“I’m not going to let Rouge hurt me. Or Bianca. Or you and Alissa. Or anyone fucking else. You have my word.”
He nods. “I know… But you should know the kind of woman you’re dealing with.” He takes another deep breath in. “There was this time… She invited me into her office. I thought it was for a little fun. I had the hots for her when I first started coming to Aces.”
I exhale sharply. Rouge is gorgeous, so I get it. But I’ve always seen her as attractive in an untouchable way. Like a majestic lioness who won’t hesitate to rip your throat out with her teeth.
“What happened?”
“We did fuck. At least, as far as I remember. She made me take these magic mushrooms before we did it. I was tripping the fuck out. And after we—you know—did the deed, she gave me a goblet to drink from. And inside it was…blood.”
I drop my jaw. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah. She offered it to me as if it were some kind of ritual.”
Maddox doesn’t know about the hearts we found. Only Alissa does.
I don’t want to tell him about them now. He’ll just get worked up again, and he needs more recovery time than Alissa.
But I imagine the goblet of blood she offered to Maddox is related to the hearts. Maybe Rouge drains the blood of her victims…and then consumes it.
What kind of Vlad-the-Impaler-ass banshee is she?
“We know what we’re dealing with,” I tell Maddox. “We’re going to be careful. And then the four of us will live happily ever after. You can take that to the fucking bank.”
“Thanks, Harrison. I had no idea how lucky I was that day I met you. When I fell into the ravine.” He chuckles. “I bet you’re wishing you’d have just let me drown right about now.”
“Not in the slightest.” I punch his shoulder. “And hey, I saved your life that day. It can’t be that hard to do it again.”
13
BIANCA
I’ve enjoyed hanging out with Jack. His English has gotten a lot better the last few months, and he credits our time together watching movies and playing board games when we’re off from Aces for his quick progress.
He’s really smart. Way too smart to be working at Aces, but he promised five years of service to Rouge in exchange for her bringing him over to the States and handling all his immigration documents. I guess it’s a fair trade. He grew up in a small village in a very poor region of Russia and could barely read or write when he met Rouge. She explained to him—in perfect Russian, he tells me—what she could offer him in the States. He jumped at the opportunity.
Of course, he didn’t know the grislier details—namely, that he would be expected to sell his body to club patrons on the side. The male waitstaff don’t get nearly as much attention as the women, but he still ends up taking two or three clients to the private area behind the velvet curtains most weekends.
“It is entirely optional,” he says. “Rouge made that very clear.”
“Is it, though? Your regular wages can’t be nearly enough to live off.”
We’re in the middle of a game of Settlers of Catan. It’s been our game of choice the last month. I’m getting pretty good at it. Today, though, I’m not paying much attention.
“The extra money is nice. But we don’t need to do it,” Jack counters. “We’re not paying rent, after all. Our meals are comped as well. So this is just extra cash to sock away for when we go off on our own. By the way, I’m building another settlement.”
“Damn it!” I haven’t been watching Jack, and he’s gathered the necessary resources to bring him only a few points from winning the game. I hand him one of the orange-colored settlement tokens from the game box, which he sets up on a prime spot.
He grins. “Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.”
I roll my eyes. “I can hate you both.” I look over my own resource cards, but they might as well be written in Swedish, because my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders right now. “Sorry. I can’t seem to focus tonight.”
He eyes my half-full glass of Sauvignon Blanc. “Have you had a lot to drink?”
I chuckle. “Half a glass of white wine isn’t enough to get me wasted. It’s just…” I sigh, placing the cards back down on the table. “Rouge has been pressuring me to…‘entertain’ as well.”
Jack cocks his head. “Really?”
I nod. “Some of the patrons have been offering three or four thousand bucks an hour.”
