She pulls the master set of keys out of the tight pocket of her cutoff shorts and tosses them to him. He unlocks the drawer we keep the drugs in and tosses them a bag of blow before taking a seat in my chair.
Melissa lines up some coke on the coffee table while Candy shimmies out of her clothes. She’s lost weight and looks rough. She has the lean, sucked in look of a drug addict, and her clothes aren’t the classy ones that she first wore when I promoted her to management. She looks like she’s been shopping at the thrift store. The shorts are ragged and worn, and the shirt is faded and stretched. Only her underwear looks like it might be newish.
“What happened to her?” I mutter, and Sage puts a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. The girls do a couple of lines, giggling and talking about nothing much before they start making out. Melissa palms Candy’s naked breasts, and Lorenzo watches for a while, but he soon loses interest and grabs hisphone. He starts speaking to someone, and I lose interest in the girls as well and tune into his conversation.
“Yeah, the next shipment is due to arrive in two weeks, as well as the stock we still have in holding. We will deliver all the stock to the docks on schedule.” The words are all innocent enough, except for the fact that we don’t ship anything overseas that needs to be at the docks.
The conversation goes on a little longer, but they don’t mention a time or a date, so we have nothing to go on, and then he hangs up. By now, Melissa and Candy are fucking noisily, writhing against one another, their bodies shiny with some sort of oil they dribbled all over themselves.
“Get over here and suck my cock,” he demands, standing up and dropping his pants. He fists his dick, and I grimace, feeling a little nauseous at the sight, but Melissa grabs Candy by the hair and drags her over before forcing her mouth down on it, holding her there until she starts struggling.
“Oh yeah. Fuck, she feels so good. You know what I love, babe.” He slaps Melissa on the ass, and I see Candy struggling to move. Melissa finally releases her, and Candy’s head pops up. She gasps for breath, her pretty face ravaged with tears, snot, and saliva. She’s shaking and gulping for air, but Melissa just slaps her face.
“You fucking slut. When we tell you to suck his cock, you do it right.” She forces Candy down again, and Lorenzo groans his enjoyment.
“I want to fucking wreck her ass. Lube it up for me, will you?” he says, his eyelids lowered and his mouth open as he thrusts into the back of Candy’s throat.
Melissa gets down on the floor and parts Candy’s butt cheeks, burying her face in them to tongue her hole. Candy starts to squirm, but Lorenzo slaps one of her tits, so she stops moving. Just as Melissa spits on her fingers and starts probingCandy’s asshole, Lorenzo’s phone rings again. He picks it up and answers.
“Yeah?” he grunts, listening to whoever is on the other end. All of a sudden, his eyes pop open, and he violently shoves Candy off his cock. She falls back into Melissa, and they both tumble to the ground. “She fucking what? Damn it, that bitch. I want her taken out. I don’t care how you do it, but she needs to die tonight,” he shouts, holding his phone with his shoulder as he tucks his dick into his pants and fastens them.
Sage points at the screen. “I’m going to guess he just found out about the San Jose club.”
I chuckle. “Ah, I love making Lorenzo sweat. I think we’ve seen enough for now. I’ll take this with me and see what other information we can get, but how about we head down to the basement and see what we can find before we leave?”
I’m super curious about the tunnels now, especially if they lead to the dock. I turn off the computer, grab a fresh SD card out of the bottom drawer, and insert it into the tiger before returning it to its spot on the bookcase.
“I bet the only fucking you see on that now are Sam, Dean, and Lacey.” Sage chuckles as there’s a knock on the door. I grimace, not sure that I need to see any of that. I’ll make Sage watch them if we ever need to.
Sage lets our cleanup crew in. No words are exchanged, but polite nods are given to the both of us before they get on with their job. They know what they need to do. We head downstairs in search of Lacey to ask where the basement entrance is.
Chapter Seven
The basement is exactly what Lacey said it is—a large space set up much like the room upstairs, with a bar, tables, chairs, and booths all facing a stage. It shows signs of having been used in the recent past. Sticky drink rings still line a couple of tables, and the scents of smoke and stale beer fill the air instead of dust and mildew, which should be present if this place was unused. A couple of condom wrappers litter the floor, and there’s a sheen of white powder on a table as well.
I guess Lacey was right, and they were coming down here to fuck, but has anything else happened down here?
Sage and I bypass the large area and approach a single door on the far side of the room. He pulls out his gun and gestures for me to move behind him before grasping the doorknob and pushing it open.
The door swings open with a creaky groan, and I peer over his shoulder. All I can see is a dark corridor. I look around for a light switch and find one just inside the door. I reach over Sage and flick it on.
Dull, incandescent bulbs dangle from the roof, lighting up the inside of a nondescript concrete corridor with five doors on either side before they stop, and the concrete walls continue toa dead end probably about fifty feet away. I look down, noting the dusty floor has been disturbed, and there are a number of footprints in the thick layer of dust and debris. I wrinkle my nose at the sight of rat droppings as well.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Sage suggests, and I nod and follow him in, his gun still raised in front of him. We reach the first door, and again, he gestures for me to stand behind him while he opens it. I roll my eyes but don’t argue with him. Sometimes, I need to let him lead, and I’m surprisingly okay with that.
He pushes it open, and we peer into the darkness. I wrinkle my nose at the stale air that billows out. I don’t think this one has been used in a while, but I reach in and turn the light on so we can see what we’re working with.
The same dull lightbulb illuminates the room, which is basically nothing but an old rusty bed with a moldy mattress that I’m pretty sure the rats have been living in.
“I guess Lacey was right, a space to try the merchandise,” Sage says bitterly as I look around the room to see if I can find anything else, but there’s nothing, and you couldn’t pay me to check under the bed. I turn the switch off, and we do the same to all nine remaining bedrooms. It’s not until the last one that we find signs of use. The rest of them were the same as the first—empty save for a rusty bed that had seen better days—but I gape at the last one and feel a shiver run down my spine.
Instead of a rusty bed, this one is full of equipment that wouldn’t be looked at twice in a sex dungeon. There’s a St. Andrew’s cross and a thick metal pipe running across the roof with chains dangling from it. There’s also a hook, which makes my skin crawl, a set of stocks, and a number of tools on a side table that wouldn’t be out of place in my torture rooms. Worst of all, there’s a drain in the floor, and instead of a bed, there’s a rack.
“I don’t know whether to be turned on or terrified,” Sage mutters, and I shiver.
“You know both torture and bondage revs my engine, but none of this is turning me on. If what they say is true, then no one who was in this room wanted or deserved to be here.” My stomach rolls, but there is a thick layer of dust covering everything, so I assume no one has had the unfortunate pleasure of being in this room in the recent past.
I flick the light off, and we pull the doors closed. “I don’t know the exact timeline, but the Russos gave up the skin trade when my grandmother asked my grandfather to stop it, and he was so in love with her, he was happy to grant her that wish. It must have been at least thirty or forty years ago now. These rooms don’t look like they’ve been touched.”
