“I believe that you believe that, Jack. But what you’re talking about is stuff out of some true-crime podcast. This is Rouge I’m talking about. She’s a lot, to be sure—I could tell you stories from our childhood that would shock the color from your hair—but she’s not the kind of person who hacks people’s heads off, drinks their blood.”
He looks at me, really looks at me, not even blinking. “My God. You’re one of them.”
I scrunch my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“The Montroses. All of you. You’re rotten to the core.”
“You don’t mean that, Jack.”
He gathers his things, hustles to the door of my apartment. “Yeah, I fucking do.”
I cross the room, grab his arm. “You’re not going to quit, are you?”
He whips his arm out of my grasp. “Can’t very well do that, can I? Rouge sponsored my green card. Without her, I’ll be sent back to the little hovel I grew up in. I thought if I told you what I saw, you’d help me.”
“Jack, you have to calm down.”
“Besides. If I tried to leave Aces, Rouge would think I didn’t dismiss the whole thing as a trip. She’d have my head next.”
“Rouge would never do anything like that?—”
“Of course that’s what you’d think. You’re her sister. You share the exact DNA that makes her an evil bitch.” He opens the door, looks over his shoulder. “Guess that makes you an evil bitch, too.”
“Jack, please?—”
But he’s slammed the door behind him, rattling my entire apartment. The glass of water he was drinking from falls off the coffee table, shattering on the hardwood floor of my living room.
Fragmented into pieces, just like my heart.
I grab Harrison’s hands. “Mr. Rose is one of Rouge’s closest confidantes. Besides her Kings, he’s the one she trusts the most.”
“But babe, I told you?—”
“You don’t understand. When I say he’s a confidante, I mean… I think he’s part of the organ harvesting process. I think he might have been the person who cut off May’s head!”
Harrison drops his jaw. “No. It can’t be.”
“Jack told me years ago he saw Mr. Rose doing it to another person. But he was high off his mind on shrooms at the time, so I dismissed it. That’s why we had that big falling out. But now, knowing what we know now, I don’t think it was a bad trip.”
He rubs at the back of his neck. “Fuck.”
“You’re telling me. We have to get the hell out of this hotel. Right now.” I get off the bed and pad into the living room of the executive suite. I make a beeline for the door and turn the handle.
And my heart sinks.
Because it’s locked from the outside.
20
HARRISON
“Please tell me you’re joking,” I say.
She shakes her head, her lips trembling. “No. It’s locked. We’re trapped in here, Harrison."
I charge ahead, grip the doorknob with all my strength, and pull.
It won’t budge.
