Dark Mafia Kings by Penelope Wylde
Chapter Six
The faint click of her heels against polished marble marked Rhia’s progression down one hall and then the next.
She pushed deeper into the belly of Haven, and the centuries seen by the walls like an invisible presence thickened the air with every step.
She tried to steady her racing heart despite the icy premonition that skated the length of her spine as she quickly passed several red doors.
Gold calligraphy bloomed across the heavy wood, but she didn’t take the time to notice the names. From what Maya had told her, each room catered to a sexual preference. The interest and temptation to take a moment to look inside was there, but she tempered her curiosity for another time.
After what felt more like an hour but was probably closer to a minute, Rhia turned to look over her shoulder before continuing. If she followed this corridor to the end it would open up to the private boxes and lead directly to where Sevastyan and the men stood. She turned right down another hallway.
A wall of muscle collided with her nose and a beefy hand clasped her shoulder, while another wrapped around her left biceps.
“Ms. Carmichael.” A rough voice spoke her supposed name, and her gaze climbed the wall until a pair of brown eyes came into focus.
“Good evening.” She stayed in the man’s embrace a little longer than needed despite feeling shakier than a leaf in a hurricane. Rhia slid a calm smile across her lips at Haven’s security detail as she finally pulled back.
Encased in black from head to toe, the ox of a man with a barrel chest and neatly trimmed beard somehow managed to blend into the dark surroundings and she narrowly missed her timely run-in. She popped out a hip and wet her lips, his eye traveling to that point on her face. “If you’ll excuse me, a client has made a special request.” She cranked up her inner sex kitten a couple of notches and hoped her Halle Berry smolder was on point.
Moans split through the momentary silence before Mr. Beef Cake ushered her on with a light swat on the ass.
She reined in the knee-jerk reaction to bury her knee in the jackass’s nuts and hurried past instead.
Cutting his balls off would come later.
That put a spring in her step—and the fact he didn’t notice her swipe his keycard when he got a little handsy. Not all guards were created equal and this one was apparently on the slow side. Suddenly she didn’t feel so bad for the trouble he would no doubt encounter for her sticky fingers.
Seconds later the long passage came to a dark end as the light faded behind her. No longer needing the tray, she discarded the burden on a glossy table holding a large bouquet.
A soft golden glow crept down an adjoined hall as she took a sharp left and found the first of two locked doors. She glanced at her watch. Half an hour was all she had before the men returned to their office for the evening and Indigo would be firmly positioned as the gatekeeper.
Several beeps rang out before the bar turned green and the lock released the latch to a large wooden door that sectioned off the second floor from the third. Once through, Rhia tiptoed up the last set of stairs to another door and held her breath until the lock gave.
On the other side, she quickly accessed the short passage, only to find it empty.
She would give anything for this night to be over.
Counting to ten, she held her breath as one of three doors creaked open. “Come on, Indigo.” She chanted in a barely audible whisper. “Don’t let me down now. We have no choice. You have no choice.”
Her friend was due her nightly ‘break’ any minute. As if on cue a faint feminine voice carried down the hall followed by a deep growl from a man. From this distance, the deeper voice sounded agitated. Indigo answered something with just as much irritation in her tone with a long pause to follow before the door swung fully open to flood the entire dimly lit corridor with light.
Rhia tucked herself around the corner in case they turned their way and flattened her body against the cold stone wall. Why—who knew—because they would have to walk right by her if they opted to take the back way down to the first level.
She leaned to the right enough to see the wispy long blonde hair of Indigo and the man Rhia would know anywhere—Bjorn. Neither Indigo nor Maya were with a man long enough for her to bother getting to know last names, but the man was memorable enough with his braided black hair and giant height.
Muffled footsteps carried away from her as Indigo and her beau opted for the elevator instead of the stairs.
Thank the sweet baby Jesus.
Rhia slowly let out the breath she’d held for what felt like forever.
She eased into the empty hall. After tonight she would have her answers, turn all the evidence she had over to the cops, and she could be gone from this place once and for all. That truth helped ease her rattled nerves. Before pushing her way into the outside office that flanked the kings’ offices, Rhia froze, listening. Nothing came from inside or in either direction.
Rhia sidestepped around Indigo’s large desk which graced the entire middle of the office. The boulder with drawers adorned with a stylish single-bulb lamp served as a breaker between where she stood and the inner office.
It seemed everything in here was made for giants. She leaned back to take in the behemoth of a door that stood wider than she was tall and towered over her by a good three feet.
If she was a praying woman—and she really should be— she should fall to her knees on the spot. Two large crosses graced the double doors. Remnants left over from the ages gone by when nuns walked these halls clutching their rosaries instead of barely-clothed hostesses doing midnight recon missions? Or a deeper meaning for the men who walked with the devil as their sidekick?
It didn’t matter.
She fingered her cross hanging around her neck and whispered a quick prayer just in case the whole one-way ticket to hell thing was a certain event in her near future. Maybe a confession when—reality check, if—she made it out of here in one piece wouldn’t be such a bad idea either. In any event, extra brownie points with the Big Man had to help against the devil ruling from her shoulder.
She checked her watch again.
Shit. Twenty minutes. Tops. Should be enough, but it would be pushing her luck.
Before she could change her mind, she leaned forward and pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. Gripping the doorknob to her bosses’ office, Rhia checked it quietly, turning it slow one way then the other. Good. It wasn’t locked.
With one last breath, the snick of the knob released and she was welcomed by a small lamp on the corner of another desk. A decidedly masculine one. Soft golden light poured from beneath a beige shade to highlight polished wood and offered a glimpse of a massive bookcase the entire length of the back wall.
Faint cigar smoke and the smell of leather filled her head as masculine elegance greeted her.
To her right moonlight filtered into the room between narrow slits in the curtains to reveal the backs of two oxblood chairs covered in supple leather and pushed up close to the deeply stained desk fitting of a king. Or kings, since it was the only one in the room.
Long shadows reached across the office like fingers of a giant to play across the vast expanse of a couch.
Opposite the couch, a wide window revealed the floors below, and beside that was a bank of dark monitors.
The door snicked closed as determination pushed her deeper into the half-lit room. Hunched over as not to be seen, she carefully clung to the shadows undetected. Papers were stacked neatly along one side of the desk, Indigo’s doing no doubt, while the other end was clear of all but two empty tumblers. The lack of personal photos that normally cluttered offices didn’t go unnoticed. The scent of the space plus the sight of those abandoned glasses told her exactly who inhabited this room. She could almost see Sevastyan’s long, elegant fingers wrapped around that glass, Roman standing by the window looking down on his people.
She weaved around the leather armchairs and grabbed the first folder off the top of the pile. The club’s name sprawled across the front in midnight black ink. Nothing of importance. She set it aside and went for another. Receipts, order slips, and stockroom reports filled each of the files. “Damn it. This can’t be it.”
With trembling fingers, Rhia pulled out the match case from her bodice. There wasn’t a lot of time, but she knew she was in the right place.
She peeled back the creased and worn cardboard flap. “Come on, Father, speak to me. Show me what I’m looking for.”
Her father’s familiar scribble and a detailed penciled version of Sevastyan’s spider tattoo graced the inside flap of the matchbook. Beneath it sat the cold case number she found in all her research of unsolved missing girl cases. The one Maya mistook for a phone number.
But so far neither had helped her find answers to why her father was dead.
Chimes knifed the silence, signaling half past the hour from some clock hidden in the darkened room.
She swore softly.
Indigo would be back soon. With her heart hitting warp speed, she restacked the files. There had to be more than this, but where?
Offices usually had filing cabinets, but the only thing Volkov seemed to favor was cold stone walls and a fetish for plush furniture in leather. She turned to the bookcase and traced her fingers over the rough spines. Some were long and about three-quarters of an inch thick, resembling the same kind of ledgers she recalled from her father’s offices.
She plucked one from the shelf at eye level and cracked it open. Name after name filled the lines of each page followed by date and country and position in society. Some she recognized—a movie star or two, a rock star known for having wild parties, and a handful of politicians who made the news frequently. All the others were a mystery, but her imagination could fill in the blanks given the dollar signs beside their names. Not many people made that kind of money to throw away. Not legally anyway.
But that wasn’t the oddest part. Why would they want to keep a record of names and amounts? And family members were listed, too, in another column—uncle, mother, sibling, and the list went on to name children and any of their offspring, each category marked.
Rhia flipped several more pages until she came to a section and her heart stopped cold.
With her fingers pressed to the crease, she ripped and tucked the first piece of evidence she feared didn’t exist inside her bodice and thanked the Universe for the first time the restrictive contraption was tight enough to hold the pages in place against her abdomen.
Rhia placed the book on the desk and quickly snapped pictures of the other pages with her phone, not wanting to risk taking too many for fear of being noticed.
Finished, she grabbed another and repeated the process. The information inside identical, only the names changed.
Her father’s office once had mountains of the things dating back a couple of decades that held all kinds of information on her father’s dealings. When she stepped in as the company’s accountant, it had taken her a good six months to transfer everything over to a modern digital system and database. As the world’s leading international shipping company, they dealt with millions of pieces of information, but her father’s records looked nothing like what she saw here.
She placed the book back on the shelf. Unsure what a list of names would get her, she checked her watch. With quick motions, she made sure everything was as she found it on the desk. Choppy motions, nerves, or a combination of both sent her off-kilter, and she caught herself on the edge of the shelf.
A hinge creaked and she tightened her fingers around a heavy gargoyle-shaped bookend, scared soulless someone was walking through the door. She didn’t dare breathe. Cold air caressed her bare thighs and backside. She jolted upright.
She blinked into the dim room when no one appeared. “What the hell?”
Her eyes shot to the space of the wall at her back. Beams of light splintered along the right-angled edges of the shelf from floor to ceiling. With a little effort, the heavy case and a third of the wall shifted toward her on a hinge and opened to reveal large, flat slabs of stone that spiraled downward into the unknown.
This couldn’t be good. Not for her anyway.
She pulled the door open farther until the arch of the doomed ceiling came into full view.
Brightened by sconces fastened to the curved walls, Rhia considered her options. Descend into the bowels of Haven or cut her losses and get the hell out of there?
She mentally ran over the various schematics she’d procured from the local library. Decades of updates and remodeling showed several additional sections, but none of them showed secret passages within the walls of the former convent.
She pulled her lips between her teeth and dragged her gaze around in a panic. What if one of the men came in to find her standing at the mouth of their secret cave? She didn’t need to guess what would happen next. The last thing she’d need to worry about were hidden rooms in a centuries-old building and more about what secret room they’d stuff her in.
Curiosity, and a bit of lunacy, pulled her over the threshold despite her less-than-favorable odds. The answers she needed could be down there. Everything in her pointed to that conclusion. Her last hope lay at the bottom of these darkened stairs.
Determination and dedication drove her forward one step, and then another, and the deeper she descended the farther back in time she traveled. Smooth rock against her bare palms anchored her to reality and helped tame her wild imagination that threatened to rebel against her better judgment if she were not careful.
“This is a bad idea. Very bad,” she reprimanded herself in a hushed whisper, still weighing a bad idea versus the worst option before her. Getting killed for being reckless didn’t sit high on that list, but she needed answers.
She wasn’t blind to the fact every step she took could lead straight into danger. Her gut and her less than nerves of steel pushed her forward.
When the light of the sconces vanished, she let out a shaky breath and took two more stairs, pushed flush against the cool rock wall that spiraled downward in a sweeping curve.
Motion sensors buried somewhere within the walls triggered a string of lights to flicker on and flood the end of the stairwell. That or someone awaited her at the bottom of the stairs. She really hoped for the former option.
It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness.
Slowly Rhia took the last step and her entire body wanted to clench with fear, but she refused to give in.
Three walls towered over her by a good six feet. From stone ceiling to marble flooring, high-tech computers attached to wall-mounted banks of monitors gleamed back at her with a heavy hum of electricity.
In case she wasn’t alone, Rhia edged deeper into the room, dungeon, cellar… her coffin— only to find the space void of other life. Rhia had no idea if the room was monitored, but if no sirens and flashing red lights signaled anyone to her presence, it was probably a safe bet to say this section of the club didn’t have the same level of security.
Whatever this place was, not a hint of the deeply rich hues and tones used upstairs to bring about thoughts of sexual delights and decadent rendezvous could be found. Void of color, the stone walls arched over her, their mighty force oppressive, if not a shade menacing.
She simply couldn’t believe what her eyes saw. Situated dead center, a long mahogany table ate two-thirds of the room. A damp chill clung to the air and forced a shiver up her spine. Trying to ignore all the sensory input, she shoved aside the unsettling feeling and scrubbed her palms down the length of her leather skirt, but it didn’t do much good. The day she could kiss this deplorable outfit goodbye couldn’t get here soon enough.
She scanned over every chair, piece of paper, and crack in the wall, taking a mental picture, unable to believe any of what lay before her. Not what she expected to find in the basement of a sex club. Not a flogger, gag, or spanking bench in sight.
Anything warm and inviting began and ended with the several leather chairs that encompassed the heavy table. From there everything else came off as cold, hard, and mysterious. State-of-the-art equipment flashed images of persons she couldn’t identify.
From her position, the deep bass of music couldn’t penetrate the thick walls and silence reigned.
Several legal-sized folders drew her eye on the end of the table. Not a marking or label to be found on the manila-colored paper. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
That wasn’t the case for what she found inside. Her brain couldn’t focus on a single detail but drank it all in at once. A flicker of light from the side of the room caught her eye.
Image after image scrolled across the screen. She’d seen something like this process before on some cop show or another. They’d been hunting some fictional murderer through a database. But nothing about this screamed fake.
Thousands of questions popped up faster than she could process.
She took a step back and slowed her mind long enough to let her brain play catch-up and digest what her eyes were seeing. An assortment of images were displayed along the bank of monitors.
Various faces stood out from bits and pieces she could recall from the evening news, only these shots didn’t feature men in flashy suits and broad smiles with some socialite clinging to their arms or stepping from some fancy restaurant. In these shots their faces were bloated, and from her untrained eye, she’d definitely say tortured, from the black stains on their mutilated bodies. As if a predator had ripped them apart.
No glamour, no glitz. Then again, crime scene shots rarely were. A shudder of fear started in the tips of her toes and worked its way up until her hands shook. What the hell was going on here?
To her left, another monitor was sectioned off in six angles, each shot showcasing different rooms within Haven, constantly rotating. She suspected they hid cameras throughout the dungeon-like structure, but she couldn’t help the surprise at seeing how closely they monitored the rooms.
Hello blackmail material. “I guess nothing is kept a secret for long.”
A few of the other monitors held what looked like mugshots and rap sheets while yet another monitor displayed more shots of people she didn’t recognize, all organized in a pyramid like she’d seen on detective shows.
She took a few steps back and made a beeline for the bank of keyboards that controlled what was displayed across the screens. Her mind turned over all the information at her fingertips. More than she could ever have hoped for.
Someone would be back sooner rather than later and from the looks of it, there was only one way in and out of this room. She flipped the slightly out-of-focus photo around and traced a finger across the glossy surface.
Rage tightened around her heart before a deep pain settled over the aching wound as though a blade pierced her.
Staring back at her was the gold of her father’s company logo painted across the side of several containers used for transatlantic shipping.
All the prayers she’d whispered in the dead of night for her father’s soul were for nothing. Deep in her gut, the truth sat, putrid and rotten. On some level, she knew, but now she had proof.
Her father was a criminal.
