Chapter One
Nathalie
Two years ago
"I'm going home," I announce to no one in particular.
"Boo! You're no fun," Alana says, not even looking up from her champagne, one perfectly manicured hand flipping dismissively in my direction.
"Get home on time," I tell her, reaching for my clutch.
That earns me an eye roll dramatic enough to qualify as a sport. I don't wait for anything else. I turn and walk away from the booth, from the bass vibrating through the soles of my heels, from Alana and her circle of perfectly curated friends who have spent the better part of the evening finding creative new ways to jab at my father's campaign.
I'm not worried about Alana. She has her friends, she has her champagne, and she has a driver who will have her home beforemidnight because her father runs a tight ship. And her friends — well, they have never liked me. The feeling is mutual and has been since we were children. I only showed up tonight because my father wanted me gone.
I push through the side door and the night air hits me, carrying the distant smell of rain that hasn't come yet. New York in late September has that quality to it, everything on the edge of something.
I start walking toward the parking garage and let myself think about it properly now that there is no one watching my face.
Dad had a meeting tonight. He was running for City Comptroller not the top of the ladder, not yet, but it mattered. It was a stepping stone and I knew it and I wanted, more than I wanted almost anything in recent memory, to be inside that room. Not to sit at the table, I wasn't naive enough to think that was possible. Just to be present. To hand someone a folder, to bring coffee, and exist in the same square footage as something my father considered important.
I told myself he would see me and think:she wants to help.
Instead, his right-hand man, Gerald, had appeared at the study door before I even reached it and looked at me with the blankness that all of my father's people had perfected and said, "Mr. Keller asks that you enjoy your evening elsewhere, Miss Nathalie."
I was twenty-two. I had just come back for college break. I had a 3.8 GPA and I read every article published about his campaign since he announced it and I had thoughts, actual coherent thoughts, about his policy positioning and the demographic gaps in his outreach strategy. I had written some of them down.
Then Alana appeared at the front door like a summoned creature, already dressed, and saidcome out with meand I went because what else was I going to do. I knew my father had sent her to collect me because she looked annoyed even when asking me to come.
I hoped to at least get properly drunk. That plan had also failed.
I reach my car, an expensive dark grey thing, and fish my keys out of my clutch. The garage is quiet at this end. A few other cars, yellow overhead lights, the distant sound of the city doing what the city always does.
I'm reaching for the door handle when the shot rings out.
It cracks through the space and I spin before I've made the decision to, my hand moving, fingers finding the long pin I keep tucked into the knot of my hair.
It is an old habit. One of the bodyguards my father had briefly assigned me when I was sixteen taught me that a hairpin at the right angle is a strong weapon.
I pull it free and hold it and get into the car and I have the door halfway shut when he appears.
He comes from between two parked cars, moving wrong, one shoulder dropped and his hand pressed flat against his chest. Dark shirt, dark pants, and even in the flat yellow garage light I can see the blood spreading beneath his palm. He looks at me through the gap in the door and I look at him and for one suspended second neither of us moves.
The light is poor but it is enough. He is tall, the kind of tall that makes the low ceiling of the garage feel smaller, with dark hair that falls just slightly across his forehead and a jaw that looks like it has been put together with the sole purpose of making people feel intimidated. Even hunched against the pain, even bleeding, there is a broadness to his shoulders, a density to him that suggests the suit he is wearing has been made to contain something that doesn't particularly want to be contained. His eyes, when they find mine, are pale. Green maybe, or something close to it.
Then I hear them. Footsteps, more than one set, fast and getting faster, echoing from somewhere behind him.
The gun he is holding is pointed at the floor. His jaw is set. He is losing blood fast.
I reach across and push the passenger door open.
"Get in the back."
He doesn't argue. He folds himself into the backseat with a controlled kind of agony and I hear him exhale hard as he lies down. I pull my door shut.
I don't know why I told him to get in. A smarter, more self-preserving version of me would have put the car in reverse the moment I saw him. But I hadn't and now he is bleeding in my backseat and I can hear voices getting closer and it is too late for sensible decisions.
They will search the car and there is nowhere to hide a man of his size. What will they do to me if they find him here? I can't cause any trouble for Dad.
