Despite how this evening had gone, I was also grateful that I’d got to keep Matthew. I was closer to him than to my parents. He’d basically raised us, and now he was my personal assistant.
I sliced through the wind with how fast I was going, and it bellowed like it was trying to slow me down, but it failed.
The city blurred, steel, glass, and neon lights blending together, Lorens Industries logos on half the billboards. I dropped a gear and pushed further. Faster. Horns blared, but I was gone before anyone could do anything.
Traffic thinned, buildings got shorter. The air got colder and cleaner as I hit the open road, heading away from Harborview along the coastline that led to Port Skelton.
There was a lookout not far out of town. It’s where Archer and I met up when we wanted to make sure we were alone. Dad had been all for me forming strong “connections” with the Kovats family, until he realized I’d only befriended the family’s outcast. I hated them all except Archer, and I tolerated Henrik for his sake, but something about that guy was off. I didn’t trust him.
I eased off the throttle enough to give Archer a fighting chance at catching up before we reached the lookout. He managed to just as we pulled up.
“You have a death wish or something?” he shouted at me.
I rolled my eyes as I pulled my helmet off, running my fingers through the short strands. “Not my fault I’m a better rider than you.”
“Better. Ha. Interesting way of saying stupider.”
This far outside the city the water was lit only by moonlight, the ocean blending with the horizon. Indigo and black. I inhaled the coastal air. It smelled like freedom.
It was temporary.
“How was the party?” he asked, voice muffled by his helmet.
“Same as they always are. Why weren’t you there?”
“Had a fight with Dad.” He hesitated before reaching up to very carefully pull his helmet off. I realized why the moment I saw his face.
“Jesus, Archer. Did your dad do that?”
I wasn’t sure how he’d even been able to see with the way one of his eyes was almost swollen shut. There was a split on his lower lip and one on his eyebrow, and dark circles under both eyes from what was clearly a broken nose.
“I’m gay,” he blurted.
It wasn’t the response I was expecting. It took me a moment to process. “Okay,” I landed on eventually.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“What did you expect, a blow job?”
He laughed. “No. Just… something. Rejection maybe.”
“Is that why your dad hurt you?”
Archer sighed, looking out over the water for a while before he answered me. “He walked in on me and a guy. Lost his shit.”
I didn’t know what to say. My greatest fear was my father finding out that I was only attracted to men, but even if he did, I couldn’t imagine him hurting me like that.
“Andor Kovats wanted nothing to do with my brother and me when we were born. Children of the mistress. It was a scandal, and he paid my mother off to keep us well away from the “real” Kovats family. We lived with her in Port Skelton until just after we started middle school. Then he found out something about my brother and took us away from Mom. Brought us to Harborview to live with the family. But I know he always wanted Henrik, not me. This was just what he needed to push me out.”
Archer didn’t talk about his family often, and I knew better than to ask.
Lorens Industries made tech, from smartwatches to high-end surveillance gear, covering pretty much everything you could plug in, sync, or spy with. To the general public we were phones, tablets, smart appliances, and nanny cams, but there was more to our company than that. We made tracking software, biometric scanners, security drones, things that interested those who operated in the shadows: government agencies, private contractors, and certain others with old money and power like the Kovats family.
I didn’t know exactly what the partnership between Lorens Industries and the Kovats family involved, Dad hadn’t let me in on that information yet, but I knew enough to understand they had secrets that weren’t to be messed with and that they were dangerous people.
