Revolution (Replica) (12 page)

“There hasn’t been anything serious,” Shrimp said. “Bumps and bruises, is all. But security is getting uptight about it. They’ve beefed up those checkpoints around the border. Enough to scare off customers. Even Angel’s is half empty these days, and cuttin’ off the money ain’t gonna go over too well, if you know what I mean.”

If Dorothy was hoping to provoke rioting in the Basement, then she was on the right track. Someday, probably in the near future, some Employee or Executive was going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people and was going to get killed. And that would give Dorothy just the excuse she needed to take even more drastic measures.

*   *   *

One
week after arriving in Red Death territory, Nadia arose in the evening to find that Shrimp wasn’t bustling around the kitchen as usual, and Agnes said he hadn’t been around when she’d emerged from the shower earlier. His absence made both of them vaguely uneasy, and when the boys joined them at the time when Shrimp ordinarily served dinner, he still wasn’t around.

Shrimp showed up before they had a chance to imagine too many worst-case scenarios, arriving at the apartment with three garment bags draped over his arm.

“Maiden wants to see you,” he announced.

“So you keep telling us,” Nate said irritably. “It’s not like we’re hard to find.”

Bishop shot him a warning look, but Shrimp was a hard man to annoy—which was a good thing, considering the state of everyone’s temper after the long period of inactivity.

“For real this time,” Shrimp assured them. “Dinner at his place tonight, eight o’clock. Just the Execs, though,” he said with an apologetic shrug toward Bishop and Dante.

Nate shot up from the sofa he’d been sitting on beside Bishop, a belligerent scowl on his face. “No way. We all go, or nobody goes.” Of all of them, Nate seemed to be struggling most with their maddening captivity.

Shrimp met the scowl with one of his own. “Bishop, put a leash on your boy before he gets himself in trouble.”

Apparently, it wasn’t that hard to annoy Shrimp after all. Not for Nate, at least.

Bishop grabbed Nate’s arm and yanked him back down to the sofa so abruptly Nate let out a little grunt of surprise.

“If Maiden says Dante and me stay here, we stay here,” Bishop said in response to Nate’s shocked expression. “And you need to think over anything you want to say at least three times before word one leaves your mouth tonight. You do
not
want to piss him off.”

Maybe having Nate and Maiden in the same room was a bad idea, though Nadia didn’t suppose they had any choice in the matter. Nate had never been any good at guarding his words. To be fair, he’d never had to be, never been as vulnerable as someone like Nadia, who didn’t have the cloak of near invincibility that came with being the Chairman Heir.

But Nate wasn’t the Chairman Heir anymore, was no longer anywhere near the top of the food chain, and he couldn’t afford to let his mouth get away from him.

Nate nodded his acceptance of Bishop’s warning while still managing to look mutinous. If Maiden were to act deliberately provoking, Nadia had no idea if Nate would be able to control his temper. Bishop leaned over and whispered something in Nate’s ear that coaxed a reluctant smile out of Nate—and made him blush to the roots of his hair. Nadia was perfectly happy not to know what Bishop had said.

“Good decision,” Shrimp said, but there was still an unaccustomed tension in his shoulders. Bishop had said Shrimp was the one person who wasn’t afraid of Maiden, but Nadia wondered if that was wholly true. Or maybe he was just worried that Nate would run his mouth at dinner and someone would get hurt.

“Will you be coming with us?” Nadia asked Shrimp. She doubted he could or would help them if they got into trouble with his brother, but she had a feeling things would go more smoothly if they had a Basement ally with them to help keep things on an even keel.

“I’ll be there,” he confirmed. He brushed at his orange hair, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “And, uh, I brought you some stuff to wear. Maiden likes his dinner guests to dress up. I know shit about sizes, so I had to guess.”

Nadia shared a grimace with Agnes. They’d both gotten used to wearing Shrimp’s roomy, comfortable castoffs, and changing into elaborate Basement regalia held no appeal. Not that Nadia had any intention of defying Maiden’s wishes when he held her life and the lives of all her friends in his hands.

Shrimp distributed the three garment bags, and Nadia and Agnes returned to their bedroom to change, both expecting the worst. Basement outfits were not the kind of thing you ordinarily carried around in garment bags, so Nadia had no idea what they would find when they opened those zippers.

“How bad can it be?” Agnes asked with a little smile, then dropped her garment bag on the bed and yanked down the zipper. She was clearly braced to see something hideously flamboyant, and her mouth dropped open in shock when the opening revealed a length of scarlet silk chiffon.

Nadia crept closer as Agnes reached in and pulled out a padded hanger, carefully extracting the silk from the bag and revealing a knee-length cocktail dress with a beaded bodice and short, fluttery sleeves. The skirt was a layer of diaphanous chiffon over a closely fit sheath with a slit that reached to mid-thigh.

It was not at all something Agnes would usually wear, based on Nadia’s admittedly limited experience with the girl. Agnes tended to favor muted pastel colors or basic black, with skirts or pants that were very loosely fitted, most likely in an attempt to camouflage her bottom-heavy figure. She probably couldn’t have picked a more unflattering wardrobe if she’d tried. But the dress she was still holding up and gaping at was exactly the kind of thing Nadia would have chosen for her.

“Well,” Nadia said, “that’s a step up from what I was expecting.”

Agnes let out a little huff of laughter. “More like several staircases up.” She shook her head. “But I think Shrimp must have mixed up the bags. He must have meant this one for you. You’d look so beautiful in it!”

No, she wouldn’t, Nadia knew. The red was far too bright for her pale complexion and blond hair, and she wasn’t curvy enough to do the fitted skirt justice. Shrimp had known exactly what he was doing when he picked the dress for Agnes.

Agnes tried to hold the hanger out to her, but Nadia pretended not to notice as she unzipped her own bag.

Nadia’s dress was lovely, but nowhere near as striking as Agnes’s. It was the kind of dress a woman wore when she wanted to disappear into the sea of little black dresses at a cocktail party, although the panels of deep red lace around the edges of the flaring hem added a spot of color and interest. Nadia had to suppress a smile as she realized that Shrimp had chosen the perfect showstopper for Agnes while picking something much more ordinary for Nadia. The two of them did seem to be getting along awfully well as Agnes grew more proficient in the kitchen and Shrimp trusted her with more challenging tasks.

“That one must be meant for me,” Agnes said, looking at the black dress longingly.

Nadia smiled at her. “I don’t think so.”

“But I can’t wear this!” Agnes wailed, eyes wide.

“You’re freaking out over a red cocktail dress after walking around the Basement wearing nothing but a bodysuit and boots?”

Agnes’s face turned a shade of red that was a nice match for her dress. “But that outfit was practically invisible out there,” she protested, waving a hand in the direction of the window. “No one gave me a second look.” She swallowed hard and tried again to hand her dress to Nadia. “I’m sure this was meant for you.”

Despite their differences in body type, Nadia suspected she could fit into Agnes’s dress and vice versa, but there might be one way she could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the red dress was meant for Agnes.

Laying her own dress down on the bed, Nadia reached into the garment bag once again and felt around the bottom. Sure enough, the outfit came with shoes. A pair of black velvet pumps that fit Nadia’s small feet perfectly.

With a groan, Agnes pulled out the shoes that came with the red dress and found a pair of strappy red heels that were two sizes larger than the ones Nadia had on.

Nadia grinned at her. “The shoes fit, Cinderella.”

“I could wear these shoes with that dress,” Agnes said, staring longingly at the black.

Nadia shook her head. “The lace panels would clash. And I suspect Shrimp would be insulted. I’m afraid you’re stuck being stunning tonight.”

Agnes gave her a dirty look. “Maybe it won’t fit,” she said hopefully, but they both knew it would.

“Who’d have thought we’d have to wear cocktail dresses to have dinner with a gang lord?” Nadia said as she took her dress off the hanger and started to change. She had a feeling it was time to set aside all her preconceived notions of what a gang lord would be like. Except for the part about him being dangerous.
That
he couldn’t change with a hundred beautiful dresses or fancy manners—assuming he had the latter, which considering the dresses seemed like a good bet. A wolf in sheep’s clothing was still a wolf.

CHAPTER NINE

Tonight
was far from the first time Nate had had another guy choose his outfit for him—he’d had a valet for as long as he could remember—but he’d never been dressed in borrowed clothes before, and so far, he was not enjoying the experience. The charcoal gray suit Shrimp had provided was expensive and well cut, but its shoulders were too broad for him, and the sleeves came all the way down over the ball of his thumbs. The thing would probably fit Dante’s muscular form just right, but Nate felt like a skinny kid wearing his father’s clothes. At least the pants fit better, though he had to cinch the belt tight to hold them up.

If he were dressing for a business meeting or a media event, Nate would undoubtedly have skipped the bland red tie and pocket square that came with the outfit, but tonight was not the time to show his usual attitude, so he put on the tie and stuffed the pocket square into its proper place, then examined himself in the bathroom mirror. Except for the imperfect fit of the suit, he wouldn’t have looked out of place stepping into a boardroom. Not at all the look he’d have chosen when going to meet a Basement gang lord who was named after his favorite torture device.

Nate stopped dead in his tracks when he stepped out of the bathroom and got a look at the girls, who were waiting in the hallway for him. Nadia looked like her old, elegant self in a conservative black cocktail dress accented with red lace, though she wore no makeup, and her hair was styled in a simple bun that cried out for a dose of hair spray.

Agnes, however, looked like a different person in a look-at-me red dress that accented her figure perfectly. The skirt’s slit revealed a generous glimpse of thigh, and the red heels made her legs look long and sexy. The mousy brown hair with baby blue highlights detracted slightly from the look, as did her guarded, closed-off body language. This was not her usual camouflage attire, and she wasn’t exactly wearing it with confidence.

“You look amazing,” he told her, triggering one of her easy blushes.

“Hot enough to burn,” Shrimp agreed, emerging from the bedroom at the end of the hall. His suit was a tailored pinstripe, under which he was wearing a red tuxedo shirt that was a good match to Agnes’s dress. Nate wondered if that was by accident or by design.

Agnes was no good at taking compliments—Nate had the impression she hadn’t received a whole lot of them during her life. Instead of answering, she just stood there and blushed, her gaze fixed on the floor. He wanted to say something to put her at ease—not that he’d ever had much success with that before—but Shrimp brushed by him before he could think of anything.

“Let’s not keep Maiden waiting,” Shrimp said, holding out his elbow to Agnes. Nate wondered if he practiced these gentlemanly manners with the women of Red Death, or whether this was something special for Agnes. He suspected the latter.

Nate held his elbow out for Nadia, and together they followed Shrimp and Agnes to the door, where Dante and Bishop were waiting to see them off.

“Be good,” Bishop reminded him, only half joking.

Nate wished everyone would stop treating him like some out-of-control hothead determined to run his mouth no matter what the consequences. He understood
why
they saw him that way, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting. And it sure as hell got under his skin that no one seemed to have noticed how much he had changed. He would never be as quiet as Agnes or as cautious as Nadia, but he wasn’t about to put everyone in danger by antagonizing Maiden.

They took the stairs to the top floor, because no one wanted to risk having a power outage while they were in the elevator.

As soon as they stepped out of the stairwell, it was obvious that Maiden had done a massive renovation of the whole floor. The kind of renovation that required knocking down walls and ripping out appliances and wiring.

The stairwell opened out into what in an office building Nate would have called a reception area. The reception here, however, was far from warm and friendly. Four guards with machine guns and body armor were stationed around the room, and their first reaction when the door had opened was to train their guns on it. Shrimp took it completely in stride, no doubt used to the reception, and the machine guns lowered.

“This way,” he prompted, giving Agnes’s arm a little tug when she initially stayed rooted to the floor. Unlike Nate and Nadia, this was almost certainly the first time she’d had a gun pointed at her, and Nate couldn’t blame her for being unsettled.

Shrimp led them toward a long hallway, and Agnes balked again. Nate and Nadia moved forward, and that was when Nate saw the reason for Agnes’s hesitation.

Lining the hallway on both sides was a grisly array of coffin-like metal cases, their insides bristling with spikes. The iron maidens for which Maiden was named. Some were rusted, corroded antiques, and some were polished and shiny as if made yesterday, but all of them had vicious teeth. A couple of them had teeth so long that it was obviously impossible for anyone to survive if they were closed, but most were short enough that it seemed possible their victims could survive and suffer for a long time.