Chapter 19 Bianca
BIANCA
“She offered you a shroom?” I ask.
Jack cocks his head. “Shroom?”
“It’s slang. For magic mushrooms. Psychedelics.”
“Oh, yes.” Jack scratches the side of his head. “She said that if I were going to be brought on as a King, I had to—how did she put it?—go on a trip with her. Take the mushroom and continue discussing the position.”
I narrow my eyes. “How exactly would taking a mind-altering substance help her determine whether you were the right fit for the position?”
“That’s what I asked her. She told me it was a test of my merit as a physical specimen, as well as my loyalty to Aces.
She did say I could turn it down, but then I would not be looking at a promotion anymore.
It seemed like a weird requirement, but it’s not like Rouge does things by the book anyway.
I figured there was no harm, that if I could stop providing my physical services to the bloated male patrons of the club and make twice as much money, it would be a good trade-off. ”
“So you took the shroom?”
He nods. “I started seeing these vivid images almost immediately. Rouge told me it was normal, that I would have visions. She apparently had genetically modified them, enhanced their effects.”
“What did you see?”
His eyelids tremble. “Lots of things. I was on a beach, but the ocean was made of a sticky red syrup. And then I was in a library, but the books kept turning into bats and flying around my head. The visions weren’t pleasant at all.
Like the stuff you see when you have a bad dream.
And I kept shifting between those visions and what I think was real. ”
“You think?”
“It was hard to tell. Even when I was clearly back in Rouge’s office—or, rather, in the bedroom attached to her office—the things I saw, they weren’t quite real.” He swallows. “At least, I think they weren’t…”
I lean in. “How do you mean?”
“Well… When I first came back to reality, I realized I was in this big bed, the kind with curtains around it. And my shorts had been taken off.”
I drop my jaw. “You were naked?”
“Yes. And then…” His face twists. “Someone was fucking me.”
“Rouge?”
“No. She made it very clear we would never do anything physical. But someone else was…inside me.”
“Who?”
He bites his lip. “Mr. Rose.”
“The patron? Florian Rose?”
He nods slowly.
Mr. Rose normally sticks to the Clubs section, but I’ve seen him come to Hearts, usually to talk to Jack. He’s taken a special liking to him and has taken him behind the velvet curtains often.
He’s always seemed like a creep, but apparently Jack has made top dollar servicing him. He’s grinned and borne it because of the carrots Mr. Rose has dangled in front of his nose.
“But Rouge didn’t clarify that someone would be fucking you during your trip. And you couldn’t have possibly consented once you were under the influence.” I take his face in his hands. “That’s rape, Jack.”
Again he nods, his eyes wide. “Yes, it was. But that’s nothing compared to what I saw next.”
I blink. “How could anything possibly be worse than that?”
He draws in a slow breath. “The second time I came to, a second person lay in the bed next to me. A woman.”
“Rouge?”
“No. The Two of Hearts. The girl who was supposed to cover me on my shift.”
“Was Mr. Rose fucking her as well?”
“No. She was just lying there…and then the visions took over again.”
“What do you remember after that?”
“Next thing I remember, I was in this embrace with Rouge.”
“She was hugging you?”
“No. More like she was holding me down.” He frowns. “But there was a…tenderness to it. It’s hard to explain.”
No. I get it. I’ve been in that exact same position. The position where you’re being forced into a false kind of intimacy. The men who take me behind the curtains at the club do it all the time. And I remember Rouge doing it at least once as well…
Story for a different time.
Right now I’m focusing on Jack.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.” The color drains from his face. “It was… I mean… Rouge was holding me down, and eventually she turned my head to the side of the bed. And… It was Two again.”
“What about her?”
“She was on the floor at this point. And Mr. Rose was over her, pressing a finger to her neck. He said something to Rouge, but I couldn’t understand it. And then…he took out a saw.”
“A saw?”
“Like the tool. And he placed it against Two’s neck. Rouge made me watch as he… As he…” He starts breathing heavily, his eyes wide.
I run into my kitchen and grab a paper bag. I hand it to him. “Here. Breathe into this.”
He does, and eventually his breathing slows.
“What did Mr. Rose do to Two?”
Jack steels himself, slowly delivers his answer. “He… He sawed her head off. Removed it from her body.”
I gasp. “He didn’t!”
“He did. Rouge made me watch the whole thing. He did the same with her hands, sawed them off, too.”
My stomach is churning. This can’t be true… My sister is a little cuckoo, but she’s not this.
“And then…he took a silver chalice, and he… He held her wrist over it, filled it with her blood.”
I can’t speak. There are no words.
“He took a drink of her blood. Then he gave it to Rouge. Then she gave it to me.”
“Did you drink it?”
“No. I couldn’t. I couldn’t really do anything except just lie there. I was terrified they were going to do the same thing to me. And then…I started sinking into the bed, into the fiery depths of hell itself.”
“The shrooms…” I say.
“Exactly. Next thing I know, I’m back in Rouge’s office. She tells me that, regrettably, I failed the test, but that I’m welcome to stay on as the Jack of Hearts.”
I scratch the side of my head. “Just like that?”
He nods. “Just like that. I got up and tried to leave the office, but I was locked in. Rouge told me to sit down. Feeling like I had no other choice, I did. She told me that sometimes people have adverse reactions to using the mushrooms. She’s still tinkering with their genetic makeup and hasn’t quite figured out the right potency yet.
She told me I had a bad trip, that if I saw anything frightening or traumatic while under the influence, that it was the mushrooms. My brain playing tricks on me. ”
I bite my lip. “So… Is that what you think happened?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Bianca?”
I clasp my hands together. “I just mean… It sounds like you had a bad trip.”
“I know what I saw, Bianca.”
“I believe that you believe that, Jack. But what you’re talking about is stuff out of some true-crime podcast. This is Rouge I’m talking about.
She’s a lot, to be sure—I could tell you stories from our childhood that would shock the color from your hair—but she’s not the kind of person who hacks people’s heads off, drinks their blood. ”
He looks at me, really looks at me, not even blinking. “My God. You’re one of them.”
I scrunch my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“The Montroses. All of you. You’re rotten to the core.”
“You don’t mean that, Jack.”
He gathers his things, hustles to the door of my apartment. “Yeah, I fucking do.”
I cross the room, grab his arm. “You’re not going to quit, are you?”
He whips his arm out of my grasp. “Can’t very well do that, can I? Rouge sponsored my green card. Without her, I’ll be sent back to the little hovel I grew up in. I thought if I told you what I saw, you’d help me.”
“Jack, you have to calm down.”
“Besides. If I tried to leave Aces, Rouge would think I didn’t dismiss the whole thing as a trip. She’d have my head next.”
“Rouge would never do anything like that—”
“Of course that’s what you’d think. You’re her sister. You share the exact DNA that makes her an evil bitch.” He opens the door, looks over his shoulder. “Guess that makes you an evil bitch, too.”
“Jack, please—”
But he’s slammed the door behind him, rattling my entire apartment. The glass of water he was drinking from falls off the coffee table, shattering on the hardwood floor of my living room.
Fragmented into pieces, just like my heart.
* * *
I grab Harrison’s hands. “Mr. Rose is one of Rouge’s closest confidantes. Besides her Kings, he’s the one she trusts the most.”
“But babe, I told you—”
“You don’t understand. When I say he’s a confidante, I mean… I think he’s part of the organ harvesting process. I think he might have been the person who cut off May’s head!”
Harrison drops his jaw. “No. It can’t be.”
“Jack told me years ago he saw Mr. Rose doing it to another person. But he was high off his mind on shrooms at the time, so I dismissed it. That’s why we had that big falling out. But now, knowing what we know now, I don’t think it was a bad trip.”
He rubs at the back of his neck. “Fuck.”
“You’re telling me. We have to get the hell out of this hotel. Right now.” I get off the bed and pad into the living room of the executive suite. I make a beeline for the door and turn the handle.
And my heart sinks.
Because it’s locked from the outside.