I could have told him that the surveillance is unnecessary. Old Town will cave to his new leadership. He gave them the only thing they care about—the promise to be left alone. They’ll counter-offer, of course. Rolling over without a fight screams of weakness, and Chinh is too savvy not to spin this to his advantage the same way he did when my father staged his coup. I want to resent them for it, but they are who they are.
Ultimately, war is bad news for everyone. A civil war most of all. As long as Abel doesn’t do anything to upset the families in power, they won’t risk it.
Old Town is just one section of the faction, though. It remains to be seen if Abel will follow in his father’s footsteps when it comes to his lack of care about the rest of the people who reside here. People like Harlow, who was harmed over and over again because Bauer Paine was too content in his power to bother with people he didn’t see as worth his time.
My leadership has hardly been perfect, but everyone knows the consequences of stepping outside my laws, and I enforce those consequences without hesitation. No matter how much they turn my stomach.
Will Abel do the same?
Eight years ago, I’d know the answer. Half the changes I’ve enacted were ones Abel and I planned together. A baseline food budget for everyone. A strong presence in the streets to enforce the laws against murder and assault and abuse. Programs for the schools to help guide kids to better jobs when they finally reached adulthood.
Surely he hasn’t changed so much as to take all that away? Not even to punish me.
I wish I could believe it without a shadow of doubt.
The real question is whether or not I’ll sit back and allow him to fuck up what I’ve worked so hard to put into place. With Harlow at his side, she might shade his perspective in our favor. Or he might truly only be using her as a way to twist the knife for the next year. Impossible to say.
I step into my bedroom and stop short at the sight of a white square sitting on my nightstand. That most definitely wasn’t there when I left. I glance around the room—empty—and walk to it. One single line of text.
North balcony. 2 a.m. Tomorrow night.
Damn it. Marie isn’t going to listen to my order to stay away. She thinks she’s helping, but this has to be played very carefully to avoid catastrophic results. There’s no help for it; I have to meet her. And this time, I won’t be subtle about my order for her to stay the fuck away from this house. Abel already suspects we can move without being seen. I shouldn’t have tracked down Harlow in the library earlier, but the temptation was too strong to ignore. Not to mention, I doubt she’ll see me without my ambushing her. I hardly had a choice.
Kind of like I hardly have a choice about picking up the gauntlet Abel has thrown. If he thinks he has the upper hand and is winning this power struggle between us, he’ll relax a little. He’ll have no reason to look for me tomorrow night, because he’ll think that I’m retreating from the forced intimacy of sharing a bed with him and Harlow. I walk into the bathroom and methodically shred the paper into tiny squares and then dump them into the toilet and flush.
Sharing a bed with Abel and Harlow.
It’s the smart move to make. No matter what they believe, sex changes things. It allows a shortcut into intimacy that is challenging to find in other ways. The problem is that intimacy can cut both ways. I don’t make a habit of lying to myself, and the desire that I have for both of them, albeit in different ways, already colors my thinking. The trick is realizing and accommodating for that.
I walk back into the bedroom and sit on the bed. The question is Harlow. If she’s really only looking out for our people, then she won’t blink if I take out Abel and his brothers, as long as they’ve done something to prove they don’t have the faction’s best interests at heart. But if she’s softened toward him; cutting him down will hurt her.
Fuck, it will hurt me. I can admit that to myself, if not aloud. It doesn’t matter that we have eight years’ worth of betrayal and rage and pain between us. I’ve never been able to cut out the part of me that sees him as a friend. The part of me that loves him. It went dormant while he was gone, but the longer we spend in each other’s presence, the more prominent that feeling becomes.