Chapter 9 #2
Linda is still staring at the unconscious middle-aged man. Her hands are gripping the metal edge of the open trunk. Her knuckles turning white.
“In the last year since Meg…I’ve become acquainted with every type of poison on earth. And you know what I realized? The most toxic one is guilt.”
The sound of cars coming our way makes us look up. Lori and Gabriel arrive first, then Ramiel and Hunter, and lastly Uriel. Their faces have the same level of fury as Linda’s.
Sariel told me the poison that Dr. Meghan was exposed to wasn’t all cyanide, but a perfect blend of different compounds that made it unique.
He tried to find out the exact quantities.
He thought he did, but the fact that the doctor is slowly getting worse means he hasn’t.
On top of that the doctor has lupus, a chronic, long-term autoimmune disease.
Because of her already compromised, immune-suppressed state, the results of the poison were more complex and unpredictable.
For starters she inexplicably didn’t die, but she is getting there fast. And now the family wants the person who made the mortal concoction to pay and to give them information—I guess that’s why Uriel is here. He makes donors talk.
“Fucking piece of shit!” Ramiel spits on the ground and marches inside the building.
“Is this what a genius chemist looks like? Bald, beer belly, and piss stench?” Lori makes a disgusted expression.
“I want answers. All of them.” Linda looks at Uriel, and he nods with a cold demeanor.
“I’ll take him in,” Hunter offers, throwing the man on his shoulder before making his way inside with Linda and the others.
Uriel stays behind and, with a hand on my arm, keeps me back.
“What’s up?” I ask nonchalantly, but my curiosity is piqued. My brother was salivating to get his hands on Marlon Finch, so why the fuck is he here with me?
He goes back to his car to grab something, a plastic bag, and hands it to me.
I raise a questioning brow at him as I look inside. A book? The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success. “What the shit is this?”
“Meg bought it for Raphael. He became less of an asshole after reading it.” His tone sounds bored.
“He was more of an asshole than he is now?” I snort.
“He was a fucking bastard.” He huffs.
I smirk. “Did you steal it from him?”
“No, I stole his desk. I bought the book,” Uriel confesses. “Look, it was Linda’s idea. Read it. Don’t read it. Do whatever the fuck you want.”
“Why did you buy it if it’s all the same to you?”
“It’s what Meg would have wanted.” He looks me straight in the eye and then starts walking toward the front doors.
Dr. Bear-Stone surely holds my brother’s respect and the others’. I always liked the saying, you reap what you sow because trying to cheat on the reaping part sounded like fun. But maybe there’s more to it than I thought.
I follow Uriel inside, and after passing Serena’s security, instead of turning right to the training area, he takes me through the kitchen, down a corridor, and then stops in front of a door. We go through more security checks before it opens into an elevator.
There are twelve numbers on the control panels, even though there are only three floors in the building. Uriel pushes five of them in a sequence: eleven-three-seven-zero-ten, and the elevator, instead of going up, starts to descend.
“Interesting,” I mutter. The ride is short. When the elevator opens, Lori is waiting for us.
“Welcome to Chateau Donor,” he says in a terrible French accent. “Me torture es su torture.” His Spanish is not better.
“Where’s the shitbag?” Uriel asks him.
“FUNS room number three.” The FUNS room is where they torture their donors; it stands for Fucked Up Nasty Shitheads. I remember seeing the golden plaque over the old one before Nine burned it to the ground.
Uriel moves around him and heads toward the room.
“How many FUNS rooms do you have now?” I ask Lori as we walk together.
“Three. Each one with a different nightmare show.” He grins at me pointing toward them.
The FUNS rooms like the old one have smart glass front walls and doors.
We pass the first two, one looks like a butcher shop with a thick wooden table, blades and tools hanging from the ceiling on thick chains and more lined up on tables—the plastic sheets all over the walls are neon pink.
The other one is more eerie, reminds me of an operating room with a metal bed frame in the middle, round adjustable lights, and a rectangular table, holding surgical tools perfectly arranged—here the plastic sheets on the walls are white with red skulls on them.
In the third room, there’s a single metal chair, where Hunter and Gabriel are tying the now-naked poisoner—Linda keeps a watch on him.
The small, cheap plastic drawer cart with wheels takes my attention for a moment.
It looks out of place in this state-of-the-art torture zone.
“Ramiel still buys those weird-as-shit sheets?” I ask, pointing at the blue ones with Hawaiian hula girls.
“Donors love them,” Lori says, adjusting the plaque outside the door that says FUNS Room 3.
“If you keep walking through the door on the left, there’s the lab, and on the right, Ramiel’s tech wing. Then the crematorium room, two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, and at the end a living room/kitchen.” It’s like a serial killer bunker in here.
“But this is the best part,” he continues when I’m already fed up. “The wall of records. Ta-da!” He makes the jazz hands movement to show me…a wall with some words written on it.
“It’s the list of our records. I like to write down the most incredible, disgusting, frightening, disturbing, and so on things we have done with or for donors.”
“Why?” It sounds juvenile and stupid.
“It’s fun.” He shrugs.
The words WALL OF RECORDS are at the top, written in red. Below are their names, and under each one a list of entries. Spiked ball, terrified to death, skewed toes. The last one is Uri’s. Toothpick skin carving. Sounds tiresome.
“Remember what happens in the FUNS rooms stays in the FUNS rooms,” Lori feels the need to tell me.
I turn toward the corridor, and I see Ramiel and Hunter in a corner. The PI is trying to calm down his boyfriend, cupping his face while whispering to him. Ramiel’s body loses some tension as Hunter kisses him.
Everybody has a breaking point. I need to find Nine’s and tear her apart.
When I look back at the FUNS room, Gabriel is on his phone. Linda is pacing, and Uriel is staring at me, tossing a knife in the air and catching it in his palm.
“How did you find him?” His voice comes out of the speaker over the door. He points the blade at a still-sleeping Marlon Finch before resuming the tossing.
“Acquaintances,” I answer vaguely. Vulture told me it wasn’t easy. And the information cost me a retro arcade game I had to win at a fucking online auction.
“Thank you,” Ramiel says between gritted teeth, stopping near me with Hunter behind him. I nearly roll my eyes. He knows it was Vulture, so why is he thanking me?
“I want to stop Nine,” I simply state.
“This prick has more info than we think. I know he does.” Linda narrows her eyes at him.
“And I have some as well. Is that shithead, Jacob, still with you?” Ramiel asks me.
He already told me that Jacob’s phone didn’t get us anywhere near Nine. She never leaves digital footprints and the messages were encrypted, impossible to find the source.
“I found out who the girl was he fucked with. Gabriela Mendez, daughter of Pedro Mendez, a drug lord for the Mexican Cartel here in Chicago. Jacob told you that Mendez didn’t go after him even though he told him he would.”
I nod at Ramiel.
“I know Mendez from when I was in the police,” Hunter interjects. “He was a low-ranking Falcon. The piece of shit never goes back on his word, especially if it was a threat.”
“Nine must have stopped him somehow,” Linda hisses.
I think Jacob’s had enough time to ponder his life choices. It’s time to question him once more.
“Raphael, Gabriel, and I will go ask Mendez a few questions as soon as Rami gives us the word. We know where he is, we just need to get to him,” Hunter finishes.
A cartel drug lord must be heavily protected; that’s why they need Ramiel to find a way in.
“It’s still unsettling seeing you and Uri near each other. You are like Frankenstein’s monster’s brother,” Bezaliel grunts.
Lori laughs at that, but I don’t get the hilarity.
I look at my identical twin. We are very similar, but also fucking different.
I’d never get those lame dreads. His phone rings.
The fact that he answers after one ring tells me it’s Sariel.
He only picks up a phone call that fast for his boyfriend. Now I get it.
“Okay, Baby Blue,” he is saying. “You need to know the exact amount of the poison and the other components he used to get Meg sick.”
The sound of the phone has woken up the poisoner. He blinks a few times, eyes still foggy with sleep, until he focuses his gaze on us on the other side of the glass wall. Uriel must have kept the smart glass clear since the donor can see us.
“Wha…?” He tenses when he realizes he’s naked and restrained.
He hazards a look at Uriel, who ended the call and is still playing with his knife again, and then at the horrifying hula girl plastic sheets covering the walls.
It works like a charm. His mouth opens and closes as he starts to hyperventilate, pleading eyes locked on Linda.
“Please. Pleas…”
Her hard slap halts his pleading voice and makes his face snap to the side. The poisoner’s watery eyes move on Hunter—who is now entering the room with Ramiel—and he starts shaking uncontrollably.
“Oh god,” he sobs. How do they put up with this level of pathetic?
“He’s a grizzly but a domesticated one,” Ramiel hisses menacingly at him, patting Hunter’s round pec. “It’s the one with the knife you should be terrified of.”
Uriel is going to hurt him but I bet Linda will be the worst today.