Kings of Blood and Money (Underworld Kings)

“Lots of girls come in here. We run a few clubs.” There’s a quiver in her voice.

“Let’s not waste time pretending you don’t know who I’m talking about. It’s late, surely you want to get home to a husband…kids…a cat?” The threat is there without having to actually develop it.

Turning toward me once more, her eyes wrinkle, her lips thin and aged. “I didn’t tell her anything. I don’t really know anything to tell.”

Fear punctuates the air. I can taste it rolling off her in waves. “Anything about what?” I ask, firm, agitated.

“Marcia Gallo,” she says like I should have known. My heart skips a beat. Freya came here asking about the woman who birthed her. She’s trying to find her mother? Does she not believe us that she’s dead?

“She said she was writing a piece for her journalism class on the Gallo family’s disappearance,” the woman adds.

Freya created an entire fabrication to come here. How long had she been planning this trip? Looking into her past? What did she know?

“Anything else?” I demand.

Shaking her head, the fat on her double chin jiggles, her glasses almost falling. Rolling my neck, I pin her with a deathly glare. “Are you sure?”

Lips wobbling, her face crinkles up like paper. “She asked about a man who used to come here.”

A man? What man? “Who?” I stress.

“I don’t know his first name. Marcia used to call him Doc, but his name was Mr. Remington.”

My mind races, trying to strip away at what this means. Why the hell would my father come to a place like this? How would he know Marcia?

“Why did he come here?” This place is a shit hole.

“For her,” she says simply.

The walls rush in, suffocating me. Pushing out into the night, I gulp at the air, trying to fill my strained lungs. I rest my hand against a large tree in the front of the church, it’s leaves unmoving in the stale heat. He was fucking her. Freya’s mom. My father.

The information floods my mind, bringing back memories from our childhood. They were happy…right? No arguments. Mother was content they had Rose. My muscles twine around my bones, compressing. Movement in my peripheral has me reaching for my gun, the holder stitched into the fabric of all my jackets. I aim it at the bravest of the teens who’s made their way across the road, wrongly assuming this would be an opportunity to rob me perhaps.

“Turn the fuck back around. You don’t want none of this, little boy,” I say, venom lacing my tone.

Hands raised, he backs away. Caleb is already out of the car, approaching us.

“You good?” he asks, his hand resting on his own piece at his hip.

“Take me home,” I order.

There’s a TV on somewhere in the house. The muted sound of laughter hums from upstairs. Yanking my jacket off and dumping it on the kitchen counter, I punch in the code to the door leading to father’s private area, turmoil roiling within me. My footfalls echo down the corridor. The light in here is too fucking bright. It’s like the sun beating down on me.

I pass the medical room and go straight to the last door. Sucking in a couple breaths to regain my composure, I reach for the latch on the metal cell. The sound of it scraping across metal drums in my ears. My heart flops about in my chest like a fish plucked from the ocean and dropped into a tank without water.

The lights inside the room are dimmed. A plastic-coated mattress lay on the floor at the back wall. There’s a toilet and sink, just like you’d get in any prison. And books. The books he’s forced to read from mother’s list. A thousand books she wanted to read before she died. My chest constricts, lungs failing me.

“It’s been a while.” The hoarse voice carries across the cell to my ears. My gaze travels to the man staring back at me through the small square gap in the door. His face covered in hair, like a forest reclaiming land, hanging in matted clumps. Pale skin, almost translucent, marred with more scars than you’d think humanly possible, sags over bone.

Taking a step toward me, I stand back. One of his shoulders curls in at an odd angle, a dislocation not re-set many years ago.

“I’ve come to ask you something.” The wound on my chest burns with a phantom ache. “Was my father fucking your wife?”

Twenty-Seven

Freya

I haven’t been able to settle the pacing of my heart since Noah left the house. Remi’s arms encase me, offering comfort, but there’s a pit, pitch black and cavernous, widening inside me, threatening to swallow everything into it.

He shifts on the bed, a soft rumble from his chest as he laughs at a sitcom. I’ve been so mad at Noah for the secrets he keeps, yet I’m going behind their back, seeking my own answers. The deceit is stacking up and polluting what we’re building between us. What Noah said about the person in the box. If it was true, do I want an animal like that out there living, committing such brutality against innocent people, kids? Was Father doing society a favor? Was it my place to judge him? How many people would he help by ridding the world of scum?