Page 35 of How to Steal a Galaxy

And it’s been enough to distract him from what I actually came here to steal.

15

Rian’s not letting me out of his sight again; that’s for damn sure. He escorts me to the now-dark windows at the back of the main gallery, and we watch on screens as Fetor finishes up his speech on the other side of the black curtain.

“Backstage at the biggest event of the year,” I say. “I feel like a VIP.”

“I feel like I can’t let you out of my sight.”

“You’re such a flirt.”

“Trust me, folks,” Fetor says on stage, the voice amp picking up his resonant chuckle. “We had a great display set up for you to explain it all, but—”

Rian notices the way my lips snarl. “Why do you hate Strom Fetor so much?” His voice is low, and we’re far enough away from others that our conversation is, essentially, private.

“Do I need a reason?” I ask. “He’s so hateable, on so many levels.”

“Is Fetor the reason why you’re here?” Rian tries to keep this all business. He’s so focused on me, he doesn’t even notice the way Phoebe is on the other side of the hallway, whispering to a tall man with reddish-brown skin and crinkly eyes, both of whom keep looking at us conspiratorially. I wish there was a way I could eavesdrop on the office gossip that I am absolutely thrilled to be in the center of with Rian. From their point of view, I was caught making out with Rian and then escaped certain punishment after that stunt on the hover stage, and now I’m hanging off his arm. I slither a little closer to him, and it takes him a full five seconds for him to move his hand when it brushes against my hip.

“I didn’t come here for Fetor,” I say. Lie. The job I was hired to do had nothing to do with Fetor, but part of the reason I accepted it had everything to do with it. Dominos. Still, to Rian’s face, I say, “I consider personally informing Fetor that I despise every molecule in his body as a bonus of the job. Almost better than the food. It would also have been a bonus if he’d caught on fire in front of a live audience, but I had to improvise on that one. You’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Rian mutters, but he doesn’t sound grateful at all. “So, Strom wasn’t your job?”

“Of course he’s not,” I say. Someone closer to the stage glances back at us, glowering, as if she’s far more concerned about what Fetor has to say than anything else, which is just ridiculous.

“But then why do you hate him?” Rian asks, softer.

“Do I need a reason?”

“Just curious.”

“I don’t think anyone should have enough personal wealth to decimate a large country’s income just because he’s going through a midlife crisis.”

Rian frowns, considering. There are at least three things I could be referring to with that statement. The bureaucratic coup that shifted control of the communications network from Fetor’s mother to Fetor himself also saw a shift of the main office from Centauri-Earth to Rigel-Earth, creating an economic crisis on the former. Fetor’s brief, passing interest in ship development saw him purchase and then bankrupt the largest engine manufacturing chain, which resulted in alternative fuel systems all but disappearing from sale.

And that’s not even mentioning . . .

“Your father,” Rian says softly, razor-blade gaze on me, cutting off every mask I usually wear.

I nod tightly, not trusting myself to talk.

See, Fetor’s family wealth did start on Earth, and while his family’s compound in the heart of the United Russo-Asian Republic may have been vastly different from my own upbringing in rural America, that little bit of shared homeworld would normally garner my sympathy.

Not for Fetor.

“I thought you’d appreciate the climate-sickness vaccine,” Rian says.

“I do.” I wrap my arms around my shoulders, unconsciously touching the rough patch of skin near my left underarm. The med patch vaccine left a scar, one anyone who was in the first few years of vaccines has. They have a milder version now, one that doesn’t leave a mark.

Climate sickness only affects people on Earth. Radiation and pollution combined into a lethal outcome for hundreds of thousands of people before anyone even started to try to find a cure, and it was only in factories like Fetor’s, ones that were literally on the planet, that there was any sort of concentrated effort to discover a cure, even if other planets claimed to offer help.

Fetor’s medical research facilities discovered the vaccine and treatments to help those already sick first. I’ll give him that. The researchers saved billions of lives.

But not at first.

At first, after the trials and experiments, the only people who got the vaccine or treatment were those who could afford it.

“Eight years,” I say, my eyes blurring as the audience starts to clap for Fetor. The show’s about to end.

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