Page 47 of Pretty Nightmare

“It’s not a job, per se. It’s a life.”

I expect a quick quip back from Nathan St. James. But he’s cautious now. Or maybe he’s just wounded and he suddenly realizes all this talking has cost him, because he looks like shit. At any rate, he takes his time to consider his words. Finally, he says, “Do I have to answer to you?”

Of course that’s his first question. God forbid this boy have to take orders from me. “No. I’m a silent partner in this particular endeavor.”

I expect a comeback to that. Something along the lines of, Haven’t you always been the silent partner? Wasn’t that why you were bred in the first place? Just a replacement. Not even the replacement, either. Because I had those older brothers. I was the backup’s backup’s backup. Not sure that makes sense. But it encompasses the general idea.

Nathan chews on this last bit of information. “Will I answer to Adam?”

“No.”

“Donovan?”

“Listen to me. Because my head is pounding like a motherfucker right now. I’ve got a team working on a project, and I’m down a grunt at the moment. You can have the job if the boys can trust you. How that shakes out is not up to me. Like I said, I run them, but I don’t get involved. So if they kill you because you piss them off with your wild mouth, Nathan, that’s on you.”

He sighs as he rolls this around in his mind so he can see it from all angles.

But he can’t see it from all angles. Even if he had all the pertinent information, which he doesn’t.

He can’t see it because he blew out his knee. No more football for this boy. He could go back to college with the money I pay him for the cottage and the land, but he’s in way too deep now. He’s seen way too much. And I don’t mean that in a threatening way.

He’s absolutely right about one thing. I can’t kill him. Somehow, some way, Indie would find out. And then I’d lose her. And why the fuck would I put up with ten years of all the shit we’ve been through if I were just gonna let her slip through my fingers after I lost my cool in a critical moment?

That’s not gonna happen.

Nathan is Company. He might not be an integral part of it, but his grandfather raised him up knowing where he came from. And once you understand that there is a group of super-elite assholes running this world and then you find out you’re one of them—no matter how low your rung on that ladder—that shit consumes you.

He wants in.

I can take a good guess and figure his grandfather tried to shelter him from the Company life. Hell, I’m pretty sure my father, and Adam’s father, and every Company son’s fucking father had that same idea at one point right after their baby boys were born.

But it never works, does it?

I was sold to the Boucher family.

Adam was trained. Only half finished, but it doesn’t matter.

Donovan took the bait whole. Hook, line, and sinker.

I could list every single Company man I know of as an example. Nick Tate wanted out too. Look where that got him. James Fenici turned down his little-girl promise, Harper Tate. But he came after her more than a decade later and took her back.

Power is a sickness and we’re all infected.

Nathan sighs. It’s a resigned sigh. And his words are low and filled with resignation when they come out. “Will I have to kill people, McKay?”

“Only if they get in the way, Nathan.”

It’s not the answer he wanted. But it’s the same one my father gave me when I asked him that very question. And it’s the truth. That’s the only thing that matters now.

“Does Adam know about this?”

I look over my shoulder at the mansion. No real reason. Adam’s not there. But he’ll be back. And if he ever figures out what I’ve been doing in the years since his head injury, he won’t be happy. “No,” I tell Nathan, and then I look him in the eyes. “He doesn’t know. And it needs to stay that way.”

Nathan leans up against a tree, exhausted, the adrenaline of the fight and flight gone now. He’s hurt. Probably badly hurt. And he’s got to be wondering, at least on some level, what Indie’s intentions were when she did this to him.

Did she really want him dead?

I wish I had an answer. If I did, I’d tell him yes or no definitively. Just so he could deal with it and move on.