Page 53 of Heist in Paradise

No windows. Just naked bulbs hanging from the low rock ceiling.

Numbly, I reached for the metal latch, unable to work the mechanism until scarred fingers reached around and slid it open effortlessly. I didn’t spare him a look as I walked stiffly inside. The air was stale yet somehow damp. I could smell the mattress, the cold iron of the bed frame. For a moment, I just stood in the space, taking it in, dizzy and numb.

Jax hovered in the doorway, his arms crossed, biceps twitching with his undercurrent of violence. I walked to the bed and gingerly lay on it. The frame whined and creaked, the mattress wholly unforgiving.

“The fuck are you doing?” Jax sounded shocked, then furious. I stared up at the lights, thinking of Molly.

“She was here,” I said in a small, distant voice. I felt so far away, and I thought that was how Molly had probably felt. Not here. Somewhere else. Somewhere better.

Jax was suddenly leaning over me, breathing heavily. “Get up,” he snarled.

“She was here.” It begged repeating. After all this time, all my efforts to dig up the truth, and I was lying in her casket.

Rough hands grabbed me and hauled me up. I fought him clumsily, still floating too far out of reach.

“I don’t want to see you like that,” Jax growled in my ear. “Not as one of them. Fuck, he’s going to die slowly.”

My hands curled over his biceps, anchoring me back to the grim present. He was so solid. So alive.

A tiny flash of red above his head caught my eye. I froze, then withdrew with a slow blink, uncomprehending. A few seconds later, I pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”

Jax turned, his body vibrating against mine. We were pressed together so tightly that I felt when his heart skipped. “Shit,” he muttered. He pressed a finger to his ear. “Zola. We got eyes.”

Whatever reply came didn’t seem to surprise Jax, but it made his face downright surly. He cursed again, then manhandled me out of the room, not bothering to shut the door behind us. I went willingly, if not a bit shocky, my feet tripping over nothing and only his firm grip preventing me from eating dirt.

The tunnels went on forever. I lost count of the doors after seventeen. We arrived at the end of one tunnel to a set of double doors that hinged inwards, a grand opening to another cavern of Hell.

It was a bedroom, a proper one, with a plush king-sized bed in the middle, polished dark wood side tables, and another tusk chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the light warm and soft against the rough cavern walls. I knew with certainty that this was Salvadore’s real bedroom, not the pristine showroom upstairs. The room was still neat, but it had signs of life—the mug on the side table, a pair of reading glasses beside it, a box of tissues and lotions, and the artworks on the walls. They were decidedly more sinister than his upstairs collection, more flesh and bone, wailing mouths and twisted bodies contorted in agony. Whoever painted them was probably less disturbed than the reclusive billionaire who hung them up in his underground rape dungeon.

The thought, bizarrely, broke through my shock and made me laugh. It was a quiet, desperate noise that made Jax falter. The others were waiting in the bedroom, and on our arrival, they each turned and stared at me like I’d grown a second head.

I barely smothered my laughter, pushing my knuckles into my mouth. “Sorry,” I muttered.

Nate shot me an amused look. “She’s cracked.”

“She hasn’t cracked,” Jax said, at the same time Ryle punched Nate in the shoulder. “You’re one to talk, dude.”

Callum dragged our naked hostage to the bed and forced him on top of it. He had gone weak and rubber-limbed, the blood flaking where it had dried on his chest. “M’ not allowed in here,” he mumbled without prompting. “He don’t let anyone in here.”

His lids fluttered, and he started to slump over on himself. Callum caught him, and then Madoc leaned over and slapped him hard across the face. Kane jerked upright, blinking, the pain spiking his awareness.

“Not nighty night time yet,” Madoc sang. He was enjoying this. Of course, he was, the weirdo. It was probably one of the few reasons Jax kept him around. It wasn’t like his personality was winning any points.

It was then that I realized that Zola was missing. My stomach clenched hard, and as I turned to alert Jax, he said, “Zola, don’t watch it.”

There was a beat. Then Nate shot out of the room, and Jax rubbed his forehead with a resigned expression. I noticed Madoc watching him intensely. And then Madoc noticed me watching him, and I couldn’t seem to look away from his pitiless stare.

It was Ryle who broke our staring contest.

“Hey,” he said with a grim smile. “Zola found the surveillance room. There are videos. She’s watching them now.”

His gentle words doused me in ice. “Videos?”

Ryle’s mouth pressed into a hard line. He nodded to something over my shoulder. I followed it, finding a wall of TV screens mounted there, facing the bed. “The sicko liked to watch,” Ryle said.

And so the depravity continued.

“It’s a good thing,” Ryle went on, and then balked at my incredulous expression. “I mean, obviously not the videos themselves, but the evidence. It’s what you wanted, right?”