He rolls his shoulders loose and climbs the staircase two steps at a time.
By the time he reaches his bedroom, the cocaine high has begun to twist into heat under his skin.
He peels off his jacket and tosses it across a chair. His shirt follows.
The bathroom lights snap on automatically when he steps inside.
He turns on the shower. Steam is already beginning to fog the mirrors as hot water pounds down from the rainfall head.
Knox steps under it and groans softly.
The water beats against the back of his neck, washing away the smell of perfume and sweat from the club.
His mind drifts as the heat soaks into his muscles. He thinks about the blonde from the VIP section, the one with the short dress and the sexy smile who slipped her number into his hand before he left. She said she would meet him tomorrow night after his meeting. Knox imagines her on her knees already, mouth open, hair pulled back while he grips it. The thought makes him smirk under the spray.
His thoughts shift to the meeting scheduled for the next afternoon with Elliot. Elliot wants to discuss the fallout from the manor.
The water streams down his chest as another memory surfaces.
Asher.
Asher had always been the loudest one in the room. The first to grab a bottle, the first to cut lines across the table, the first to laugh when someone started screaming.
They used to party for days without stopping.
Now Asher is dead.
Knox frowns slightly as the thought lingers.
He still doesn’t know who killed him.
Part of him wonders if it had been Seth.
Knox had seen the reports afterward. The bodies in the manor. The chaos that followed.
Nobody has ever managed to locate that place from the outside. The estate had been scrubbed from every record and buried behind shell properties and restricted access roads. Even most members of the Collective have never been there in person.
Everything burned afterward.
The physician is dead. The guards are dead. No survivors have surfaced. Knox has assumed the victims died in the fire.
That is the logical explanation.
Still, the question creeps in now and then.
What if someone had gotten out?
The steam thickens in the bathroom.
Knox closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting the water pound against his face.
Then the lights go out. The bathroom drops into sudden darkness.
For a moment he doesn’t move.
“Jesus,” he mutters, blinking into the dark.
He reaches out and shuts the water off.
