“Yes, except Vianca has no family left. She has no heir. She’s destined to fall.”
“One can only hope,” Jac echoed. “So do you know all this just from working at Liver Shot?”
“Not exactly.”
Before Jac could ask her to elaborate, Sophia stopped them in front of an alley, dark enough that Jac couldn’t see the end of it. She pulled a coin out of her pocket, flipped it, and caught it again. It landed on heads. “Fifty-three,” she muttered.
“What’s that about?” he asked.
“It means we won’t encounter any danger,” she said, pushing him forward into the darkness.
Jac knew a lot of superstitions, but he’d never encountered one like that before. And even if Sophia strolled with confidence—her thigh-high boots clicking with every step—he couldn’t be certain some Charles-paid Dove wasn’t waiting for them at the alley’s end. So he kept his eyes trained ahead and one hand on the gun in his pocket.
Eventually, they approached a set of double doors. Sophia opened them, and they entered a cheap hotel—the counters nicked, the floor stained, the floral wallpaper faded. A few men and women, all Jac’s size or larger, played a game of Tropps at a table in the corner. Several others stood in front of an elevator, dressed in dark suits and red ties—Luckluster colors. They nodded at Sophia as she approached and stepped aside for her and Jac to pass.
It wasn’t until the elevator’s gate closed that Jac realized what was about to happen. He was going to come face-to-face with Delia Torren, an actual member of the Family that had nearly destroyed his life. Jac had never met Sedric or Garth, never had a living face to attach to the evils of the Torren empire.
Until now.
“Don’t make a face. Don’t say anything,” Sophia warned him. “Especially about the smell.”
“The smell?” Jac asked, then quickly went silent as the elevator lurched to a halt. The doors opened to reveal a room cloudy with cigarette smoke and filled with steel tables, lining the walls side by side, gleaming under bright fluorescent lights.
Each of them held a body.
Jac couldn’t help it. He grimaced and swallowed down a wave of nausea. The room looked like a morgue, and itreeked—not just of cigarettes, but of whatever slew of concoctions boiled in the glass beakers on the shelves, of the phlegmy coughs of those lying on the tables. It smelled chemical and rotten, and even when he snapped his mouth shut, he could still taste the stench on his tongue.
He would’ve almost preferred the bodies to be dead. Instead, he stared, horrified, at the labored rising and falling of their chests, at the empty looks in their eyes, at the IV drips in their arms.
A woman—Delia Torren, he assumed—stood over one of them, attaching a new packet of saline to the IV. Her brown hair was tied back in a slick, low ponytail, and she wore a pair of glasses and a pristinely white lab coat, its pockets overflowing with paper receipts, pens, and vials. Jac had seen Sedric’s picture a few times in the papers, and Delia looked at least ten years older than him—almost forty, with a seriousness so unlike Sedric’s pursuits of bright lights and constant entertainment.
She looked up as Jac and Sophia entered, then abandoned the man trembling beneath her on the table and walked toward them. “Sophia,” she cooed. Her voice was comically high-pitched, and she herself was quite petite. “You’re early.”
“I’m always early,” Sophia pointed out.
Delia raised an overgrown eyebrow. “Yes, always hoping you’ll cross paths with whoever pays a visit before you. I know how you think. So ambitious for a den manager. My consigliere thinks you’re a spy.”
Jac caught his breath—even if Delia didn’t sound angry, it was clearly a threat. But Sophia didn’t even stiffen. Instead, her gaze roamed around the room until it settled on one of the tables. “Thatconsigliere?” she asked, nodding at a balding man whose skin was a strange green color, matching the liquid that flowed in through his IV.
“Yes,” Delia answered, her lips pursed with disappointment. “As you can see, I didn’t take his advice.”
Jac had heard appalling rumors about the Torrens—so many it was impossible to believe them all. But here, he could see that the truth surpassed even the most monstrous tales. To Delia, these bodies weren’t people—they were experiments.
This was the woman he worked for at Liver Shot. Whenever he played bouncer at the door or referee to the boxing pit,shebenefited from the profits. The thought made him sick.
“I’m accepting your request for increased shipments,” Delia told Sophia. “I managed to sway the Arzt family to my side. They find my brother...distasteful.”
If they preferred Delia to Charles, Jac wondered, what must Charles be like?
“That means you’ll run him out by August,” Sophia said. “He won’t get by without being able to sell Rapture.”
Jac perked up. That was all the information he needed to call Harrison and give him Delia’s name. Then Jac could return to being the second of the Irons and leave the Torren Empire behind him.
“That’s true,” Delia mused. “But I don’t expect Charlie to be so easily defeated. He lashes out when he feels threatened.” She handed Sophia a folder of documents. “These are the new pickup locations. I’m glad you brought muscle with you, by the way.” She nodded at Jac, making him stiffen. “I’d play it safe until this finally ends. Double up the men on each pickup and the bouncers at the den. Start denying firearms at the door. I don’t want mess or headlines.”
Sophia nodded and tucked the folder into her bag, then pulled out several green saltwater taffies. She offered one to Delia. “Candy?”
“Trying to poison a split Apothecary?”
