Floyd showed no fear or trembling in his voice as he began. It had to be nice, to be so rich and powerful that Ezekiel didn’t strike you as scary.
“My sources started with the origin of Ezekiel’s birth, of course. This was probably one of the hardest bits of information to find, because Ezekiel made damn sure the records of his younger life were purged, save the very few essential things. His birth certificate lists no father, so I suppose that is one fact that’s lost to history. His mother’s name was Victoria Peters, and he was born to the name of Jameson Peters. Obviously, I had to go snooping to find out who this Victoria Peters woman was. She spent a majority of her life unemployed—at least according to the government, which I didn’t believe for an instant. I asked around, but no one had heard of a Victoria Peters. Luckily, I managed to find one old man who, upon hearing her more formal title, told me he didn’t know her, but then later asked if perhaps I was talking about Vicky P. At this point, I had no other leads, so I asked if he could talk about Vicky P. Apparently, she was a prostitute living in Metro.”
It was at this point that my heart nearly stopped beating.
“A few more people recognized the name Vicky P. I had the luck of finding an old friend of hers from years ago, who, while not exactly mentally sound, was able to give me a few great tidbits of information. Victoria had been a heavy drug abuser, a drunk, everything in the books. She was a beautiful woman, I was told—at least before she really started to degenerate as drug addicts usually do.
“This friend didn’t seem to know she’d had a son, so she probably kept him away from the public. This led me to a few questions. Was there something wrong with him? Was she ashamed of him? Why keep him holed away in an apartment?”
“That’s a story we’ll never know,” Rika supplied, sipping her drink.
Floyd nodded. “Unfortunately, his life is a mystery until he started attending elementary school. That’s five years of his life only he knows about. But it’s probably safe to say he resented her. According to those I spoke to, she was not the greatest mother figure. She had constant money problems, and her old landlord told me he shut off her electricity and water on several occasions when she refused to pay the bills. Not the greatest situation to bring a child into.”
“Which begs the question—why did she have and keep him in the first place?” Stefany asked, her face flushed in the excitement of the story. I supposed a journalist would love details like these.
“Maybe she wanted someone to love her,” I provided. I probably understood the Metro mindset more than they did. “She must have led a pretty thankless life. Perhaps she just wanted a smiling child to come home to.”
“Entirely possible. Though it must have all gone wrong, because there’s evidence pointing to Ezekiel—Jameson—having difficulty with compassion and love from very early beginnings.”
“He caused trouble at school?” I asked.
Floyd shook his head. “Oh, no. Jameson was a marvelous student. His grades were exemplary all the way through high school. I managed to find a teacher who taught him when he was about twelve. She told me that while he’d been an incredibly bright and attentive child, he unnerved her. He was not a favorite student of hers, and he knew it. She felt that sometimes he exploited her.”
“Exploited her how?”
“A range of things. Something simple like pointing out a mistake she made in class. Asking her rather disturbing questions she didn’t feel comfortable answering—questions about death, torture. When I asked her what she thought happened to him, she said she didn’t know. She was probably afraid of the answer.”
Stefany shook her head with a sigh, shoving more zucchini bread into her mouth.
Floyd continued. “She talked about how he would organize the students. He would make allies of the biggest and meanest kids. One day, a boy who’d been vandalizing the lockers went missing. They found him three days later, tied up and bruised in an abandoned apartment building. She said some of the teachers were thankful that at least the unnamed bully was doing some good, hunting down the troublemakers instead of the innocent kids. But they failed to see the nefarious work at play. Jameson wasn’t stopping crime—he was re-directing it. Children who wanted to hurt others simply stopped doing it randomly and instead fell under his command. It was either join him or behave, the latter being an option none of these troubled kids wanted.
“High school was actually harder to track than middle school. Jameson appeared to keep a low profile. I’m not sure if he was planning something, or if he had other issues, but I picked up a few facts here and there. He had a few very exclusive friends, most of whom were his favorite bullies from middle school, but two of whom were female, which strikes me as very odd, considering Ezekiel’s disdain for women. This attitude might have come from a bad relationship with his mother, who died two years after he graduated high school. I’d like to tie him to it, but she died of a stroke in a hospital, which is hard to pin on him.”
“These women…do you know anything about them?”
Floyd tapped his chin. “I only found out the name of one, which was Yola. She was described to me as a very silent person. She was smart—graduated with the highest marks—but she was anti-social and avoided people in general. A year after graduation, she committed suicide at the local community college. A girl who had everything going for her—dead. That also seemed unlikely to be tied to Jameson, considering she shot herself at a very convincing angle. It would have been hard to fake that. Not impossible, but Jameson was never concerned with faking deaths unless it was advantageous to him, and this was not. Yola lived in obscurity, and the only one who was really affected by her passing was her single father.”
“But the nature of the relationship…?”
Floyd shrugged. “Was he keeping Yola and her other female companion for sexual purposes? I can’t be sure. It’s probable. I can’t imagine why else he’d befriend women if not because he needed them for something your average teenage boy could not do. He’s never had female employees, as far as I’ve seen, outside of those who cater to his more…intimate needs. What I’ve always found strange was that Yola was not your typical teenage girl. From what I’ve found, she was reserved, conservative, poised. Most boys Jameson’s age were out getting drunk and sleeping with anything that had two legs, but even as a teenager, Jameson had incredible restraint and self-discipline. Only the best.”
I wished I could have met Yola. I’d have so many questions to ask her. It was hard to imagine what a teenage Ezekiel would be like.
“After graduating high school, Jameson attended Ewefiedri University, which you all know is one of the most selective in the country. It’s located up north, away from Zinya City. He was granted a full scholarship due to his academic excellence. He majored in both business and psychology, which I find to be highly appropriate for how he turned out. No majors could be more perfectly matched. Jameson wanted to know how to read people even better than he already could, and then use that reading to exploit them. It was, again, hard to gather details—he continued to keep a low profile. He wasn’t in any honors fraternity, despite his perfect marks. He had little interest in catering to the institution—he most likely wanted to create his own.
“I think it was around his third year of college that he began to experiment with the drug market. There’s no evidence claiming he was ever on drugs himself. That would ruin his control over his grades and his life, and control has always been Jameson’s obsession. Someone with Jameson’s personality needs a strict regime; absolute power over everyone and everything. It’s a social kind of OCD: instead of performing rituals, he makes sure everyone behaves as he tells them to. Everyone is his pawn, and if someone moves without his permission, he acts out violently.
“After college, Jameson rejected job offers thrown his way and instead enlisted in the military.”
“The military?” I couldn’t believe it. “But you said he loves to control people. Obviously in the military people would tell him what to do.”
“A perfect institution to learn from. The military is the best at ordering others around, and he needed to learn their tricks. He had perfected his mind, so now it was time to perfect his physical skills. Of course, he wasn’t going to simply become a soldier and leave it at that. He enlisted as an Operate.”
“Operate?”
“Very top secret government infiltration unit,” Stefany explained through a mouthful of food. Wearing her pearls and girly clothing, it seemed like the last sort of thing she should know. Clearly, beneath all the pink and lace, she had a sharp, professional mind.
Floyd nodded. “They only let in about a hundred men, and Jameson, of course, was not turned down. Jameson has never allowed himself to be mediocre at anything. He spent several years doing covert missions for the government overseas. It seems ironic, that someone who now subverts the laws of the government used to work for them. It was with them that he learned how to operate weapons and artillery. He rose high in his ranks with seemingly little effort; he perfected the art of getting people to do what he wanted.”
“Are we going to talk about that little incident in Nuania?” Mina asked. I was shocked when she opened her mouth. She’d been silent the whole time.
“What happened in Nuania?” Nuania was a very mountainous, snowy country across the sea and sat much farther north than Zinya City.
“Just a bit of genocide,” Mina murmured, blowing on her coffee.
“No one really knows what happened. It didn’t even hit the news it was so hush-hush. Apparently, our government believed the Yentis were hiding weapons in some Nuan military base, and the Operates were sent over to deal with it. Next thing we knew, the whole base exploded and the nearby town was caught in the middle of open fire. A bunch of innocent civilians were murdered, including women and children. In the end, nothing was gained, and the Operates were sent home. Who knows what really happened? Jameson might hold blame, as he was leading the unit. Perhaps he led the genocide. Perhaps he tried to avoid it. Only he knows.”
“Wouldn’t the other Operates know…?”
“They would. However, most of them were killed in the skirmish. Only three came back, including Jameson. One suffered from extreme PTSD afterward and shot himself three months later. The other vanished, and to this day, no one knows what happened to him. The clues point to Jameson. Something happened, and Jameson didn’t want it to get out. That’s what I think. The police said the missing one suffered from PTSD, too, and probably killed himself. While I do think the man really did suffer from trauma, I don’t believe it was to the degree of his comrade.”
I shoved my hands between my thighs because they were suddenly cold. “And then what?”
“He quit the military, vanished for a whole year, and then emerged as the Ezekiel we all know. He started under the drug regime of Najih. Remember Najih?”
“Vaguely. He was around when I started high school.”
“He was a real dictator; that was one of Metro’s most violent eras. One night, Najih was found floating down the Wendel Tributary. They never found the murderer, though they probably didn’t try that hard. Everyone was just glad that Najih was dead.”
“And then Ezekiel ascended to power to take his place on the throne of the drug trade,” Stefany finished. “Though that’s the unofficial statement. So far, no one’s been able to pin him with anything.”
“To be honest,” Floyd murmured, “I haven’t been trying that hard. I know it sounds cruel, but drug lords are inevitable. There will never be any getting rid of them. Ezekiel is an evil necessity, I fear, and while I’m not comfortable with his presence, I must admit he’s made things better for Metro since Najih. Instead of funneling my money into his capture, I’ve decided to put my funds to better use—Metro schools.”
“Take care of the cause, not the effect,” Rika said with a small smile. “Educate the kids and hope they find something more to life than drugs.”
I frowned. “Education doesn’t erase shitty home lives.”
“No, but it still offers another option. With these funds, they can have after-school programs that target at-risk children. Try to keep as many as we can from ‘going under,’ as I like to say.”
“So Ezekiel’s just gonna run around free?”
“Well, if he does anything stupid, we’ll be right there with the handcuffs.” Floyd sighed. “As it is, he covers his tracks. He does actually do legitimate importing and exporting. The drugs only bring in a percentage of his income. Those are what got him so rich in the first place. He’s keeping his nose clean. It’s not that we’re not looking, it’s just that we’re waiting for him to screw up.”
Right. Like someone so obsessed with details as Ezekiel was going to slip up before the cops did.
“If I put all my funds into kicking Ezekiel out, we know someone else would take his place. Someone probably more like Najih.” Floyd could tell I was upset by this news and tried covering himself. “The police are doing what they can about Ezekiel, though.”
I shrugged. How could I possibly complain about Ezekiel anyway? The things he did were horrible, I’m sure, but he paid for my drugs and he treated me somewhat decently—better than most, less-generous clients did. As much as I wanted to care for the well-being of my neighborhood, I had to care about myself first. That’s how it was in Metro.
The new phone in my purse began to buzz. I scrambled to unlock the keypad and answer.
“We should probably be going now, Melissa.”
I recognized Victor’s voice. “All right.” I hung up and faced my newfound acquaintances. “I’m sorry, but I have to be going. It’s been nice meeting you all.” I extended a hand to Floyd, who shook it, then I offered the same to Stefany. Stefany instead rounded the table and hugged me. Mina nodded while Rika saluted lazily.
“See you around, Melissa,” she said with a grin. “Next time you’re in Alpin, you should stop by and see me. Or Stefany. Stefany makes great cupcakes.”
“Oh, yes!” Stefany said, clasping her hands together. “And I always make far too many. My door is always open. Much to my husband’s displeasure.”
I finally managed to excuse myself. I saw Victor already standing at the edge of the street. When we began to cross, he finally turned to me.
“Are you ready to go back to the penthouse?”
I nodded. “Yes, sounds like a good idea.”
* * *
Ezekiel was home that night and actually ate dinner at the table with me. He almost never did this, preferring instead to eat in his office with his work. Garrett and Bruce ate with us. Between bites, they discussed business with each other and Ezekiel. They barely spoke loud enough for me to hear them across the table—not that I wanted to. I would rather have eaten in ignorance than have trouble stomaching the chef’s excellent filet mignon. Occasionally, I looked over until Ezekiel’s eyes met mine. Then I’d look away and smooth my hands over what little skirt I wore.
After desert, I went up to the room while Ezekiel went to his office. A girl couldn’t spend her whole day shopping or drinking lattes at posh cafés. I was really trying to cut down on the amount of dust I injected, so I grabbed a book I’d convinced Victor to get for me at the library instead. Oh, the glamorous life of a gold-digging prostitute.
Reading had never been a large hobby of mine. In general, I avoided it when I could. But when I had plenty of time to waste, I’d learned it was a good way of escaping. I wasn’t a fast reader, and I wasn’t about to conquer any of those “deep” literature novels smart people read, but the light fluffy stuff could keep my attention for a while. It at least distracted me from the slight shake in my hands.
I was wrapped up in some fantastical world of dragons and elves when the door opened. I threw the book down onto the nightstand. Ezekiel slipped off his jacket in one smooth move, as if shrugging off a blanket. Now that I knew how extensive his combat training was, the ease of his movements made me uneasy.
I stood, as was protocol when Ezekiel entered the room. When he looked at me, I approached him, having learned his body language.
“You know how to properly knot a tie by now, I hope?” Ezekiel asked as I loosened his.
“I’ve been practicing on Victor,” I murmured. Ezekiel had been rather insistent that I learn how to knot a tie, probably so I could do his when he needed his hands free for other things. Or perhaps he thought it was something a classy, well-bred woman should know how to do for her man. Before Ezekiel, I’d never spent time with anyone who wore a tie on a regular basis.
“Would you like to try it on me a few times?” Ezekiel asked once the knot was undone.
“Um…” I bit my lip, then nodded. “All right. Your neck isn’t as thick as his.”
Ezekiel chuckled, lifting his chin as I shifted his collar. “I suppose that’s because I don’t drink all the protein shakes he does.”
For a moment, I was stunned. Ezekiel told a joke?
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I smiled and proceeded to knot his tie. I was afraid to yank too much because I wanted to impress him. I could never relax, could never mess up. Every step I took was a step without a wobble. By this point, I could have probably run a marathon in six-inch heels, since they were almost all I wore.
I slid the knot up to the base of his throat and nodded. Ezekiel turned and looked in the mirror behind him, lightly running a few fingers down the tie. The skinny part of it stuck out from behind the fat part. I waited for a harsh reprimand.
Ezekiel began to undo the tie, his face blank.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m no expert yet. I suppose I should practice on Victor more.”
“Your hands are shaking,” he said, meeting my gaze.
I folded them behind my back, blushing slightly. “I guess I’m nervous.”
Ezekiel strode across the room, looking down at the nightstand. I didn’t know what he was looking for. A needle?
“Nervous and other things, perhaps.” He picked up the book. “And this is?”
I blushed redder. “J-just a book I’ve been reading.” The colorful, juvenile cover embarrassed me. I wished I’d been reading poetry or something classier.
Ezekiel flipped through it casually. “I didn’t know you read.”
“Not much. I’ve been trying to get into it.”
“Hmm.” Ezekiel continued to stare at the cover. “How did you do in school?”
“School? Um. Well, I-I didn’t care for it much. It was all right. I guess.” So much for being articulate.
“Did you have many friends?” Ezekiel’s eyes lifted to meet mine.
“A few. What about you—” I nearly clamped a hand over my mouth, but stopped myself in time. I looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to ask.”
When I looked up, Ezekiel was standing an arm’s length away from me, watching me intently. “Is there a reason you want to know?”
“It was a reflex reply,” I whispered, head bowed. “I’m sorry.”
His finger pushed my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Curiosity is excusable, Melissa.”
“It’s just… I know you don’t ever talk about…well, before you were this.” I motioned to the lavishly decorated bedroom. “I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Do you expect me to tell you about it?” Ezekiel asked.
“No.”
“Do you want me to?”
I shook my head a moment, then stopped and bit my lip. I wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted.
Ezekiel’s gaze intensified. “But don’t you already know?”
I blanched. He couldn’t possibly know?
His hand slipped up through my hair, gently at first, and then his fingers clasped around the roots and pulled my head back. It wasn’t a hurtful grip, but it was a firm one, and it forced me to look straight at him.
“Don’t think I can’t keep track of what you say and do, Melissa,” he murmured, his voice completely calm and smooth, the sort of voice used to quiet a scared child. “Do you think I’d let you run amok? Knowing what you know about me and my operation?”
“You heard—how could you—but—”
“So far, you’ve simply been curious, and I can’t punish innocent curiosity, even if you were foolish.” He lifted his other hand and ran his knuckles gently along my cheek. “But I have a certain priority of investments. You are quite a substantial investment of mine, and I’ve given you much freedom because I trust you. But the very nature of your freedom poses some danger to my superior investments, and I must take this into account.” He leaned down, his voice barely above a whisper. “I do ask that you take some care in what you do, Melissa. Because I’ll be there with you when you do it.”
He let go of me and strode away, heading for the bed. I took a step back, my hands shaking twice as hard and my throat dry. I gasped out, “Have you always tapped me?”
“Just lately,” he responded coolly, facing opposite me as he unbuttoned his shirt. “Since I lost track of you after that car crash. I realized I couldn’t afford not to know where you were and who you were with.”
“I would never—I—you can trust me. I would never do anything to—”
Ezekiel turned around, eyes sharp. “Don’t stutter, Melissa. Especially to me.”
For a moment, terror and uncertainty overwhelmed me, but as always, I managed to cork it and shove it beneath three layers of calm. I could do this. I’d faced worse. If I could survive a customer pointing a gun in my face, I could survive anything.
“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head slightly. “I never meant to disappoint you. I just… I only wanted to know…”
“I understand.” Ezekiel’s shirt slid off his shoulders. I shivered watching the way his muscles twitched along his back. “Innocent curiosity. Now you know my story. Is there anything you want to ask me?”
I took a deep breath. “Yola.”
Ezekiel turned, eyebrows raised. “That’s all?”
Not all, but Yola intrigued me the most. “The other woman. Floyd said there were two. Who was she?”
“Tanya. Both were my consorts, like you. Both were very smart women, obedient. They catered to my tastes at the time. And as much as I tried to curb my own primitive desires—such desires are nothing but weakness, sickness—I could not help myself.”
“Did Yola kill herself? Or did you—”
“Kill her? Of course not. Yola was one of the few women I could tolerate. In fact, I enjoyed her company. She said little, and what she did say was intuitive. She did as I said and didn’t complain. She knew her place, and she did nothing without my permission. She knew who I was, what power I held. No, she killed herself, and I had no part in it. Such a shame. She was a lovely creature.”
I sucked in a deep breath of air before asking the next question. “And Tanya?”
Ezekiel’s hands paused as they moved to unbuckle his belt. “Tanya was different. She was even more beautiful than Yola and twice as smart. She was an asset when trained properly. However, she had a knack for quiet rebellion and liked to test her boundaries. She knew the dangers she faced, and yet she provoked them anyway.”
I tried to keep my hands from shaking as I finally smoothed back the hair Ezekiel’s fingers had mussed. “What happened to her?”
Ezekiel was silent a long time before saying, “She committed suicide.”
“Like Yola?”
“Well, she did it in a different manner. Yola pulled the trigger on herself, through no doing of my own. Tanya did something she knew was wrong in a deliberate attempt to control me. She knew I wouldn’t approve, and yet she did it anyway.”
“But what…?”
“It’s of no consequence.”
I could only stare.
“She knew the repercussions of her actions,” Ezekiel continued, as if discussing the weather. “And so, in a way…” The muscles in his neck tensed for a second. “She killed herself.”
I was rooted to the floor, speechless and suddenly very cold. Ezekiel slipped his belt through the loops of his slacks and waved me forward.
“Come here, Melissa. I have you for a reason, don’t I?”