Page 91 of It Destroys Me

I left the car then approached the club. People were gathered outside, and the music was loud. They had no idea what lay underneath. I moved to the front, and no one stopped me from entering the hallway and going down the stairs to the basement entry.

The two bouncers were there, and they recognized me without saying a word. One of them opened the door for me, and I entered the Brotherhood, the underground bar with the topless waitresses. It was a night like any other, and the men didn’t seem to mourn their former leader.

The guys drank from the pints and laughed uproariously at the tables. Music played overhead. I expected to be interrogated or noticed, but they were so busy among themselves that no one even glanced at me.

Guess Axel could have joined me.

I crossed the room and entered the hallway that broke in two different directions. To the right were the bathrooms and the gun room and the private rooms where the guys fucked the waitresses and their whores. I’d never been to the left, so I went that way, exploring the hallways until I found the stairs.

There were a couple guys smoking in the hallway, and they looked me up and down when I came close.

“I think you’re lost, baby.” One guy leaned against the wall and let the cigar smoke leave his mouth.

“I don’t think I am.” I turned to the stairs and started to go down.

Behind me, I heard the guys talking to each other.

“That’s Bolton’s wife,” one of the guys said.

“It is?” the other whispered. “Why is she here?”

I didn’t hear what else was said because I’d reached the bottom of the stairs and descended farther underground. It was noticeably colder. The stone was like ice to the touch. Even if I wanted to call Axel for help, I doubted I had service.

I found a triage room, as far as I could tell, with the medical supplies on the counters and the medicines stored in the fridge. It was set up like an operating room so they could skip the hospital if they needed to.

I kept going, knowing I was headed in the right direction. Down the hallway was another room. I saw the line of metal cabinets along the wall, all big enough to fit a grown man. I approached the drawers and grabbed the first one to see what would happen when I pulled it. It immediately rolled forward with no effort, and I saw the open eyes of a man who was as pale as snow.

I gave a jump and quickly shut the drawer, haunted by those empty eyes that seemed to stare right at me. I dusted my hands on my top even though they were clean. Terror and disgust spread through me like tremors. “Alright, get your shit together.” I looked at the rest of the drawers and tried to figure out the names of the people inside. Some of them had names scribbled on the outside in rushed handwriting. Others had a notation of the payment of the contract, ranging from a hundred thousand to even a million. And some just had numbers.

I looked through all the names and didn’t see Killian’s anywhere. “There has to be a rhyme or reason to this.” I turned around and looked at the tables, hoping for a binder where the coordinating information would be written.

“Looking for something?”

I turned at the voice, seeing one of the guys who had been upstairs, the one who had recognized me as Bolton’s wife. “I’m just grabbing some of his things.”

“In the morgue?” he asked incredulously. “His body ain’t here.”

I already knew it wasn’t. “I’m just tying up loose ends for him.”

“And what loose ends would be down here?” He came toward me and looked at the binder I’d just grabbed.

“He said he always delivered the body to the buyer,” I said. “But he failed to do that for one of his contracts. My husband was always a man of his word, so I want to fulfill that obligation for him.” It was a decent lie to make up on the spot. Hopefully it would be enough to make this guy mind his own business.

He seemed to buy it because he didn’t look suspicious. “Who are you looking for?”

“Killian Bianchi.”

He gave a slight nod in acknowledgment before he looked at the rows on the wall. “And who’s the buyer?”

It seemed like a test, a test I was about to pass. “Beau.”

Recognition moved across his face before he approached the cabinets. “This is him.” He tapped the drawer that had 500,000 written on it. He opened the drawer, which was at eye level for him. “You want a hand?”

“Um…sure.”

He grabbed a leather duffel bag and unzipped it before he put on a pair of blue gloves. Then he reached inside and removed bones surrounded by clothes that were too baggy…because the body had decomposed.

I’d seen enough, so I quickly looked away.