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“Used to be like that. Couldn’t be a henchman unless you were born into one of the Quinn bloodlines. It was one of the things Don changed after the war.” I remember her talking about the war yesterday when she said she would have been forced to be a housekeeper. “But yes,” she adds softly, “the creepy place is for family, too.”
We descend in silence, but my mind is twelve floors up, thinking about the creepy place. I’m imagining what it must be like to be plunged into total darkness with a man you need to kill. A man who also needs to kill you. Every creak running your blood cold. Every footstep making your head spin.
“I think you’ll like the basement.”
The air changes long before the elevator stops. It’s warm, spiced with chlorine and essential oils. The doors open to a shimmering pool, set into a mosaic tile floor and finished with gold ladders on either end. Quiet jazz floats through the humidity. Distorted yellow light wobbles through the water.
“You’re smiling.”
And so I am. “It’s lovely. So calming.”
“Yeah.” Aisling sighs. “As soon as I’m finished with my exams, I’m going to come down here and float, for like, a week.”
When she claps her hands, something she has a habit of doing, the noise echoes off the low ceilings, creating a polite applause. “Look, I really gotta get to class.” She kisses the silver card, then hands it to me. “Any questions?”
“Am I the first?”
I surprise myself by asking it.
“First to be kidnapped?” Aisling whistles, raking her hair back. “I have no idea. Probably not? That’d be my guess. Honestly, I must be the only Quinn who would swap all of the riches and the reputation of having the family name for a normal life. I keep my head down and ignore all the…darkness that comes with being a Quinn.”
“No,” I say weakly. “Am I his first…wife?”
She cackles, looking relieved. “Oh, yeah. Of course!”
Of course?
Her abruptness makes me recoil. I think of the child’s doodles on the wall of Donnacha’s office. The girl in the Polaroid, the corners of the photo curling in to protect her.
“First woman he’s ever let into his home too, I’d guess.” She slashes her eyes to me and smiles. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be right, up until ten years ago.” With a flick of her head, she beckons me toward the elevator. “He was a total manwhore with women dripping off every limb, or so the story goes.”
Heat prickles at my chest like a rash. It’s not jealousy. It’s just very hot by the pool.
“So what happened?”
She twirls her watch around her slender wrist, looking up at the ceiling of the elevator as if it’ll make us travel faster. We don’t go far, just one floor up, where the doors open the reveal the lobby. It’s hard to believe it was only three days ago when I stood in this elevator bank with no idea how different this whole situation would turn out from what I expected. “After the war, Don went away for a while. I was young, but I remember it quite well. He went away for just under a year. When he came back, he wasn’t the same.” Three guards round the corner on a mission and create a barricade in front of the doors. “Back up you go, Mrs. Quinn,” the blond one snarls. I scowl back at him, then turn to Aisling. “Wasn’t the same?”
“Chill, Aiden, I was just showing her the pool. Back up a little, will you? You’re making us claustrophobic over here.” She gives me a what-are-they-like? kind of eye roll, then goes to shove past the burly bodies.
“Wait.” I grab her arm.
She halts in her tracks, her bicep tensing under my grip. “Judo, remember?” The way she lifts her free hand like she’s going to chop me tells me she’s not very good.
“You said he wasn’t the same.” My eyes slash to the henchmen. They all look away. “He went traveling.”
“Oh. Uh-huh. He was…”
“He was what?”
Aisling pulls her arm out of my grip slowly like a snail escaping its shell.
“My brother…he’s always been so laid-back. It’s one of the things I think makes him so terrifying, you know? Some people don’t take life seriously, but he doesn’t take death seriously, either. But when he came back after his travels, it was like a darkness followed him off the plane. Like he was haunted.”
She turns to the door, about to brace the storm.
“Wait. You said he was a manwhore before?”
She shrugs. “Yeah. And after, I never saw him with a woman again.”
She slips away, parting the sea of henchmen. I’m frozen in my spot, stupefied by so much new information at once. Eventually, the blond man grunts, taps something on the elevator screen, and sends me back up to the Devil’s lair.
