Chapter Forty-Four An Arrangement
Chapter Forty-Four
An Arrangement
Zephyr,
I regret to inform you that Richard left Viryana at dawn. There will be no trial against the girl. As such, there is no longer a need for you to testify. We no longer have an arrangement regarding the House of Representatives. Do not contact me again.
WM
· · ·
Lord Montrose’s letter burned in Zeyar’s breast pocket as he knocked on the door.
He’d read it a hundred times: forty-seven words that left him with nothing.
Despite the warning, he had tried to call upon Montrose Manor, but the guard at the gatehouse had chased him out.
He had lost it all: his chance to free Paranjay, his relationship with Hasan, even his own name.
There was only one person in the city who might not slam their door in his face.
The door cracked open a fraction. He caught sight of one hazel eye and lifted the corner of his mouth into a cocky grin. “Hello, Harithi.”
She flew out of the door, her dark ponytail streaking behind her. “You have a lot of fucking nerve,” Harithi said, slamming him into the wall. “I told you, Zeyar. You don’t come here, ever.”
“Your brothers are at school,” he said, ignoring her dagger resting on the tip of his sternum. “They won’t see me.”
She curled her lip at him. “Have you considered that it’s me who doesn’t want to see you, especially after that stunt you pulled in Sanivali?”
He flinched. “If you didn’t want to see me, you wouldn’t have opened the door,” he said. “But you did.”
Zeyar reached for her slowly, giving her enough time to move back if she wished.
She didn’t. He laughed, placing one hand at the small of her back, pulling her toward him.
The tip of her dagger pierced his skin, crimson staining his shirt, but he barely felt the sting as he leaned down and kissed her.
“I hate you,” Harithi said, but she was already dragging him into the apartment.
· · ·
“Still hate me?” Zeyar teased, leaning over to wrap one of Harithi’s curls around his finger.
“Yes,” she said, though she let him continue to play with her hair. They lay in silence for a moment, their bare legs tangled under her bedsheets. Then she rolled onto her side so she could look him in the eye. “Why are you here?”
He leaned over the side of the bed, fishing a lighter and his pack of smokes from his pants, which were pooled on the floor. After he’d taken a drag, he said, “I wanted to talk.”
She snorted. “We don’t talk, Zeyar. That was never part of the arrangement.”
Ah, yes. Their arrangement, a set of rules that had defined their trysts for the past year.
The cardinal rule: It could be nothing but physical.
No talking, no attachments. This was fine with Zeyar—Harithi was arrogant, blunt, and willfully independent.
Oh, she was good at what she did, but Zeyar had resented her loud mouth from the moment Hasan had brought her on.
The arrangement only worked because each trusted the other not to stab them in the back while they were putting their clothes back on.
Zeyar exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “I have no one else to talk to.”
“That’s hardly my problem.” She lifted his cigarette from his lips, taking a drag herself.
As she reclined, blowing a cloud of smoke out, he confessed, “Richard Montrose has left the country. His father won’t honor his deal with me.”
Harithi lolled her head over, unmoved. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I supposed to be surprised?” When Zeyar glared at her, she spread her arms. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” He gritted his teeth. “I gambled everything on this. And—”
“And you regret it,” Harithi said. “What made you deal with him again, Zeyar? He’d already burned us once. We’d have found another way to get Paranjay back.”
“It wasn’t just about Paranjay.” Zeyar took the cigarette back from her.
“It was for Hasan too. What happened to Vinay at the museum could have just as easily happened to Hasan. When I saw him bleeding out in the back seat . . .” His stomach turned, and he forced himself to push the image out of his mind.
“The police are too advanced—their weaponry, their technique. Paranjay can’t escape them, Hasan can’t defeat them, and I couldn’t protect either of them—not unless I befriended Montrose.
Becoming a representative was supposed to be insurance, for the future. ”
“Did you explain this to Hasan?” Harithi asked.
“Hasan doesn’t want my protection.” Zeyar flicked the spark wheel on the lighter absentmindedly, watching the flame wink in and out with each click. “Even before he cut me out, he was so damned bullheaded when it came to taking advice from me.”
“You’re one to talk. When you left for the city, did it even occur to you to talk about your plans before you made them?”
“Hasan would have—”
“Not Hasan. Me.”
Zeyar’s eyes snapped to her face. “You?” He hadn’t meant for the word to come out sounding so incredulous.
She tilted her chin up defiantly, her hazel eyes hard. “Yes, me.”
It hadn’t occurred to him at all. “What could you have possibly said?”
“I would have said that when you took Richard to Sanivali to take Poppy, you should have left the key with me, and I would have fetched Paranjay from the neutral location before Montrose could have reneged.” She rolled her eyes.
“Honestly, Zeyar, I’m shocked that you didn’t think of it. The solution was right fucking there.”
Zeyar flushed with humiliation. That was the thing about Harithi. She rankled a man’s pride, and right now, with his ego wounded, her scorn was like salt in a wound.
He dug his words in hard, trying to pierce her stone heart. “Yeah, well, talking isn’t part of our arrangement, is it?”
Harithi glared at him. “You’re right. It isn’t,” she spat. “You’ve overstayed your welcome. Get out.”
Zeyar reached over, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray perched on top of a stack of Miss Marnapur magazines on the nightstand.
He dressed himself in his pants and bloodstained shirt.
As he bent to pick up his blazer, he noticed a scrap of newspaper sticking out of Harithi’s blouse pocket.
The name Arun was scrawled over the newsprint, followed by an address.
“What’s this?” he asked, turning around to show her the paper.
Harithi’s face paled. She leaped out of bed, snatching for the scrap. “It’s nothing.”
He yanked it out of her reach. “It doesn’t look like nothing.” Zeyar frowned. Their arrangement wasn’t exclusive, but as far as he knew, neither of them had been with other people in the past year. “Who’s Arun?”
“No one.” She made another futile grab for the paper.
He shrugged, his heart pounding. “Maybe I’ll visit this Arun,” he said. “See what all the fuss is about. Is he ugly? Is that why you’re ashamed of having him as your lover?”
“He’s not a lover,” she said. “Fine! I’ll tell you, but you have to promise to stay out of it.”
“I won’t interfere.”
She sighed. “This is Hasan’s paper, not mine. Arun is a vasudhakt man who’s helping him form the Delegation for Virian Interests. Their aim is to install Poppy Sutherland as vicereine, then advise her in office.”
He almost laughed out loud. Hasan, playing at politics?
Hasan, whose first instinct was to fight his problems with fire?
He would never last. Either his own delegation would oust him, or he would ruin Poppy Sutherland with his idea of “advice” first. That girl needed someone rational, someone cool and logical.
The delegation needed Zeyar.
“It was good seeing you again, Harithi.” He bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she caught him by the throat.
“Don’t fucking come back here,” she said. Then she kissed him once, savagely, and kicked him out of the apartment.