Chapter Twenty Seven

Lisbet woke to the sound of china clinking. It was a soft sound, one that was not meant to wake a soul, but it broke her haze of oblivion and she blinked, opening her eyes like clamshells. There was no sunlight, only a soft blue light like the lighting used in a pool—indirect lighting pointed at the floor. She felt artificially underwater. A sound like water lapping was bubbling from the side of the bed.

“Beck?” she whispered.

Opening her eyes fully, she saw his bare back as he lay on his side. The sheets covered his lower half and blue lines like water veins twisted on his elbow and across his shoulder blade.

He was still asleep.

What had he done to her the night before?

She was just about to think it over when her thoughts were interrupted by an extremely unwanted sound.

“Her breasts are perfect. I should have a cast made of them and get my surgeon to do me up just like her,” a yoo-hooing voice practically sang.

Lisbet yanked the bedsheets over her chest.

Hessia and Carlos were sitting at a table at the foot of the bed. They were not having breakfast. They were having morning tea and they hadn’t quite set their teabags to soak.

“Oh, look,” Carlos yawned. “You woke her up.”

“Good morning, Lisbet,” Hessia said triumphantly.

Lisbet touched her face. Of course, she hadn’t worn her mask to bed for her first night with Beck.

Now, they knew who she was.

She slapped Beck’s bare back. He jumped up. Then he saw Lisbet’s face and his parents watching them. In a tired voice, he ordered the palace’s AI to change the lighting scheme so that they could all see each other properly. Then he reached for his cigarette and leaning back in his bed with all the pomp of a rich boy, he started smoking. Obviously, he made no attempt to dress himself and left the sheet over his bottom half with no adjustment.

“We brought you breakfast,” Hessia said sweetly as she showed them another picnic basket that looked more like a cooler meant to carry organ transplants.

Beck didn’t answer. He casually kept smoking, while Lisbet was profoundly aware that he had asked her not to speak to his parents. If that was his order, then she mustn’t. After what he had done to her the night before, she would never disobey him for fear that he wouldn’t do what he did to her again.

However, sitting next to him on the bed, a flood of memories from the night before sparked inside of her. Her face went flush. Lisbet clutched the blanket to her chest. He had been right. The whole world had changed. She picked up his free arm and put herself under his wing next to his skin. From there, she peered at his parents.

“Does Vantz know she’s here?” Carlos asked conspiratorially.

Beck exhaled and put his cigarette in Lisbet’s mouth. He made up a lie and delivered it like it was the truth. “I’m here because I’ve been exiled from the God of War’s court because I couldn’t keep my pants up and I didn’t want to. If you get in Vantz’s face and tell him that his wife is here and tell him that he should find a way to skip the destruction of this pleasure palace rather than let it explode with her inside, the information won’t change his mind. He’ll tell you to put her in an evacuation pod and then put yourself on an evacuation pod because he has every intention of blowing up the whole surface of the planet. His job is to terraform Mars. Surely all that has been explained to you.”

“Well, what are you doing here if you’re so certain the bombs are going to go off?” his father asked sharply. “Why aren’t you in orbit?”

“I left with Lisbet on a solarship that practically had the words ‘garbage heap’ written on the side in a hurry because Vantz found out about us on the same night the angry mob descended on his castle. I took Lisbet, ran, couldn’t stay in orbit, and intentionally crashed near a rocket I thought I could repair. When I realized I couldn’t fix it, I had one of my old friends send me a vehicle to help me get back to Noachis. All he could give me was that land rover, which you crippled to bring me here.” Beck adjusted the truth to match his needs so effortlessly that what he said came off as the cross-my-heart truth. “Did you do that because you thought Vantz would care if I were alive or dead? I promise you, after what I have done to betray him in stealing his wife, I’m not a bargaining chip.”

“Was that man even born on Mars?” Hessia exclaimed with an exaggerated head swagger. “Doesn’t he know everyone has sex with everyone? It’s the Martian way. How could he get angry at you over such a small thing?”

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Beck rolled his eyes. “A man who was hired to terraform Mars has no love for Martian customs. He wanted his wife to stay faithful to him. He wanted me, his subordinate, to realize that. He warned me and others many times that he would not tolerate anyone fooling around with Lisbet behind his back.”

“Why was he so nervous?” Carlos asked languidly. “She’s a bought woman? She’s wearing a bracelet now. How could you have an affair with her if she was being properly shocked?”

“He disabled her bracelet. He doesn’t believe in shocking his wife. He expected her to be faithful,” Beck explained.

Hessia huffed a laugh. “Come on, darling,” she said to her husband. “It’s not surprising that Beck can make any woman do anything. Even if he is fifteen years younger than her—”

Lisbet made an involuntary sound. She was not fifteen years older than Beck. Seven. She was seven years older than Beck. Six if you took off the year she was in cryostasis where she didn’t age.

Hessia waited a moment for Lisbet to clarify, but Lisbet said nothing.

Hessia continued, “Every single slave girl I spoke to last night begged me to send her to pleasure Beckett.”

The way the words came off her tongue made Lisbet choke. The cigarette fell out of her mouth.

Beck retrieved it with a smooth swoop and put it back into Lisbet’s mouth. Turning to Hessia, he said, “You know why they want to come to me, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she replied, a naughty little smile on her face.

Beck narrowed his eyes. He was determined to set the story straight. “They want to come here because they know that I will never administer an electric shock to them and because they’re hoping that after all the stories they’ve heard about me working for Vantz, I have the power to put them into orbit. That way they won’t be here when this place becomes a caved-in crypt.”

“What?” Carlos asked in utter disbelief. His jaw hung open.

“You heard me. The girls know they’ll die if they stay here. They don’t believe that you can protect them from the bombs. They know how greedily you mine. You’re likely to set off a bomb Vantz left unattended if you don’t stop mining.”

Carlos and Hessia exchanged worried glances.

“Yes, but you were so popular,” Hessia said in a falsely positive voice. “Before Vantz. Before any of this happened, you were so popular.”

“I agree. Again, it’s because I didn’t shock them. If they’re with me, they can count on one night when their teeth won’t rattle. Do you know what they used to say to me when we were alone?”

Carlos glared at him.

Beck wouldn’t stop. “They said they wished they were dead, but they didn’t want to die and you know why, don’t you?” Beck accused angrily. “You know why it’s not better for them to be dead. They want this place to cave in and everyone inside to die at once. They want you to die with them and leave a spectacular mass grave that no one will ever find under ten thousand tons of rock. How many suicides do you have? Have you ever even had one when all of them wish they were dead?”

“That’s enough,” Hessia said between tight lips. “You’re upsetting your father.”

“Lisbet didn’t see a tenth of what you guys do to your slaves at the party last night. And no one can ever talk about it. No one ever talks about it because if anyone puts it all together… it will happen again and again and again. Someone with power will want to stimulate that hateful twisted little part inside them that likes it when their dark side is tantalized. Depravity has no limits. There isn’t any end, is there?” Beck shut up, took the cigarette out of Lisbet’s mouth, and puffed on it himself. Between set teeth, he continued, “I may have put my dick somewhere I shouldn’t have and it may have ruined the other life I could have had with the terraforming team in orbit, but I’m perfectly happy to let Vantz kill us all if that’s what you’ve decided, Father.”

“If I go into space,” Carlos said, not sounding defeated. “It would be better for me if I was dead.”

“You’re worried about them catching you? Putting you in jail? Funny. I’m not worried about that at all. I’m worried about you killing everyone you’ve brought down here. I told Vantz you were an old miner and you loved it underground. After running the math after we had our first explosion, I have to tell you, you’re not going to survive in your caverns here. You were too greedy… and you’ve been even more greedy since my last visit. Your skeletal cavern walls will not hold up against the bomb that Vantz planted closest to you. Your life is over either way. It’s just a matter of whether or not you want to kill everyone with you.”

Carlos was getting angry. “You sound like you haven’t grown up at all. There you are shouting at me just like you did when you were eleven. After all we gave you, you haven’t changed at all,” his father said sourly, like that was the worst thing he could think of to say to his son who he utterly adored.

“I’m finished,” Beck said with a wild grin. “I’m not going to say another word to you about it. I’ve said my piece and I know you heard me. What does it matter anyway if all of us roast in hell? I’ve brought heaven with me.” He kissed the back of Lisbet’s hand, dropped his cigarette, and rolled into her chest.

Carlos stood up.

Lisbet had been knocked on her side, so her view of Beck’s father was askew. Beck was wrapping her legs around him and ignoring the fact that his parents were there.

The old miner snapped his fingers and Beck turned to his father to give him the attention the old man commanded. “I’m not sure I believe you. I’ll talk to Vantz and then I’ll be back. I’m sure there’s some arrangement I can make with him.”

Beck smiled. “Go ahead and try.”

“Come on, Hessia. We’re leaving.” He snapped his fingers at her and she toddled after him like a trained animal.

Once Beck was certain they were gone, he flicked the bedsheets off him and took a deep breath. “That was nowhere near as terrible as I feared.”

“Your father really loves you,” Lisbet said in awe. “I thought he was going to put a collar around my neck and offer to give me back to Vantz.”

Beck blinked at her. “My father would never take away one of my toys.”

“That’s what I am?”

“We’re all toys here,” he said crossly before he stood up completely naked and disappeared into the hallway. “I’m starving!”