Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) (16 page)

Here and now, when I need my voice most, I’m trapped. The world has come to love Trevor Stone. Nobody knows who Daniel Rice is, even if he’s been the wizard behind the fortune all along.
 

“I don’t understand,” I say.
 

Trevor’s eyebrows bunch on his face. He cranes his neck, tries to see from his position near the table holding this competition’s final rose.
 

“Tom?” I say, turning to Welty. “What is this?”
 

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just the messenger. The results are straight from Halo.”
 

Welty’s simple mention of the algorithm chills me. Halo is not public knowledge. Halo is a beta program that might, in the right hands, become a true AI. Alexa has all sorts of ambitions for it — rattling the bushes to find questionable partners like Caspian, like the organization I suspect the board almost blabbed to me before. Right now, Halo is helping us to find an avatar — someone whose unique psychology Eros can remix into a trillion-dollar adult entertainment franchise. I think of it as Porn 2.0, but nobody really knows what it is. Here, we’re all blind, merely following the next ludicrous, lucrative step.
 

But nobody is supposed to know about Halo.
 

Nobody’s
ever
supposed to discuss it.
 

And the fact that Welty has just spoken the algorithm’s name in front of Jessica and Bridget forces my breath to hitch, confirms that he knows about our tampering. His voicing the word reminds me of a villain telling his plans to the tied-up hero because soon the hero will be dead and it won’t matter anyway.
 

I’m still shaking my head. Still looking at the piece of expensive-feeling paper. The torn envelope is in my left hand, forgotten. The girls are restless, shifting their feet, murmuring inaudibly.
 

“What does it say?” Trevor asks.
 

“Yes, Daniel,” Welty says, still wearing his plastic smile. “What
does
it say?”
 

“It says ‘conditional.’ Behind an asterisk.”
 

“And?” Welty prompts.
 

“And,” I say,
“‘Bridget.’”

But that can’t be. We sabotaged and sabotaged and sabotaged. Bridget should look as appealing to Halo as a year-old piece of gum stuck beneath a school desk. She should have almost no score. Jessica has been flexing her memory, bedding Trevor like a champ, displaying everything we’ve decided Halo wants in our avatar. She’s smart and remembers everything; she’s beautiful and adventurous. Every man will want her. They’ll model Jessica inside and out. With the help of the board’s quiet partners, ten years from now they’ll have a product —
some
sort of product, though I shiver to think of the form it might take — that will make the entire porn industry obsolete. Porn fills an evolutionary need, mostly for men, but it does so clumsily. Porn succeeds because thus far there’s been nothing better. But that will all change once Eros stocks the shelves with Porn 2.0, after all they learn from Jessica.
 

Jessica
. Not Bridget.
 

Welty is laughing — a cultured,
no-harm
chuckle — the kind that comes from a man in an expensive armchair over a glass of brandy or port.
 

“Oh, that’s right,” he says.
 

“What’s right?”

“There
was
some conflicting data. Now I remember. This must have been what he meant.”
 

I don’t bother to ask who Welty means. I already know he means himself. His little performance, pretending someone else discovered an amusing kerfuffle in the process, makes me want to stick a boot down his throat. Of course he knew what was in the envelope. It’s clear as the threat on his face.
 

Across from us, Bridget looks lost. Like a frightened little girl. I want to go and take her in my arms. But I can’t. I’m pinned here by circumstance, just like my proxy power at Eros. It’s
my
company.
My
fortune. But the thing is a shell game, until you wake up one day and realize you couldn’t move if you wanted to.

“I don’t get it,” Trevor says. “Is it Bridget, or isn’t it?”
 

Trevor’s face says,
Daniel, tell me it’s not Bridget. Tell me Welty is wrong.
Because we both know what this means, if Welty has his way. Behind the scenes, the woman who makes it through Halo’s gauntlet becomes the model on which Eros-brand sexuality may forever be based. But Eros has a public image as well, and that face belongs to Trevor. The winner will become his wife. Entitled to half the fortune once the prenup is fully vested. Entitled to live in Eros homes, enjoy the Eros lifestyle I’ve spent a lifetime building. She’ll travel with him everywhere. Sleep by him, if not with him, in his private residence. She’ll be very busy. And because the investment in Trevor’s wife is so significant and her value is so high, care will be taken that she never strays. Trevor’s wife can’t have affairs. She’ll be with Trevor, or no one. And to keep things fair, the same will be true of Trevor.
 

Trevor and the winner, together forever.
 

In sickness and in health.

Forsaking all others.
 

Until death — or the company — do they part.
 

Welty shifts, looking casual, clearly enjoying the way his gambit has pinned the four of us in place.
 

“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “There was the matter of the conflicting data.”
 

Trevor says, “What does that mean?”
 

“It means that our technicians, once alerted to a possible fault, found that a large amount of raw data into Halo seemed to have been … corrupted.”

Welty’s eyes clarify,
Meaning: deleted. Tampered with. Cheated — by you, Daniel
.
 

“At first, we thought the winner was Jessica.” He pauses, looking at me meaningfully. “But once the missing data was reinserted from the backup drives, Halo seemed to change its mind, and selected Bridget.”
 

I swallow.

Welty says, “Halo chose Bridget as Trevor’s bride.”
 

Welty looks at Jessica, then Trevor, then Bridget. He lingers on Bridget for several seconds then returns his ugly eyes to me. And when he does, all the conviviality is gone. The cordial, polite man who got off the helicopter has gone missing, and in his place is a monster.
 

“Unless,” Welty continues, “you can shed some light on our data confusion, Daniel — and know a reason she shouldn’t be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The back of Jessica’s hand taps mine. I look over and see her pretty face clouded with worry. There’s no way to stick our faces into pillows now, or pretend to make out while discussing strategy. But everything’s falling apart.
 

“What do we do?” she whispers.

I don’t know how to answer, so I shake my head, fixated on Daniel. He’s still holding the envelope, and the paper with my name. The longer he waits to answer Welty, the guiltier he seems. He should say,
No, I don’t know anything
. But I can see the decision chasing its tail in his mind, and each second expired speaks for him.
 

“Bridget!”
 

“We can’t do anything,” I whisper back.
 

“We have to say something!”
 

“What can we say?”
 

I know what tempts me. I want to raise my hand, shout to Welty, and take all the responsibility on myself. Who cares if I’m kicked out? It’ll hurt, but in the big picture what does it matter if they take all my money? Caspian handled my mother and sister’s situation, and something tells me that nobody tells him which gifts to rescind. I won’t get my studio. Eros will hate me, maybe even blacklist me somehow. But I grew up with nothing. I’m a survivor, and always will be.
 

But anything I say will reflect on Daniel. I can’t assume all the responsibility even if I want to. So I keep my mouth shut, and wait through every agonizing second.
 

“Well … ” Daniel starts.

Don’t say it,
I think at him.
Don’t confirm what he suspects. If Welty knew for sure that we fudged the data, he’d have acted already. He’s hoping to trap you. To make you admit it. So keep your mouth shut, Daniel. Let it happen. Let Halo choose me.
 

If I win, I’m sure they’ll make me sign a contract and about a thousand nondisclosure agreements. I won’t be able to refuse the paperwork any more than I’ll be able to refuse what’s sure to be a legal marriage to Trevor, because doing so will indict Daniel as surely as if he blabs right now. But it’s okay. I can be a billionaire’s wife.
 

Except that Trevor isn’t the real billionaire.
 

My Daniel is the billionaire, and Trevor is the socially acceptable public face.
 

And if Daniel admits to rigging this competition in my favor, they’ll take everything from him. He’s already told me about the legal shell game that’s all but stolen his fortune — still accessible, but under board control. They can’t kick him out. Not yet. But if Daniel were to do something underhanded? If he were to break
his
contract with the company?
 

Well, then they could probably do whatever they wanted.

I watch Daniel face Welty’s silent ultimatum, knowing there’s nothing I can do or say. Right now he’s by himself. And the choice is his alone.
 

He can insist he knows nothing. Let the results stand, and I’ll become Trevor’s bride.
 

Or he can admit what we did and let the board bankrupt us both. Possibly all four of us.
 

Welty is watching Daniel, clearly enjoying his torment, waiting, not saying a word, practically licking his lips. Kicked back to enjoy the show as Daniel twists in the wind, perched on the tip of an impossible decision.

Say nothing, and we all survive.
 

Admit our crime, and the house falls to rubble.
 

I can do this. I can live with Trevor. I like Trevor. Daniel’s silence breaks four hearts, but the alternative shatters our lives.

Daniel’s mouth finally opens.
 

Stops.
 

Opens farther.
 

And then he speaks.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“And this is the kitchen,” I say.
 

Daniel looks over the space. There are four feet between my refrigerator and the cabinets. It’s not even an island. Just a wall. When the complex designed my Inferno Falls apartment, I’m pretty sure they forgot the kitchen entirely. And then, right as building was about to commence, someone noticed the error: 4-F had no kitchen. So some genius said, “Just shove it next to the living room.” Which would also explain why my living room is the size of a studio bathroom.
 

“Very nice,” Daniel says.
 

I watch him. He’s still in his suit. A suit that could surely cover the rent for years. He looks so out of place. I’d be tempted to call it adorable if it wasn’t so awful. I know he owns normal jeans and tees, but we came here, after the plane back, in a cab. Apparently, Eros didn’t even want to give their black sheep a limo into town. We have my bags and a tiny valise for Daniel. It seems to have papers in it, not even a change of underwear. He says his stuff is being shipped. But I wonder if it’s that simple — or if there’s a fight happening somewhere to decide whether Daniel’s clothes and personal items belong to him or the company.
 

I take Daniel’s square jaw by the cheeks. Now that I’m in tennies instead of the heels I’ve practically lived in for the past few months, I’m a fair bit shorter than him, even as tall as I am. I reach up to touch his face, my fingers and thumb prickling with unattended stubble. I turn his eyes to mine.
 

“Liar.”
 

“What,
liar?”
he says, affecting innocence.
 

“Such bullshit, about my kitchen being ‘very nice.’”
 

He looks it over again. “Okay, you’re right. This kitchen sucks.”
 

I can’t help laughing, even though it hurts my heart.

“I’m sorry, Daniel.”

“Don’t be.”
 

“But I am. Whether you want me to be or not.” I let go of his face. I wrap myself around his arm instead. I feel the fine fabric against my cheek, knowing it will unravel in this place like a proud animal kept in a cage.
 

“No,” he says.
 

I look up.
No?

“Do you love me, Bridget?”
 

“Of course I do.”
 

“Then don’t be sorry. That hurts me. I only want you to be happy.”
 

It’s a puzzle. He’s broke because he chose me, but the only way I can make it worse is to accept the blame I rightly deserve. I’m torn between what I feel and what I’d rather feel, to please him.
 

Then he says something worse:
“I’m
sorry.”
 

“You’re here because of me.”

“No. I’m here because of
me
. And
you’re
here because of me. I shouldn’t have brought you into any of it.”
 

“I’m glad you brought me into it.” I squeeze his arm and see only dark blue fabric, knowing he’d rather I didn’t meet his eyes. And I think,
Did I really just say that? Did I really admit to enjoying my near abduction — my half-forced journey into hedonism, perversion, and mind-fuckery?
My, my, how things have changed for the little girl from places and parents unknown.
 

“I should have left you alone. It wasn’t fair.”
 

“I’m glad you didn’t leave me alone.”