But I’m out. Damn.
I keep some in my trunk. We gave one to Alissa after we found her and Maddox at the Caterpillar Hotel.
I grab my keys—also untouched on the counter—and walk out to my garage, pop the trunk.
I grab a red Gatorade. That one always seems to help the most with headaches. Probably just in my head. I’m about to close the trunk when I notice something.
A colorful gift bag.
I spotted it the other night when I was in here grabbing a crowbar to break the door into Alissa’s room—her prison cell, really—at the Caterpillar Hotel. But of course I haven’t given it a second thought after everything that’s gone down.
Maybe Bianca left it for me as a birthday gift?
But she didn’t even know today was my birthday until after we found Maddox and Alissa. I’m pretty tightlipped about it anyway. It’s connected to the greenest day of the year, St. Patrick’s Day, and I can’t see anything green without thinking about the highlights in Ray Sinclair’s hair that evening at the Dimpsey house. The darkest night of my life.
Until tonight, maybe.
I pull out the gift bag. It’s on the heavy side.
I bring it back into my house and set it on the kitchen table with a thunk. I dig through the tissue paper and pull out an ornately decorated object.
I widen my eyes, set it gingerly on the table.
What the hell?
3
BIANCA
I finish my set. It wasn’t my best singing, but I’m going to forgive myself given the gruesome discovery I made not forty-five minutes ago.
Hearts.
Hearts.
Who did they belong to?
Someone who certainly didn’t consent to their organs being removed from their body.
Rouge is running an organ harvesting ring.
The patrons and servers who disappeared from Aces, from the Jade Sanctum, from Second Star and the rest of my sister’s clubs…
These are their organs.
And I bet they end up inside of Rouge’s friends. The club patrons who hold influence. Cale Calloway, the man who died on top of me a week ago, was in his late nineties. Most people that age are confined to their homes. They’re certainly not going out every weekend and bedding lots of young women. I’ll bet he’s been through a few of those hearts.
Hell, he probably died with the heart of a woman he’s fucked inside of him.
The Seven of Spades. May, her real name was. The girl whose head Alissa and Maddox found buried in that Forest Park reserve.
It could have been her heart. Calloway liked her.
Or perhaps it was Timothy Mann, the friend of Aus Waverly’s at the Jade Sanctum who went missing. Aus told us he lost everything in pursuit of a woman who didn’t love him back. And now he’s literally lost his heart.
She’s on the board of Harrison’s hospital. She could easily use that position to sell the organs she harvests to them. I’m not sure how organ donation works, but there must be a connection there.
I retreat to my dressing room and splash cold water on my face. It’ll mess up my makeup, but fuck it. I have much more to worry about right now than maintaining a perfect smoky eye.
