to judge as he approached. The black suit he wore emphasized the broadness of his shoulders. The gray shirt beneath was open to mid-chest and I could see the tattoos and admire the play of muscles, but he looked thinner. Perhaps a little worn out—much like how I felt. Even as his blue eyes raked over me, taking me in as I did him, there was a sense of desperation about him he’d never possessed before.
He stopped a few feet away; far enough that I could pretend I was imagining him. Even still, my knees wanted to buckle, making it a fight to stay upright. And my heart knew I wasn’t imagining anything since it felt like it might beat its way out of my chest as I stared at him.
“You’ve been in your room for five days,” he said instead.
“I wasn’t ready to come out.”
He nodded; then his expression hardened. “The bruises.”
I self-consciously touched my neck. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“It won’t happen again. I’ve dealt with it personally. You should have let me take care of it when I offered in Brazil.”
“I…” Why were we even talking about this? Alexei Petriv was standing in front of me, alive after all this time and we were talking about…I suddenly had no idea. I hugged myself because I had absolutely no clue what to do with my arms and I realized my hands were shaking. No, not just my hands. Everything in me was shaking. “You need to explain how it is you’re here and why the hell you’re still alive because I don’t…I can’t…” I wanted to rub my eyes, but knew it would destroy my careful makeup. I’d hate to ruin everything for a hallucination. “Is this even real? Are you real?”
He took a step closer and I caught the scent of the cologne I’d never forgotten, the one that nearly had me falling at his feet. Oh yes, he was most definitely real.
I held up a hand, halting him. “Don’t come any closer until you explain what the hell is going on.”
He stopped, lips quirking in a sad smile. “I’m not allowed to touch you?”
“No, you’re not. If you do, I won’t be able to think. Right now, I need to think.”
The smile grew. “That’s quite the dilemma you have. By the way, you do realize you look so stunning, I’m not certain I can think properly. I would not want another man seeing you in that dress and would kill him if I suspected he had the thoughts I’m currently entertaining.”
That shot a bolt of heat through me I didn’t expect to feel. I realized it was the first time he’d ever seen me fully dressed in my role as a Tarot card reader—the hair, the clothes, the makeup. I’d always considered it my ultimate disguise to keep the world at bay, but he seemed able to strip me bare with a single look. It was as if he knew me better than I did myself.
“Then close your eyes and quit looking. Start explaining why you’re not dead.” I sounded angry, and maybe I was. Maybe anger was the only way I could get a grip on all the emotions threatening to swamp me. And why the hell wouldn’t my heart calm down? I eyed him warily and blurted, “Are you a clone? Is this Belikov messing with my head for some twisted reason?”
“Konstantin has nothing to do with this.” There was that sad, resigned look on his face again. “Would it matter to you if I was a clone?”
Oddly, this was something I’d actually given some thought to over the past few months. After Brazil, my mind had run in odd directions. “It wouldn’t if that’s who you’d always been and that’s who walked into my shop in Nairobi. But if you’re just pretending to be him now, then yes, it matters.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him because he nodded and his smile didn’t seem so broken. “I’m not. It’s me. I swear it.”
My shivering intensified. “How are you even still alive?”
“Quantum teleporting,” he said finally. “I qt’d out of the building before it disappeared.”
I frowned. “I didn’t think that was possible. Or wait…I guess the Consortium managed to perfect the technique before anyone else, along with all your other…projects?”
“It was still in the experimental stages, not quite ready for a live trial. I hadn’t planned on making myself the first test case, but when things took a bad turn in Brazil and I realized I couldn’t get out in time…I jumped.”
“All this to stop my mother?”
“You couldn’t have endured what she planned. Her ambition overruled her common sense. I admire that in some respects, but not in this case. I could not allow her to hurt you.”
“Thank you for that. Belikov explained why the clones needed to be destroyed and even if I don’t like it, I still understand.” This was getting off track. I didn’t want to keep owing my life to this man. “So, if you…teleported, where did you go?”
He shrugged, a move I found distracting given the amount of time I’d once spent admiring his shoulders. “That’s the thing with experiments—all assumptions and faulty logic. Time isn’t linear. Worlds move side by side, traveling at different speeds. You don’t know where you may end up, which we hadn’t counted on. In my case, I lost time. For me, it all went by in the blink of an eye. To the rest of the world, three months had passed.”
I stared at him. “You…time traveled?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
I frowned and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose as I thought hard. It seemed so ridiculous, and yet… “Belikov came into my shop three months after you disappeared. That was the first I’d heard from the Consortium since Brazil and he gave me a pretty speech about fulfilling obligations. Did you make him do that?”
“I was furious when I learned he and Grigori had no intention of honoring our agreement.”
“So if you were still alive, why didn’t you come to me sooner? Why the hell did it take six damn months for you to find me? You should have shimmed or done something to let me know what had happened!”
“You’re right, but I couldn’t.” He sounded suspiciously closer. When I opened my eyes, only a few hand spans separated us.
I scowled and stepped back. “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Couldn’t,” he said, and closed the distance entirely.
“Stop it.” I reached out to block his progress, my hand connecting with his chest. Touching him nearly undid me and I jerked away as if on fire. “You’re making this confusing.”
“I know. Forgive me.” He didn’t sound the least bit sorry.
I concentrated on his shirt. Probably not the best place to look since it gave me a distracting view of his broad chest, but he stood too close and there was nowhere else to focus. I didn’t want to look up. I would drown in his eyes if I saw them. Plus it would be nearly impossible to hold on to my anger. Instead I merely smelled his cologne, which seemed to be doing funny things to my ability to pretend this wasn’t really happening.
“I was disoriented when I first came back,” he murmured, the words said close to my ear. “It took time to process what had happened. When Konstantin told me he’d gone to see you and what you said—that you hadn’t cared about us and it meant nothing, I began to doubt I was even in the correct world.”
“I never said that. He lied!” I retorted, offended.
“I know, but I was confused. The luck gene can be fickle. Perhaps you’d found someone else. I’ve known Konstantin my whole life. Naturally, I took his words at face value.”
“There’s no one else! How could I have found anyone—” Like you, I almost blurted, catching myself. “I’m not that shallow.”
He chuckled softly, no doubt hearing what I’d left unsaid. “I think at that point, I went a little insane. I had to be restrained for my own good.”
“That must have been awful.”
“It was necessary. I would have done things I regretted and would have been unable to recover from. And before you ask, I will never tell you what those things were.” He reached up to touch one of my braids. Part of me wanted to jerk away, but couldn’t. I had been soundly overruled by the part that wanted him to touch me. “This is pretty. It makes me want…” He sighed and his voice drifted off. Then he tucked a loose strand of hair carefully behind my ear as if afraid he would break me. As I feared, thinking was becoming impossible.
“Konstantin told me you were leaving for Mars, probably thinking I could do nothing to prevent it. He doesn’t like the perceived hold you have on me. Nothing personal. Just not good for business. He tried to rush your travel permits. I slowed them. I needed time to consider what I had to do.”
His hand moved from my hair to lightly graze my neck and bare shoulder. I shivered.
“Consider what?” I breathed.
“I knew Roy was going to Mars. I transferred him to Venus, which was far better than he deserved. I didn’t want him on the same planet as you.” The hand on my neck went higher, to my jawline. With light pressure from his thumb, he tilted my head until I looked up at him. His eyes locked with mine. They were as blue as I remembered, maybe even more so. I felt the pull then, like an ocean current drawing me back to him and threatening to drown me, just as I’d known would happen. “Then I sniped the CN-net to discover what you and Konstantin discussed at your shop. I wanted to know if his version of the story was the true one. Plus I wanted to see you again, even if it was through the filter of someone’s stored memories.”
“Were you successful?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I stopped thinking about five minutes ago.”
His laughter was soft and intimate. “It was difficult, given your lack of CN-net presence and Konstantin’s t-mod blocks. I couldn’t track the actual conversation. Then I realized that ridiculous nursemaid was the key. Doesn’t speak any English or hold a thought in her head, but she was there for the entire conversation. I knew it would be in her memory blocks and I could find it on the CN-net somewhere.”
He leaned in, lips grazing my throat. I felt his hair brush my ear and cheek, and my breath hitched. His other hand rested at the base of my spine, caressing me gently through my dress. I shivered. His nearness overwhelmed me; there was no escape.
“I said you weren’t allowed to touch me.”
“I don’t follow rules I have no vested interest in, particularly when they’re in the way of something I want.”
My head swam. “Didn’t you once say when you decided to seduce me, you wouldn’t need much to get the job done? Seems like you’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble, considering we’re bound for Mars.”
“Sometimes, my bluff is called and I need to step up.” He pulled back enough to gaze down at me. “You told Konstantin we didn’t have enough time. You said we could have worked through the secrets and lies if we’d had more time. We have thirty-six point five standard Earth days until we reach Mars. How much time do you need?”
The man had trapped us together on a star cruiser for over a month just to discuss a relationship? I tried to pull away. The firm hand at the small of my back wouldn’t allow it, holding me still with deliberate strength.
“That’s a risky move. I’m not the confused woman whose world is falling apart now. I’m starting a new life on Mars and I’m going to make it work.”
“Of course you will. I have every faith in you.”
“So shouldn’t you be on Earth, leading the Consortium’s charge across the tri-system? After all, you did what you set out to do. I assume you took over the Consortium’s leadership,” I said, hearing the bitterness in my voice.
“Yes, it’s mine now. All of it.” His tone was surprisingly bland.
“Does this mean Mr. Pennyworth will reappear at some point?”
“That project has been shelved for the foreseeable future. The side effects outweigh the benefits so I’m reprioritizing. Mars has issues that require my attention. I’m looking into the asteroid mines between Mars and Jupiter. I’ve heard there may be a handful of companies for sale. We’ve already secured the rights to building a base for human settlement on Callisto. Then, we’ll see.”
Mining companies? Building on one of Jupiter’s moons? I tried to imagine the Consortium controlling the tri-system’s entire resource base along with access to the outer solar system. What would he do with all that might at his back? Not my problem to worry about. However…
“Then I’m not the real reason you’re here.”
The pressure in the hand at my back increased until he pressed me flush against him. His other hand stroked my jaw, knuckles grazing my skin in mesmerizing circles. I felt everything then, including how much he wanted me, as he no doubt intended. “You are the only reason I’m here. The rest is irrelevant. The things I’ve spent my life chasing are meaningless—which is the only useful thing I learned in the time we were apart. If I can’t make you fit into the world the Consortium wants to build then I have no desire to create it. You know what I am…Who I am…I can’t undo that. All I want now is for this to matter. I need you to say you can look beyond what happened before and what I am, and tell me this means something to you.”
