Cruel Temptation (Underground Kings 1)

When the elevator came to a smooth stop, it took a second for the heavy metal to settle before the doors opened. I expected darkness, water dripping onto the floor, lights flickering like a haunted house. I expected hooks hanging from the ceilings and maniacal laughter echoing off the walls, unable to locate the creepy sound because of the acoustics of the basement.

It was nothing like that.

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed to not see a dungeon. I expected as much from Jaxon.

The basement looked like the other floors, only a bit colder since it was underground and had no windows, well, none I could see yet. The lights were turned down to pilot mode, and the slight glow reminded me of lamps hanging on the walls to ignite a path like they did in the olden days.

The walls were still white, and the floors were still black. If anything, Jaxon was consistent with his colors.

The basement wasn’t for fun and games. That much was clear. I could smell the antiseptic in the air along with cleaning solution fumes mixed with sterile plastic, and I wanted to gag. It reeked of a hospital. I hated the smell of hospitals.

He stopped at a door. It was plain. A normal size, black, just like all the other doors. It had a gold handle and the number 55 painted white in the middle of it. “Do not speak to him. I’m serious. If he knows you are there, he will not say the truth. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am protecting you. Even if I found you after you were married, I would have come for you and saved you because you have no idea who this man is. Whoever you got to know for the last ten years, it wasn’t the man he kept hidden from you.”

Again, I was torn. I wanted to see Brian and fuss over him, but then the other part wanted to lock onto Jaxon and run away with him, no questions asked. I gave him a nod, and he sighed, unlocking the door to allow me in. The room was dark until Jaxon flipped on the light. A mirror came to view, allowing me to see into the other room. Brian was there, lying in bed, hands cuffed to the rail. He was awake, blinking up at the ceiling.

“He can’t see you. It’s a two-way mirror,” Jaxon said.

“Oh,” I said, a bit relieved because I knew if Brian saw me now, he would comment on how unattractive I looked. He hated my appearance when I was tired. He never failed to remind me.

“Remember, don’t say a word.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Stay back. I don’t want him to see you.” Jaxon flipped a button, and something turned green on the wall. He backed into another door, and then I wasn’t looking at Jaxon face to face, but through a mirror. “Hey, Brian. How are you doing?” he asked, walking like a predator as he stalked his prey. I could see in the way he carried himself that he wanted to kill Brian. His demeanor had changed; the way he carried himself was different, lethal.

“Did you bring me anything?” Brian asked, a little too chipper for my liking. You’d think he’d be begging to get out of here or screaming in pain, but he seemed fine.

“Like what? You’re still alive, aren’t you? That’s saying something. That’s a gift.”

“What do you want? I was catching up on my beauty sleep,” Brian’s sigh was long and drawn out, a bit dramatic. Nothing had even been said that could convince me of anything, but one thing already stood out to me. His voice was different. I didn’t know how to explain it, but when he spoke to me, he kept his voice soft, almost crooning. I found it sweet, but now I wondered if he did that to cover just how vicious his voice sounded. My skin chilled, and the hair rose on my arms.

“I wanted to cut a deal with you. You said she had four million, right?” Jaxon asked, tapping the IV bag connected to the needle in Brian’s arm.

Brian nodded, narrowing his eyes into snake like slits at Jaxon. “Yeah, so?”

How did he know? Four million was what I had in one account. I had another eight in an offshore bank. I never told him anything about my finances. I wasn’t going to until we w

ere married. I figured it would be a nice honeymoon gift to find out that you were a millionaire. I had every intention of sharing it with him.

“If I let you live, we split it, fifty-fifty,” Jaxon offered, and my heart lodged in my throat as I waited for Brian to say something. “I’ll make sure you’re officially married and kill her.” Jaxon sounded so serious that I almost believed he would kill me. My hand stopped at the base of my throat as I waited for Brian to give him an answer. I expected him to fight, to argue, to come to my defense, but a smile, the kind of grin only a mother could love curved his lips. “And where would you put the body? I don’t believe you. You love Quinn more than anything,” Brian said, the cuffs jiggling along the rail of the bed as he moved.

“I love money more.” Jaxon had gone from warm as he spoke to me, too cold as he spoke to a man who apparently didn’t give a damn about me. “I can soak her body in lye and be done with it. No one would ever find her.”

My hands rubbed up and down my arms to keep myself warm and to remind myself that I was still here, alive, and this wasn’t a dream, but reality. Brian was the guy that wiped my tears when Jaxon went to prison. Brian testified against Jaxon, and he held me as I sobbed, realizing the man I loved wasn’t a man I knew at all.

Brian wouldn’t have killed me. Once we were married and he wanted the money, he could have taken it. There wasn’t anything saying he couldn’t have had it.

“Sixty-forty,” Brian counter-offered, and his words hit me like a sledgehammer against my gut, whooshing the air out of my lungs.

I held a hand over my mouth, silencing my sobs because they were so loud, I was afraid he would hear me.

“Fifty-fifty. That’s my final offer since I dispose of her body.” Jaxon was cool, calm, and collected as he negotiated like he had a hundred times before. He was a professional. There was a lot I didn’t know, and now that I heard one truth from Brian, it made it easier for my mind to splinter and consider that maybe, Jaxon was innocent after all.

“Why?” Brian asked him. “Why would you do this? You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.”

“Well, considering you’re never going to admit what I want you to, I want to at least get something out of this shit show,” Jaxon said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brian seemed honest as he blinked up at Jaxon. He didn’t seem like a liar in this moment, but again, I had no idea what to believe.