The Monarch (14 page)

 

17

Tartaruga Island

12:00
A.M.
Local Time

L
ARA
K
RING VAULTED
out of the elevator and launched herself down the complex's main level corridor, her long Chinese cheongsam dress restricting her movements so she looked more like a ballerina executing a pas de bourrée than an infuriated executive. But she was more than even that. She was Kring Industries' second-­in-­command, superseded only by Nathan Kring, her father.

Her bone-­white hair, stark against the bloodred silk, flowed behind her as if it were spreading her scent of jasmine and coconut rather than trying to keep up with its owner. Her black alligator Manolo Blahnik high-­heeled boots—­not easy to get on an island somewhere east of Zanzibar—­hammered out a typewriter staccato, warning everyone between her and the wide, winding staircase that led to her father's office of the price they'd pay if they tried to intercede. Though at this hour, most staffers were sound asleep.

Her South Asian features were from her late mother, but everything else was from her father. She was his younger female doppelganger in every way, but one: She wasn't dying.

“You're going to
meet
her?” Lara spouted even louder than she'd intended as she burst into Nathan's office, flipping her disheveled hair out of her green eyes.

“Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen,” Nathan said, pressing a button on a remote control that muted the voices coming from the displays embedded in the wall opposite his desk. Lara knew the mute also cut off the sound and video going out of the office.

“Is it true?” Lara demanded, holding her clipboard of papers close to her chest, her bluster already threatening to falter in his presence.

“Not that it's any concern of yours, but yes, it's true,” Nathan said. He walked around his desk and sat in his leather chair, as if preparing himself to withstand a cross-­examination. Lara noticed he'd placed his wheelchair off to the side where it would be out of view of the camera set in the wall above the displays.

“Now? What are you thinking? Shouldn't you be in the data center making preparations?” she said, stalking toward the desk, slamming her clipboard down when she reached it.

“Everything is on schedule. They're not children. I doubt that things will fall apart if I'm gone for a few hours,” Nathan said, swiveling back and forth in his chair as he spoke, as if sitting was allowing too much energy to build up in him.

Lara knew she couldn't talk him out of his little field trip any more than she could talk him out of the plan, but he had to know he couldn't circumvent her like this. If the plan failed, she would need to know everything that was happening. Everything. Right down to the last order and penny. But that was defeatist thinking, of course, and he simply wasn't capable of failure; which was one of the faults that had gotten him into this situation in the first place.

Instead of continuing her tirade, she clocked around the desk and put her hand on his forehead. As she expected, he was burning up.

“When was the shot?” she asked.

“Yesterday,” he said, pulling his head back from her hand. She knew he was lying.

“Is she monitoring you?” Lara asked.

“Don't concern yourself with Sophia. Your sister knows what she's doing. Look at me,” he said, smiling, his eyes ridiculously wide and bright.

Lara cringed inside at the mention of her name. “I wish you would stop calling her that,” Lara said. She took her hand away. “You seem fine, but remember the last—­”

“I
am
fine,” he said, slipping his hand around and squeezing her rear end. “Why don't you let me show you?”

“I'm busy and you're in the middle of a meeting,” she said, trying to hide the mix of fear and anger blossoming in her chest.

“It's been so long,” he said. She knew the serum was fueling more than his legs.

She picked up her papers and clasped them to her breast, her eyes flicking to the row of faces on the monitors. She knew they couldn't see her, but it was still disconcerting.

“We talked about this. I don't want to talk about it again. Ever,” she said, unable to look him in the eye, the memories of all their past encounters assaulting her.

“Fine. Be that way,” he said, sitting up straight and smoothing his lapels. “What are you busy with? Anything you need me for?” His tone changed and he was the CEO again.

“No. The consortium is petitioning us again about our reserves. I can handle it, unless you'll change your mind.”

“We've been over this. We might be sitting on the only natural gas pocket between here and the mainland, but it's finite. If we manage ourselves, we have maybe fifty years' worth. If we start handing it out, we'll be just like them; reliant on someone else. And you know their proposal is just the start. Next they'll want to use our airstrip or farm the back side of the island. No, I've been clear on this.”

“All right, then no, I don't need any help,” she said, and began heading out of the room.

“In that case, let me get back to the vultures before they start eating each other,” he said. “See if Sophia needs anything. I mean it. She's your sister, whether you like it or not,” he said. “And she's crucial to the plan. Without her—­”

“All right, fine!” Lara said louder than she meant to, the combined distaste for Sophia and her father wrenching away her self-­control.

“And let me know when Thomas gets in,” Nathan said, turning back to the screens. She flinched slightly.

“Yes, Father,” Lara said. She left his office feeling like the energy had been sucked from her bones. And she realized that of everyone on the island, the one she hated the most was herself.

L
ARA RAN HER
pass card through the card reader, but instead of a green light giving her access to Sophia's lab, it buzzed and blinked red. She tried it again, paying more attention this time, but again it buzzed denial. She examined the card and carefully wiped the strip clean.

“Come on,” she said to the device. After five failed attempts the door would lock down for an hour and the guards would come running. She had authority over them, but it would still be embarrassing. “What the hell has she done to this thing?”

She carefully ran the card through a third time. This time, the light turned green and she heard the electronic
buzz-­click
of the lock releasing. Perturbed, she pushed through the door and entered her
sister's
world.

The lab gleamed in the dim light coming from a few workstations. In days gone by, the lab had accommodated dozens of scientists and lab techs, but as her father's condition worsened, they'd slowly either been let go or reassigned. Sophia Kring was the only one who inhabited its beakers and test tubes now.

“Is that thing sticking again?” a voice said from deep inside the lab. Lara was almost a foot taller than her sister, but she couldn't see her from the door.

Lara hated the lab. Aside from the knot in her stomach whenever she saw or spoke to Sophia, it smelled terrible. She couldn't even think of what it smelled like. The closest she could guess was rotting garbage.

And all those disgusting animals she has.

She especially hated the little mice, though she'd never show it on her face. Thomas had taught her early in her lessons that rule number one was never let your opponent see your true emotions.
I
'm already a black belt in that department.

Lara took a deep breath and clip-­clopped back into the lab. She found Sophia sitting on the floor with a rabbit and two mice in her lap. She wasn't running any experiment, she was just playing with them.

“What's up?” Sophia asked from the floor. She was wearing a lab coat over her usual sweater and jeans, her glasses pushed up on the crown of her long black hair, which was tied back in a ponytail. Several strands either had never made it into the hair band or had worked their way out through the day.

“He wanted me to check and see if you needed anything,” Lara said. She couldn't say Father because that would mean acknowledging that Nathan was Sophia's father too; something she just couldn't do.

“I've done pretty much all the protocols I can for now,” Sophia said. “I don't have any more donor material, and since it's the largest constituent in the serum—­well, you see my point.”

Lara hated the way she talked down to her. Just because Sophia went to university didn't mean she had to rub it in Lara's face every ten minutes.

“Fine. Well, I checked,” Lara said, spinning on her heels and heading back the way she came.

“Wait! Hang on a sec,” Sophia said, struggling to get up without freeing her creatures. She dropped the mice into a maze, cradled the rabbit like it was a baby, and walked over to Lara.

“What is it?”

“No one's told me what this ‘big thing' is, yet. He's taken all my ­people and just keeps telling me I'll have to work harder. But
you
know, don't you.” It wasn't a question.

“You don't need to know.”

“Damn it, that's what he keeps saying! Somebody better let me inside the loop or I'm going to . . .” Sophia let her threat trail off. Lara stepped closer to her and stared down into her brown eyes.

“You're going to what?” Lara held her stare until she looked away.

“I don't know. Wait I guess. That's all I ever do,” she said, wandering away, patting the rabbit.

“If there's nothing else—­”

“Actually, I'm missing a bunch of animal tranquilizers. You don't know anything about that, do you? Or is that need-­to-­know too?”

Lara turned and headed out of the lab. She got halfway to the door this time.

“He's self-­medicating, you know!” Sophia yelled after her.

Lara only hesitated for a moment before using her pass card to open the door. Thankfully it worked on the first swipe from the inside. She'd known about Nathan giving himself shots of the serum for weeks. How the creator and keeper of that serum could only now be noticing was beyond her. As the door shut, Lara heard a muffled “Fuck you too.”

That was new
, she thought with a smile. She'd been treating Sophia the same way ever since Sophia had returned to the island with her precious master's degrees, but Sophia usually just took it in her own self-­deprecating way. Even though it was through a closing door, that was downright aggressive for Sophia.

Before she could think about it anymore, Lara realized what time it was. If she didn't hurry she'd be late for her moonlight swim, one of the few pleasures she had.

Well, that and counting down the hours her father had left.

A
N HOUR LATER,
Lara stood naked in the moonlight on her favorite stretch of beach, her bronze skin glistening from her swim. She turned her face to the moist, warm wind, her eyes closed, and listened to the ocean.

“Beautiful,” Thomas's Australian voice crooned as he stepped from behind the scant foliage. Lara's breath caught and she felt something run through her body, heating and moistening as it went. She turned around to see that he too was naked, though not as tanned. He was twenty years her senior, but still the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

“Baby,” she said. She hated that when she spoke to him she always sounded so fragile, nowhere near the alpha creature she was with everyone else. Hated it and loved it. She fought the urge to run to him, feeling her breath deepen and her heart pound.

He was across the sand in the blink of an eye, his mouth hard on hers, his fist firmly gripping the hair on the back of her head. She kissed him back harder, almost hungry. She didn't know who she was when she was with him, but she didn't care. She raised one long leg around his powerful buttocks and then they were lost in each other, slamming to the beach.

When they were both sated and exhausted, he rolled off her onto his back and she quickly took her place at his side, every inch of her pressed into him and her head on his powerful chest as if she were afraid he'd get away. It was always like this right after. It would pass. For now, she enjoyed the moment. No expectations or demands. No father, no disease.

“Why didn't you tell me you were back?” Lara finally managed after several minutes.

“I didn't know I was coming back,” Thomas said. She understood. It was typical of her father to give someone a task and then change it at the last moment to keep them off balance. Even so, when it happened now, she was always afraid it had another meaning. She wasn't sure what her father would do if he found out about her and Thomas, but something told her if he did she'd never see Thomas again. And neither would anybody else.

“Wait here,” Thomas said abruptly, getting up and trotting over to his pile of clothes. She watched him move in the moonlight and felt herself wanting him all over again. A moment later, he came back with something in his hands, plopping himself back down beside her.

“What is it?”

“I wanted you to have this,” he said, holding out a knife in a sheath. He pulled the blade out. It sparkled in the moonlight. He turned it over a few times and then resheathed it and handed it to her. “Just in case.”

She understood what he meant. She examined the gift.

“It goes here,” he said, taking it back and sliding his hands up her leg. He wrapped the sheath's straps around her thigh and secured them. Caressing the knife, he leaned down and gently kissed her inner thigh before rolling back on his elbows beside her.

“It's perfect,” she said, fingering the hilt. Then after some time she said, “When do you—­”

“Dawn. He wants my arse back in New York before the press conference,” Thomas said. Then he raised his head so he could look her in the eye. “Come with me.”