Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Fallow
According to Kaitlyn, there’s a big, semi-legal casino that’s a front for an organized crime family. They have a back building that is supposed to be a strip club but sounds like it’s more of a human trafficking front, if Ellery’s information is to be believed.
Ellery knows this because they worked here, but right before we fucking got here, right at the end of this long trail, Ellery went dark. Kaitlyn told us casually, not knowing our real mission here, and it lit a fucking fire in me.
I will find my sister if I have to kill every mafia fuck in this building.
The trafficked strippers I’ll free, obviously. I already regret not freeing the lizards, although they were clearly treated with more humanity.
Kaitlyn’s password still gets us into the club.
We’re pretending to be normal patrons—although Colm is a terrible liar, I’ve come to learn—but the guards here seem pretty disengaged and aren’t interested in interrogating us, as long as we have money.
We head to the bar first to get the lay of the land, and Colm orders us two beers that I have no intention of drinking.
There are some stages and poles dotted around with girls dancing on them.
They all look very clearly drugged, which isn’t that unusual, but really sells the trafficking front to me.
Well-paid, well-respected sex workers who are in it for the love of the game can be drug users sometimes but certainly not all of them, and not to this point of uniform sedation.
At the edge of the large room I see a few more doors, just like in Colm’s club. Private rooms.
Except these have very committed-looking guards, and from what I can see, suspiciously thick walls.
I don’t like the look of this place at all.
The thought of what’s probably happening in those rooms is making my skin crawl.
I may be a murderer, but abuse and exploitation always hits me right in the morals.
It makes sense to me. The people I kill have it coming, I just happen to enjoy giving it to them quite a bit.
Colm is quiet. Too quiet. It’s making me more nervous. After a minute, I try to discretely pinch his thigh to get his attention, because he’s staring way too hard at one of the dancers on the other side of the room.
He looks at me, snapping out of his daze, but I can clearly see concern etched on his face.
“What?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
Colm glances at the lone bartender and stays silent until the man walks to the opposite end from us so he can clean something.
“I know that fucking woman.”
My eyebrows raise, but I keep myself still, so I don’t draw any attention.
“What? Where from?”
“She was an escort back in Possum Hollow. About as high-end as you can get in that place. Really nice girl, too, she was seeing one of the guys at the house. She knew how to keep her mouth shut but had no interest in any of our mafia shit. She was one of the first ones to go missing in this recent spate that’s made me worried.
Everyone convinced Liam that she just took off.
They said a bunch of shitty things about dating escorts in the process, obviously, as if that’s not drowning in hypocrisy.
I didn’t get involved until several other women went missing. ”
I hiss quietly through my teeth.
“Well I guess that seals it. Something funny is going on here and you seem to be involved. Y’know, I was really, really hoping this mission could be all about my thing, without the tragic human trafficking vibes.”
Colm doesn’t smile, but I can feel him lighten by a degree. I only half mean it; I’m mostly trying to keep him from freaking out. Not that I’ve ever seen him freak out, but this is about as close as he probably gets.
I don’t think he was expecting to have to do actual work here, either. He definitely wasn’t expecting to discover something big, because it’s just the two of us and as formidable as I am, that’s probably not enough to take down an entire mob army we know nothing about.
“What should we do?” he asks me, chewing on his bottom lip.
I reach out and put a fingertip there until he stops the chewing. Now that I’ve been up close and personal with those lips, I’m invested in them. They feel like my property. I can’t be letting him gnaw on them, willy-nilly.
It only takes a few seconds for a plan to come to me.
I can’t drop the thread on Ellery right now, especially as they’re potentially getting farther and farther away.
But I can’t leave Colm hanging, either. For all his talk about “fuck the Banna”, I know his allegiance to them runs far deeper than mine.
“Let’s split up,” I say.
Colm immediately opens his mouth to object, but conveniently my hand is still next to his face, so I pinch those plush lips shut.
“Hush now, Mammy’s speaking. We have two situations here and abandoning either of them risks losing vital clues.
I reckon you can hire that girl for a private dance in one of those terrifying rooms. See if you can get her to speak.
Or if she won’t, you’ll know she’s afraid and they’re watching.
Either way, you can pick up some information.
Take your time, I’m sure she could use the break.
I’ll go into the casino and start asking after Ellery.
We’ll meet back at the car in an hour. You can call the Banna for reinforcements on the trafficking issue, and then we can follow the trail on my sister. Deal?”
Colm is looking at me like I’m fucking mad, but I think it’s a solid plan.
“You don’t mind me getting a lap dance from a random woman?”
Never in my life have I rolled my eyes this hard. I stand up, ready to get going.
“No, Colm. I don’t mind you getting a lap dance in the name of human rights. I’m sorry if my lack of jealousy breaks your heart.”
He shrugs, acting nonchalant, and stands up as well. There’s a tightness to his face that I don’t like, though.
I lean in close, making sure the bartender still can’t hear, and whisper one more thing to him.
“If she tries to suck your cock, I’ll slit her throat, obviously. But you wouldn’t let that happen anyway. You know who your master is, little rabbit. Don’t you?”
The warmth that floods Colm’s face is endearing. For the first time in public, I want him to kiss me. We almost lean in, but seem to realize we’re doing it at the same time. We can’t completely blow our cover already.
“One hour. Meet at the car. We’ll figure all this out.”
I don’t know when I became the calm one in this partnership, but I do enjoy being in charge, so I’m not complaining.
Colm continues to give me a lingering look, not pulling away, so I throw a wink in his direction and then turn to head to the casino.
This place is massive. Maybe we need more than an hour, although it’s also fucking filthy and the whole thing gives me the creeps. I wander through some corridors between the strip club and the casino for a while, dipping into any rooms I can find.
Nothing interesting comes up. My next stop is the casino floor to see if I can charm the information out of any underpaid flunkies.
Imagine my surprise when the next door I open reveals several tall, handsome men that look like more gangsters, all standing around staring at each other, dripping with tension.
Oh, and with a body on the floor. I may have a mission to get to, but this is intriguing, and I do love a bit of intrigue.
“Shit,” one of them says, as they all look at me and ready themselves for a fight.
I can’t help but smile. This is at least interesting.
These people definitely might know something about either Colm’s problem or this place in general, and even if they don’t, I might be able to get them to help me in exchange for assistance with body disposal.
After burying those Aryans in the desert, I feel like quite the expert.
“You trying to hide the body?” I ask.
“Yeah,” one of them says. He’s tall and handsome, but that’s not much to distinguish because they’re all inordinately good-looking. “You have a problem with that?”
“Fuck no. I think it’s a great idea. Better that than leaving him right out in the open.”
Obviously.
They all look at me like I’m the weird one, when they’re the ones standing in a random casino backroom with a dead body.
“Yeah. Gotta find an unlocked door to stuff him in. You happen to know of any?”
“No,” I say, I’m already getting turned around in here. “I just arrived, but let me ask you something. Did he deserve it? Scratch that. I’m sure he did. No one here deserves to live.”
“And yet here we are.”
The man who murmurs it is arguably the most attractive of the bunch.
Older, with a distinct air of murder around him that I always find appealing.
Plus, there’s a Russian or something similar accent tinging his words that would normally set my fucking panties on fire.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seduced someone over a corpse.
Colm wasn’t either. But this time, I don’t want to.
I want to get what I came for and go back to my bland ham sandwich gangster. This man is clearly more of a decadent black forest gateau. Apparently, that’s not to my taste anymore.
“Fair one. But I do love a good dead body. Did you know that badgers are known to cache or store dead animals to consume them later? Once I’ve racked up a couple, we could cache them together for later. You know about badgers, right? They get hungry, apparently.”
A little nervousness is edging into my mind. I need to make some progress. I’m not always nervous when I ramble, but it definitely helps, so these guys better help me soon if they don’t want to hear any more interesting facts.
“Why the fuck do we need to know that?” one of them asks.
I shrug. Clearly this conversation is their fault.
“Just call me a badger then. Not that I want to eat this man, I wouldn’t go that far, but a little decay goes a long way.”
“What the fuck are you trying to say?” the tallest one snaps at me.