Bram shrugged as if the answer were of no great consequence to him. He seemed much more interested in just staring at my breasts all night. “I paid him a short visit; yes.”
I stood up quickly, banging my knee against the apron of the table. Before I could protest, Bram dismissed my concern with a frown as he reached for my arm, pulling me back down into my chair again.
“Before you conjure up mistruths and fantasy, allow me to explain.”
“Why the hell are you still in contact with my father?” I snapped. “You said you were on our side!”
“I am on your side,” he answered in a monotone. “But if I suddenly discontinued my role as your father’s business partner, you and your cause would both be doomed.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged as if the answer were obvious, even sighing, like he lacked further interest in the topic. “I cannot afford any suspicion where your father is concerned, my dear. He must believe that my allegiance remains with him, rather than to you or The Resistance.”
“Then my father doesn’t know you’re AWOL?” I asked, frowning while trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not. The one thing I knew about Bram was he was an excellent liar, which I guessed made sense, given he’d had hundreds of years to perfect the skill.
“AWOL?” he repeated curiously. His eyes clouded with confusion as his eyebrows furrowed. “I am unaware of the meaning of the term.”
“What I want to know is: does my father know that you’re not on his side any longer?” I corrected myself. “Does he have any idea you’ve joined The Resistance?”
“I did not join The Resistance,” Bram answered haughtily.
“You told me you were allied with us.” My voice sounded steely.
“I
am
allied with you, my dear,” Bram answered with another well-rehearsed grin. “However, I do not wish to dirty my hands. Battling one’s nemesis is not in my best interest. Therefore, I prefer to remain on the periphery; but I most assuredly am your ally, as I can provide you with something no one else can.”
“Oh, really? And what is that?”
“Information, of course,” he said with a smug smile.
At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter whether Bram actually fought beside us or not. He was right—privy information was worth much more than magical brawn. But, as to him pulling the proverbial wool over my father’s eyes, I couldn’t say I completely had my mind wrapped around that one yet. “If my father is still clueless as to your true allegiance, how did he react to what happened between you and Christina? I mean, you basically kidnapped her to get her off the
Blueliss
, not to mention that you never returned her to Melchior?” He started to answer, but I interrupted him as something else occurred to me. “Speaking of Christina, where the hell is she, anyway?”
“Calm down, please, Sweet. Your litany of questions makes me feel something I imagine you would call anxiety, and I do not appreciate the sensation.” He paused for a few seconds and dramatically breathed in for a few counts before breathing out, which was ridiculous since he was already dead, and thus, couldn’t breathe. After regaining some sense of serenity, he smiled at me vacantly as if he’d just undergone a lobotomy.
“Okay, I won’t ask another question,” I muttered. “So answer the ones I already asked.”
“As to your leader, she is safely nestled in one of my estates. We shall retrieve her when we return to Lucerne.”
“And my father?”
He frowned at me. “I was approaching that discussion, if you would cease interrupting me.” He revealed an expression of mild discontent, so I didn’t say anything more.
He cleared his throat. “Your father trusts me as much as his nature allows,” he started. “And that one arrow in our quiver cannot be jeopardized.” His eyes narrowed as his lips grew tighter. “The moment that your father ceases to trust me is the moment of peril for you and your cause.”
“So what did my father think when you absconded with Christina?” I asked again.
Bram smiled at me broadly. “Very impressive vocabulary, my dear,” he said in a patronizing tone. I honestly thought he thought he was paying me a compliment. Seeing my impatient frown, though, he continued, “Your father showed little or no reaction, as he assumed I was just … borrowing her.”
“Borrowing her?”
Bram eyed me knowingly before sighing again, as if he were bored with our conversation and had more important places to be. “Borrowing her for carnal activities, Sweet.”
“Oh my God,” I said in disgust, shaking my head as something else occurred to me. Glaring at him, I could feel my jaw tightening. “If you laid one finger on her …”
“Sweet,” he smiled, shaking his head and holding up one hand to silence me. “I give you my word as a gentleman that I was nothing but.” Then his gaze dropped to my bust again and he licked his lips. “Where you are concerned, however, gentility abandons me.” Then he shrugged. “But no one ever accused a captivated lover of gentility, or did they?”
I had no clue what in the hell Bram was going on about and I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until I exhaled. “So you actually believe my father thinks there isn’t anything weird going on with you?”
“That is my belief; yes,” he finished succinctly.
“My father is more than a little paranoid,” I continued, wondering if Bram was simply deluding himself into believing that Melchior wasn’t in the know. “He has his own people followed, as well as their phones tapped.”
Bram nodded as if this were old news. “Yes, he does.”
I raised my eyebrows in a rendition of “Well?”
“I am not one of his people,” he answered while shaking his head as if I were slow. Well, call me slow, but I wasn’t going to allow this conversation to end until I fully understood exactly where Bram stood with regard to Melchior O’Neil.
“Then what are you to him?”
Bram cocked his head to the side as he pondered my question. Then he faced me again. “To understand our partnership, it is best to explain from the beginning.” He cleared his throat as his eyes focused on something behind me. Pausing another few seconds, he glanced at me again as he sat up straighter, dropping his hands to his sides and clearing his throat again. He looked like he was about to deliver a soliloquy.
“I met your father long before he came into power,” he started, and his English accent suddenly sounded more aristocratic. “Melchior and I were first introduced as business associates, something which eventually grew into a partnership. In the beginning, we merely dabbled in importing and exporting, but it later turned into illegal potions smuggling after your father decided to become head of the ANC.”
“My father was the head of the ANC?” I asked in surprised disbelief. The connection between the ANC and street potion trafficking was pretty obvious—the ANC was supposed to stop potion smuggling and confiscate all contraband, relinquishing it to ANC custody. My father, as head of the ANC, would obviously have had unlimited access to all the contraband, which he’d obviously chosen to recycle.
Bram nodded. “Of course, Sweet. One cannot become the head of the Netherworld without first becoming the head of the ANC.” After another theatrical breath, he continued, “Once your father achieved his dream as frontrunner of the ANC, he grew quickly bored with it, and later affixed his sights on becoming the leader of the Netherworld.”
“So how do you figure into all of this?”
“Once again, you interrupt me, Sweet. I was about to segue into that very subject.” He frowned at me, but continued his narrative, thank Hades. “I was already a very wealthy man in my own right, long before I met your father. The truth is that your father never intended to create a partnership with anyone, but he needed my money, and we were both well aware of that fact. Hence, the partnership began and, as the years went by, we both became increasingly well-to-do, although I accumulated much more wealth than he.”
“Why was that?” I asked, realizing I was interrupting him, but not really caring.
“Because as an established businessman, and a prudent one at that, I withheld my investment unless I received a larger share of the entire pie.”
It was starting to make sense. Melchior needed Bram more than Bram needed Melchior. So while Melchior did all the legwork necessary to rise to the top of the ANC, before becoming head honcho of the Netherworld, Bram simply relaxed and profited from the illegal potions money rolling in. Yep, Bram wasn’t lying when he said he was a prudent business man.
“So after becoming leader of the Netherworld, why didn’t my father just do away with you?” I asked the obvious.
Bram laughed at the idea, shaking his head as if the question were absurd. “It is not so simple to ‘do away with me,’ as you so artfully phrased it.” His subsequent frown told me he didn’t find my question particularly polite.
I, however, couldn’t have cared less. “Okay, so from your story, it sounds like you were and still are in the perfect situation,” I started, eyeing him narrowly. “So why end it by aligning yourself with us, with The Resistance? Why put an end to something that’s obviously benefitted you so nicely?” I finished, glancing around myself and taking in his exquisite home. “I mean, this gorgeous estate, all your cars, No Regrets, all your women … why would you want all of that to end?”
Bram sighed and looked away from me. He tapped his fingernails against the table again as he zoned out on the dark night beyond the window. I followed his gaze and watched the stars twinkling alongside the crescent moon.
“I suppose you might say I turned over a new leaf,” he said softly.
“How so?”
He shrugged as he returned his attention to my face. “Yes, this is all fine and well, but even I can be subjected to bouts of … remorse.”
I frowned at him, taking a deep breath and shaking my head in disbelief. “You really don’t expect me to believe that you feel guilty now, so you want out?” I didn’t give him the chance to respond. “Because I don’t buy it, not for one second.”
Bram chuckled. “I do not know why I bother speaking anything but the truth to you, Sweet.”
“Neither do I.”
His chuckle faded as he stared at me for a few seconds. Then his jaw tightened and his lips formed a solid line. “I believe your father has grown too hungry for power. He is becoming a threat to everything we worked for,” he said finally, with no mirth in his expression. “That is the primary reason I will assist you in his removal from office.” He paused for a moment or two. “That and I will never forgive him for the abuse of his sole offspring.”
“Here we go with the lying again,” I said, unable to conceal the anger in my tone. “You were much more believable when you admitted the sad truth of your own greed, Bram. Don’t try to glorify your intentions by throwing me into the mix.”
Bram shook his head adamantly, even pounding his fist on the table top. It was a rare display of anger on his part, so very rare that I’d never seen him act like this before. I felt my eyes widening with surprise.
“I apologize,” he said instantly as he uncurled his fist and allowed his hand to drop to his side. He leaned back into his chair and studied me. “But on this topic, I have spoken nothing but the truth. Had I been fortunate enough to father offspring of my own, I would never have neglected him or her so carelessly, nor treated my child so cruelly as your father did you. And for that, I shall never forgive him.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent. There was something fervently intense about the way Bram had spoken and the way his eyes darkened at the mere mention of my relationship with my father.
“The truth is, Sweet, that you have become quite dear to me.”
I wanted to call his bluff, but I couldn’t—not when there was something so sincere in his eyes, something that insisted he wasn’t lying to me, that there were no tricks, no riddles, nothing I had to discern from his words. It was a rare moment in which I thought Bram was actually baring his innermost soul.
“The gravity of it quite took me by surprise, I am loath to admit,” he continued. “I found myself constantly looking forward to your impromptu visits at No Regrets. So when you approached me and asked me to escort you to the Netherworld, I felt such anticipation as I have not known for, oh, a hundred years or more. Yes, of course, I have often said that I would love nothing more than to bed you, but I also must confess now that our … bizarre acquaintance is one of the few joys in my life.”
Bram had never been so candid with me, and for the first time ever, I actually felt sorry for him. It suddenly dawned on me, as never before, that living for such a long time had made Bram an island unto himself. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was no one he was close to—no one he considered his friend.
Except me. Yes, I had to admit that in our own limited and unique way, Bram and I were friends.
“At the expense of turning our last evening together into a maudlin scene, I shall ask that we change the subject, if it pleases you,” Bram suddenly said. He cleared his throat and his posture stiffened. “I must confide my unease with anything that defies logic and reason.”
I got his gist. Like most men, he wasn’t comfortable when facing his inner emotional child. But, to be fair, I wasn’t either. “I understand,” I said simply.
“Have you no curiosity as to the other person with whom I paid a visit while in the Netherworld?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I answered, glancing at him with renewed interest.
Bram smiled smugly as if our last conversation were now a distant memory, something to be locked away in his psyche. I had no idea if we would ever discuss it again. Why? Because Bram had said all he needed to say, and that was that.
“I believe you are acquainted with Caressa Brandenburg?” he asked, flashing me a raised brow expression.
“You visited Caressa?” I asked as shock welled up inside me.
“Yes, does it surprise you that Ms. Brandenburg and I have enjoyed quite a long friendship?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He seemed to like my answer and grinned more widely, apparently enjoying the role of news anchor. “She is quite an attractive woman, do you not agree?” he continued, eyeing me suspiciously.