The mere mention of the infamous Seattle Slave Rebellion made Myne’s voice degenerate into gravel.
“And she’s here now?”
Riker nodded at the female in the window. “Right there and all grown up. And if you’re done jacking off your dagger, we’ll go have a chat with her.”
“You think she’ll cooperate?”
Hell, no. She was a Martin, after all, current CEO of the company that revolutionized vampire slavery and used vampires like lab rodents to advance human medicine. Daedalus went through vampires like a slaughterhouse went through cattle, and Riker doubted the company held to any kind of “humane” standards.
“For her sake,” Riker said slowly, “I hope so.”
Chapter 3
Nicole martin should never have left Paris.
She hated the Seattle weather. Hated the family mansion.
Hated the vampires.
She would never have believed that the vampire situation could be so different here.
She tossed a Chinese-food container into the trash bin hard enough to send bits of rice fl ying and turned to the tele-screen on the obnoxiously decadent black and gold granite kitchen counter. Her towheaded half brother, Charles, stared at her from his desk at Daedalus Corporation’s headquarters.
“You okay?” He gestured in the direction of her garbage can. “You subjected that poor takeout to some serious abuse.”
“No, I’m not okay. I miss Paris.” There. She’d said it. Pretending to be happy about returning to her childhood home was offi cially a big lie. “I miss my research lab. I miss my friends.”
Sure, most of her friends had been of the casual kind, Europe’s wealthy and powerful who only wanted what she—and Daedalus—could do for them, but she’d genuinely liked some of her colleagues. Plus, surrounding herself with people at all times kept her busy and kept the memories of her childhood at bay.
“You’ll make new friends,” Chuck assured her.
“Really?” She snorted. “I think it’s more likely that after tomorrow, I’m going to be a pariah no one is going to want to look at, let alone invite to cocktail parties.”
“Don’t worry about the meeting.” Like Nicole, he’d inherited his green eyes from their father, and they softened as he met her gaze. “The partners will get to the truth about what happened at the Minot facility.”
A sting in her bottom lip was a sharp reminder that she was biting it. Bad habit, and one she’d been trying to break for years. A lady doesn’t fidget, her mom used to say. Later, in private, Nicole’s nanny, Terese, would tell her that Nicole was a child, and children could fidget all they wanted. The secret, she’d said, was to fidgetproductively.
Nicole reached past her medication bottles for the dwindling stack of paper on the counter, one of many she kept around the house.
“They don’t want to get to the truth, Chuck. They want a scapegoat.” She folded one corner of a sheet of paper and smoothed a crease into it. “Three dozen vampires from the Minot lab are dead. Ultimately, I’m responsible for everything my company does, and I’m going to get shipped off to Siberia for this.”
If she was lucky, she’d get sent to the Siberia office.
The other alternative, criminal prosecution, was also a possibility, thanks to groups like the Vampire Humane Society and Humans for the Advancement of Vampiric
Entities, which had, in the last five years, forged huge inroads regarding the ethical treatment and disposal of domestic vampires.
“Don’t think like that. You have a defense worked out.” Chuck scribbled something on the notepad in front of him. “When you present your evidence, the board will have to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Uh-huh. Sure. The board had been looking for a way to get her out of the company for years. Her mother and father had been the brawn and brains behind the business they’d built from the ground up, but Nicole had merely inherited her position.
Even Chuck, whose illegitimacy hadn’t allowed him a guaranteed place in their father’s empire, had worked his way from the mailroom to chairman and then, finally, seven years ago, to CEO. The position had been temporary until Nicole was ready to take over, but she’d been happy to let him run the company, so he’d remained, and she’d settled into medical research.
Until two months ago, when she’d turned twenty-eight and legal clauses from her parents’ wills and trusts kicked in, requiring her to rule the kingdom or lose everything. She hadn’t wanted to drag her parents’ names through the mud, so she hadn’t fought the clauses and reluctantly moved back to Seattle to take over.
Understandably, there were now a lot of envious, bitter people sitting on the board of directors. At least Chuck had understood, and he’d returned to his prior chairman position with grace.
Nicole made a quick series of folds in the sheet of paper, and the shape of a bird began to take form. “I should have asked for more help when I took over as CEO. Daedalus is too big, and my suggestions to sell off everything but the medical and scientific divisions haven’t exactly been popular.”
Chuck gave her a no shit look. “That’s because you’re asking that we keep the least profitable branches of the company and get rid of what our father founded the company on.” His leather chair creaked as he shifted. “Acquiring, training, and selling vampire servants are the cornerstone of Daedalus. We make billions from supplying the public with vampires and all the accessories that go with them.” It took effort to not roll her eyes. “Oh, please. We make nearly as much from our scientific breakthroughs.
Or haven’t you noticed that people will practically sell their souls to stay young another fifty years or to heal from serious injuries faster or to be cured of cancer?
We need to focus more fully on medical advancements.
Let someone else handle the tasks that don’t reflect positively on us.”
“Like?”
“Like draining recently deceased humans to package and distribute their blood to vampire supply shops.
Like conditioning and processing newly captured vampires before they’re sent to a training facility.” Nicole might hate vampires, but neutering, defanging, and torturing them until they broke didn’t sit well with her.
“Look, Nicole,” Chuck said, with a deep, long-suffering sigh. “I understand why you want to concentrate company efforts on the research side. I know how hard it is for you to live with your medical condition.”
She ground her teeth at his bullshit soothing tone.
Her ideas for the company were not about her medical issues. Her ideas were about helping people while getting away from the vampire trade. “But?”
Chuck braced his forearms on the desk and leaned closer to the screen, his expression a mask of concern.
“But some Daedalus staff members think that’s why you ordered the deaths of those vampires. To sabotage the company.”
“What?” Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Come on, sis. Like it’s so ludicrous? You hate vampires.”
“And that’s reason enough to sabotage the company? You honestly believe I’d do that?”
“Of course not.” He jammed his fingers through his two-hundred-dollar haircut, leaving messy grooves.
“I’m just telling you what people are saying.”
The intercom beeped, and the gate guard’s voice droned. “Mr. Altrough is here to see you.”
Dammit. “Let him in.” She was going to need more paper.
Chuck tapped his Montblanc on the notepad. He’d never been able to sit still. Not that she had any room to judge. She had a house and an office full of origami art that spoke volumes about her inability to relax.
“You finally giving Roland a chance?” he asked.
Still irritated by Chuck’s casual revelation that people inside the company believed her capable of such a despicable act, she snapped, “Not on your life.
But he won’t take no for an answer.”
Nicole doubted that Roland Altrough, executive vice president in charge of Daedalus’s Lifeblood Supply division—one of the divisions she wanted gone would ever back off his pursuit of her. At least, not while she was in charge of Daedalus. Maybe there really was a bright side to being ousted from the company.
“Then why are you seeing him tonight?”
“Because besides you, he’s the one person on my side in this mess.”
One pale eyebrow cocked up. “So you think that if
you sleep with Roland, he’ll stay on your side?”
“I’m not sleeping with him. He’s a pig.” A handsome pig but a disgustingly misogynistic creature nonetheless.
Chuck grinned. “Smart girl.” Behind him, a shadow approached, and Nicole’s heart lurched. It was only Jonathan, Chuck’s longtime servant, but she always had the same reaction. Twenty years had passed since her attack, yet she still got jumpy at the sight of a vampire.
As Jonathan placed a glass of bourbon on the desk,
Nicole held her breath. Chuck shifted at the same time as the vampire pulled his hand away, and the glass tipped, sloshing amber liquid onto the papers.
With a snarl, Chuck shoved himself out of his chair and backhanded Jonathan hard enough to send the defanged vampire reeling into the wall.
“You clumsy shit!” When Jonathan scrambled to clean up the mess, Chuck struck him again, and Nicole sat, stunned. Chuck had always had a temper, but she’d never seen him attack anyone like that. Then again, they’d lived oceans apart for two decades, so things could have changed . . . but this much? He’d always been kind to her family’s servants, especially
Terese, whom he’d sometimes brought extra blood as a treat. “Get the hell out. You can forget your ration this week.”
The vampire’s silver eyes flashed, but whether it was with disappointment or anger, she couldn’t tell.
After Jonathan slipped out of the room, Nicole found her voice.
“That was a little harsh, don’t you think?”
Chuck looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “He’s just a vampire.”
“It was just a spilled drink,” she shot back, still shocked by this side of her brother. How could this be the same person who had smuggled chocolates to
Terese on her birthday? “Don’t you worry that you’re going to push him too far?”
“That’s ridiculous. What happened to you—to all of us—can’t happen again. We have better safeguards in place now.” Chuck graced her with a look dripping with syrupy sympathy, the kind reserved for people with a phobia everyone else thought was stupid. “It was a long time ago. You need to get over it.”
Get over it. He wasn’t the one who’d barely survived a brutal attack that killed almost everyone she loved and left her with a rare medical condition that would
eventually kill her. Right now, the meds developed by
Daedalus scientists were helping to control the disease ravaging her organs, but eventually, she’d grow resistant. Then she’d have a lot of misery to look forward to until she finally died in agony.
So, yeah, get over it wasn’t an option.
“Attacks on humans by their servants still happen,” she pointed out, although, granted, rebellion wasn’t that common. Microchip implants that could be activated by special remote wrist devices kept vampires in fear for their health and were much more effective than the old-style collars that only kept vampires from crossing barriers.
But if the Vampire Humane Society had anything to say about it, the new devices would soon be outlawed. Nicole shivered, once again wishing she was still in Paris, where groups like the VHS weren’t tolerated, and vampire slaves were an extravagance reserved only for the wealthiest of the wealthy.
“Don’t worry, Nikki. My servants wouldn’t dare lay a hand on me or my family.”
Nicole’s father had probably believed the same thing, until a vampire decapitated him and left his head mounted on a newel post only a few feet from where Nicole now stood.
You believed Terese would never harm you.
Nicole still believed that. The vampire had been like a big sister to Nicole, spending time with her when her mother couldn’t, teaching her things her tutors wouldn’t. Terese’s gentleness and the ring Nicole now wore on her right hand were what Nicole clung to when she needed to be reminded that not all vampires were monsters.
But then she remembered that Terese had died at the hands of another vampire. A vampire she’d trusted with all her heart. Nicole hadn’t seen much that day, but what she had seen—a blade at Terese’s throat, held there by her mate as Terese pleaded and cried—was seared into Nicole’s brain. Terese, so birdlike and fragile, was certainly no match or the much larger male whose growl had frightened Nicole so badly she’d wet herself.
The scene replayed itself over and over in Nicole’s nightmares. Sometimes in those dreams, Nicole tried to overpower Riker and save Terese. Sometimes Nicole managed to scream, something she hadn’t done in real life. But the end result was always the same.
Terese would die, and usually, Riker killed Nicole, too.
With his teeth.
Swallowing against bloody nightmares and the too-vivid real-life memories, Nicole hovered her finger over the end button on the tele-screen. “I gotta go, Chuck. Roland is going to help me review my presentation to the board.”
Chuck nodded. “Don’t stay up too late. Get some rest. And for God’s sake, be on time tomorrow. You need every minute you can get if the board is going to rule at one o’clock sharp whether you’re there or not.”