Mr. CEO(103)

I try to find a place to sit down, finally giving up and pointing to her bed. “May I?”

“Go ahead. But get to talking, Jackson.”

I can barely call this a bed, it's so thin and uncomfortable. I think I might be more comfortable sitting on the floor as I adjust myself. “You know, you don't have to bitch at me about it, Kat. I'm serious when I said I'm here for the right reasons. Peter saw your most recent hit on him. Your friends in the online media need to watch themselves also, but Peter knows that he can't hit at them easily or invisibly. He hits you, though... hell, Kat, you don't even exist. Nathan took a week to find you, and he's one of the best in the city at it. And Peter went through the roof at this one. You touched a nerve that he isn't going to let go of.”

“I don't want him letting go,” Katrina says, her voice intense again. “I want him to latch on so that I can drag him into the light of day with it, then drive a stake through his fucking heart like a vampire.”

“Yeah well, I don't want to see you dead because of it!” I yell back, then settle back on the bed. “For fuck's sake, I know you don't care, but I care if you live through this or not.”

“And yourself?” Katrina asks, but this time, there's a bit of softness in her voice. “And what's with Peter?”

“He threw a tantrum today... Jesus, how I ever thought that man could have been my father. Throwing things, then he tells Nathan to hunt you down and cut your throat in front of me, because I dared to say that your little act may not have been from you. Then afterward, he tells me that if I ever contradict him in public again, he'll have my throat cut. So I went and talked to Nathan.”

“And what did Staff Sergeant Black say about it?” Kat asks, something I didn't know. She notices my surprise, and smirks. “I know all about him, remember? Give me five minutes, and I could have his last commanding officer's home phone number.”

I sigh, then half-laugh. She's still a step ahead of me, but I have to get through to her. “He says that he won't come after you. But he also knows that Peter is going to send someone else after you if he doesn't produce results. And he has to look like he's doing something, or else he's going to end up just as dead as Peter wants you to be. There's more than one way to kill someone in New Orleans.”

Kat nods, then leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “You look more awake than you were before, at least. You understand the stakes of this battle. Either I take him down, or I die. I may die either way.”

“I don't want that, Katrina!” I repeat vehemently. “I want you to live!”

“Why? Why give a damn about me?”

Her quiet question, barely above a whisper, cuts me off, and I look at her again. Her hair is totally black in the dim light from the Christmas LEDs, but those eyes of hers... like two tears in the middle of that perfect face. “Because you were one of the only decent things in my childhood, Kat. We met when we were both six, and even then, I knew my mother hated me. She kept telling me how I'd ruined her figure, how it was my fault that Peter was the way he was. I didn't understand it at the time, but I did the math later... Peter was already having an affair with Andrea's mother before I was even born. I didn't understand it at the time, and thought it was all my fault.”

“It never was,” Kat says, getting off her chair and sitting on the other end of the bed. She crosses her legs, kind of yoga style, or maybe in a meditation pose. “But go on.”

“From the beginning, you were my best friend... hell, for a lot of it, my only friend. Andrea didn't even speak English at first when she came to the house, and she and I have never got along all that well, at least until the past few days. We never did really, although I remember that you two sometimes played together. But most of the time you and I played together. I looked forward every day when you would pull up in that Ford Crown Vic that your dad drove, because it meant a whole afternoon or a full day if it was a Saturday where I felt like a normal kid, and not the son of...”

“Of what?” Katrina asks softly.

“Of a human snake,” I say after a moment. “Even when I was little, I think I knew about my... about Peter at some level. When everyone else was able to bring their parents to school for those silly days, he was never able to go. Then there were all the other signs... the sports cars, the clothes, the constant pretty girls who kept coming to the house. The son of a bitch didn't even worry about trying to hide his cheating even, although he's gotten worse as Andrea and I have gotten older. And through it all, I was the one blamed by Mom, and more or less ignored by Peter. To him, I was just an... an accessory, I guess. Something to check off the box, saying he'd done what needed to be done to complete his bucket list on life.”