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“How are you going to kill me, your highness?” he purrs in a voice like black velvet. He’s wearing black boots and jeans, and a tank top that fits loosely across his muscular shoulders. The green eyes of the skull tattoo on his throat flame in the dim light.
A second figure strolls out of the darkness. Lean but broad through the shoulders with narrow hips, long legs, and careless black hair. There are silver rings decorating his fingers, fine silver chains around his neck, and cuffs on his ears. The shirt he’s wearing is made from fine fabric, soft and expensive-looking, unbuttoned low on his smooth chest. Abstract tattoos decorate his skin, and the nails on one of his hands are painted black. Those dark eyes of his are soulless black holes in his face.
He hunkers down beside my chair and tugs on a few of the ropes that bind my arms and legs. Testing them.
“Struggle for me,” he murmurs.
I stare at him, perplexed. “What?”
His gaze travels lovingly over the ropes. Blood red ropes. Beautiful, twisting knots and loops.
“Struggle for me. Try to get away.” He wants to watch me pull against my bindings because he gets sick pleasure from seeing me at his mercy.
“Go smash your dick with a hammer,” I snarl at him.
Acid bursts out laughing. “Nice try, Thane.”
This is Thane? I’ve never met him, but he and Vinicius work together and I heard his voice once. He called Lorenzo the night a woman’s body was found in the canal. He sounded unemotional as he relayed what he’d learned from the police scanner, but as I gaze into those dead eyes, I see his inhumanity is on a whole other level.
“You’re supposed to be on our side,” I tell him, then look at Acid. “So were you.”
The smile drops from Acid’s face. “Strife is on Strife’s side. Always has been. Always will be.”
My eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness. I peer into the shadows, searching for the video camera and whatever they’re going to use to kill me. Whatever they have planned, it will be lurid and violent.
“Why did you kill Salvatore, Vinicius, Cassius, and Lorenzo’s sisters?”
Acid and Thane exchange glances, both of them smiling. All the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
“Why do you think?” Acid asks, turning back to me.
“Because you’re petty assholes. Nine years ago, you thought that with Salvatore’s father gone, you’d be able to take control of this area of Coldlake. Then the Coldlake Syndicate was formed and you discovered you’d be answering to Lorenzo. The four of them are too powerful for you to take on, and so you lashed out at their sisters instead.”
“Ah, she’s got us all figured out, Thane,” Acid says with a smirk. Thane has moved back to prop his shoulders against the wall, his expression blank.
I’m talking about the vicious murder of four innocent women, and Acid’ssmiling. “Lorenzo nearly killed himself when Sienna’s body was found. Cassius obliterated everything around him in grief and fury. Vinicius never got his lost twin sister back. Family is everything to Salvatore and you ripped his apart. You almost destroyed them over a few shitty square miles and a bar.”
Acid rubs a hand over his jaw. “You really love those men, don’t you?”
All four of them burn brightly in my heart. I want to scream and cry. I want to struggle, but I won’t give them the satisfaction. There’s probably a camera trained on me right now, and if one of my men ever sees this, I want them to know that I held it together as long as I could and I never,everbegged for mercy.
There’s no point begging. Mercy has long fled this place. Only pain and death remain.
Thane speaks in a flat, cold voice. “Strife isn’t just a bar. Strife is who we are.”
“Pieces of shit is what you are,” I snarl. If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging. “So tell me, what kind of death do you have planned for the Princess of Coldlake? You had better make this good. I want to go down in history with the grisliest death this city has ever seen. How about tying me to a throne and electrocuting me slowly? Hammering a crown of nails into my head, one by one? What’s it going to be?”
Acid gazes at me in disbelief. “Damn, girl. You’ve got a sick mind.”
The Black Orchid Killer has a sick mind. I’m just riffing to hide my terror.
Acid and Thane exchange glances, like they’re not sure what to say next, and the first trickle of doubt runs down my spine. The Black Orchid Killer would know exactly what he wanted to do next. He’s had more than a year to plan my grisly death. I barely know Acid and I don’t know Thane at all, but I do know they’re from the streets. They’re accustomed to the swift, messy justice of baseball bats and stolen guns.
So what’s really going on here?
I close my eyes and think back to the night Acid was shot and Lorenzo and I saved his life. The moment Acid woke up, he was intent on finding out who I was and what I was doing with Lorenzo. He delights in irritating Lorenzo, but even though they piss each other off, I sensed grudging respect between the two of them. Acid is curious. Smart. Opportunistic. What will he get out of torturing me to death? It seems like a lot of bother without any material gain. Surely I’m much more useful to him alive.
Relief floods through me so fast that I start to laugh, and my eyes pop open. “Oh, thank God. You’re not going to kill me. You really had me going there for a moment.”
