The mansion rose before us like it had been carved dusk itself, a shadow with glowing windows, it stood tall behind an iron gate, surrounded by manicured hedges and a wall of smooth stone topped with spikes.
A gilded cage. Beautiful. The kind of beauty meant to distract you, to lure you in. I could hear the ocean behind it, just barely, a slow, hollow crash against the cliffs.
Aran’s arm was linked with mine, as if we were just two friends out for the night. But there was nothing casual about it. We were walking straight into Hel. And he’d spent days preparing, drinking with those men, laughing at their jokes, learning how everything worked, how a man could “pay” his way in, and how easy it was to settle a debt. He learned what he needed to become the kind of man who could.
And tonight, that man was him.
It was the only way in.
“Are you sure about this?” Aran whispered. I didn’t answer. I was too focused. Two guards stood by the gate, bored but alert. “There’s no turning back,” he murmured.
I’d already told myself that a thousand times.
No turning back.
I gave a small nod and slipped into the act. I swayed on my feet, feigning drunkenness, and grabbed his arm to steady myself. Aran caught me just as we’d practiced. wanted to do everything I could to make them underestimate me, although I’m not sure anyone was paying attention.
“Good evening, sir,” One of the guards said as we ascended the stairs to the gate. “Invitation?”
As Aran pulled his card up, the one with the signature vouching for him, I leaned into one of the guards, clutching his shirt with just the right amount of chaos. He just smirked.
“And ladies are always welcome,” he said with a knowing look.
Disgusting.
The gentlemen’s club. Nothing gentle about those men; it needed a new name. Hel, was way more fitting, even though the garden and the paved stone path leading to the main entrance were lovely. Trimmed trees. Neatly arranged flowers. I was sure it had been a home once. It couldn’t always have been Hel… could it?
To my surprise, it was a woman who opened the front doors. I hadn’t expected them all to be shackled in a basement, but still, being met with a warm smile from another woman, knowing what I was walking into, felt like true evil. The last layer of the mousetrap: a false sense of safety.
Her hair was chestnut brown, her lifeless eyes the same color, and she wore a smile that seemed plastered on.
“VIP?” she asked, and Aran nodded.
That was the code for ’is this girl here to be betrayed?’ I suppose.
Behind her shadows stretched across velvet chairs and polished tables in an empty foyer. Laughter and murmurs hummed from somewhere further into the building.
“Right this way,” she said, but she didn’t lead us toward the sound. Instead, we followed her down a long, narrow corridor, each step heavier than the last. At the end of the hall, she opened a door and motioned us inside. The room was small, suffocating. No windows, just bare walls and an uneven stone floor. A single candle guttered in the corner, its light throwing jagged shadows over everything.
Three men sat waiting. One slouched on a battered red sofa, a long beard tangled down his chest, eyes sharp beneath heavy brows. Another leaned against the wall with a pistol in his belt. The third had a fresh black eye, swollen and angry, his jaw clenched as he sized us up.
Aran stepped forward.
“I’m here to settle a debt.”
The words should’ve been easy to dismiss, just part of the act, but hearing them aloud, in that place, in his voice, hit something ugly and deep inside me. For a second I imagined what it would have felt like if he meant it, how it had felt for all the other girls once dragged into that room.
The man with the black eye stepped forward, his hand clamping down around my arm, dragging me away.
“Wait—what are you doing?” I yelped, pitching my voice high and thick with disbelief. “Let me go!”
I thrashed against him, twisting, struggling hard enough that it looked real, it certainly felt like it.
“I’m sorry,” Aran said, his voice cold and detached.
And the men laughed, they were eating it up. I didn’t make it easy for the man who grabbed me though. I screamed, wrenching back hard enough to almost rip my arm free.
“Let me go!” I kicked out, my heel smashing into the man’s shin. He stumbled with a grunt. I tore loose and spun to face Aran.
