16. Hercules
HERCULES
I ’m half expecting Tink when someone knocks a little while after I return to my suite, but when I open the door, it’s a striking Black woman with a mass of braids piled on her head.
She sweeps a look over me and shrugs. “You’re pretty, but I don’t think you’re pretty enough to be causing all this drama. ”
“Thanks?”
“It wasn’t a compliment.” She shoves a laptop at me. “This doesn’t leave your room. The sensitive material on it. I don’t think I have to tell you what will happen if you try something.”
Nothing good. So far, nothing about this situation has gone like I expected, but I don’t think for a second that Hades would allow me to pass on privileged information without recourse.
I don’t know what kind of recourse, but it doesn’t matter.
I have no intention of sharing it. Even if I did, I have no one to share it with. “I’ll keep it in my room.”
“Glad we got that sorted.” She points at herself. “Allecto.? 1 I run security. You have any problems, you come to me or one of my people. You become a problem, I deal with you. Got it?”
“Got it,” I say faintly. Tink mentioned security, but because I wasn’t currently allowed into the back rooms of the club where the intense play went on, I had put it from my mind. It was enough to know that Hades protects his people.
“Then we shouldn’t have any issues.” She frowns at me. “Don’t know what he was thinking bringing you in.” She shakes her head and walks away.
I step back into my suite and close the door.
Allecto’s thoughts aren’t anything that haven’t been echoed back to me by multiple people since I arrived here.
I get it. I don’t fit in. I have to be trained from the ground up in a way that none of the other employees seemed to require.
It didn’t make sense before, the reason why Hades would drag me into a lifetime deal.
Now that I have some distance—now that I know it’s because of Zeus—I understand it a whole lot better.
Seems fitting that I should suffer for the sins of my father. Seems almost like penance after how things went down with Leda. I couldn’t save her, couldn’t stand up to him no matter how hard I tried. If there were others…
I stalk to the couch and drop the laptop there. Of course there were others. My father has hardly been a paragon of virtue only to break character with Leda. There were others. There must have been.
Thirty years ago, one of the victims of my father’s sadistic nature was apparently Hades’s son.
I wish I knew more. What happened in that situation?
What happened in the wake of it? Did Zeus kill him?
The thought makes me sick to my stomach.
I wish I could rule out my father being a murderer, but it’s an open secret in Olympus that everyone believes my father has killed all three of his wives, though the official story is that they died in accidents.
Part of me has never wanted to believe it, but it’s hard to argue with the evidence piling up.
Why not child murder as well? Would knowing the truth even matter?
As Hades said, it happened before I was even born. It has nothing to do with me.
Until now.
Then there’s Meg. It’s obvious Hades didn’t tell her his reasoning or his plans, and the fact that I knew even part of it hurt her.
I had assumptions about those two when I first came here, and now, less than forty-eight hours in, I’m having to question all of them.
They present a united front, but the closer I get, the more the cracks in their relationship start looking like canyons.
It’s none of my business. I should know by now to stay out of shit that doesn’t concern me.
But when I stood between them, things felt more stable, like I was fixing something broken.
It might be all in my head, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something there beneath the games and bullshit and plotting.
Or there could be if we gave it a chance.
Maybe. I don’t have answers now, and I likely won’t anytime soon, not with Meg and Hades’s respective walls built sky-high.
Tormenting myself by playing what-if is a recipe for disaster.
I open the laptop and turn it on. Tonight will be another gauntlet to run, and knowledge is the only weapon currently available to me.
It won’t pave the way for me to have the upper hand—I’m not delusional—but it might mean I don’t drown quite as quickly when faced with something outside my realm of experience.
The desktop is clear except for a line of six folders.
I click through the first and find more folders labeled Gaeton , Malone , Hook , Beast , the Man in Black , Jafar , Ursa .
I blink. These must be pseudonyms. I click into the first one and find a list of Gaeton’s alliances and enemies—he answers to the Man in Black and has a note that he and Beast can’t be left alone together in the club without concern they’ll be damages to the property.
? 2 There’s also a brief history and a list of kinks and favorite submissives.
I click through more files, finding similar information compiled in each.
Some of them are significantly longer than others, but it’s a lot of information to process.
I sit back. No wonder Hades is so formidable. He knows the secrets of all the major players in this city. Knowledge worth killing over, and they passed it along willingly because he’s allowing them to play out their deepest fantasies within these walls. It’s brilliant.
I manage a nap and wake up with plenty of time to shower again and grab something out of my closet for my shift tonight.
All the work clothing is in line with the shorts from last night—light on fabric and tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination.
I decide on a pair of black shorts that shine like leather but are made of some kind of stretchy fabric.
There are little rhinestones in a column down each side and they wink every time I move.
It feels strange to walk mostly naked to the elevator and take it up to the club floor, but I suppose I’ll get used to it given enough time.
I head into the employee back room and the first person I see is Aurora.
She’s in white again, an elaborate lingerie set that looks like something a bride would wear on her wedding night.
She grins when she sees me. “Hey, Hercules.”
“Hey.”
“Since Tink isn’t here tonight, you’re with me for the first part of your shift. Then Meg will take over like last night.”
My stomach clenches at the thought of seeing her again after how things played out.
I have an apology to give, and I’m not even sure how to make it right.
I thought I was starting to understand the rules, but with Meg, the edges blur.
This morning, I didn’t want to stop until I had her bent over the desk and my cock sheathed to the hilt.
I wanted to fuck her until she came, until we were so lost in each other that nothing else mattered.
But it’s not just us engaged in this dance, and it doesn’t feel like something as simple as breaking the rules to go against Hades’s command.
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
“Hercules?” Aurora takes a step closer. She’s tiny in a way that makes me feel like one wrong move would break her. The look on her face is anything but meek, though. She frowns up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t understand this.” I have to swallow the words before I blurt out everything.
What’s going on between Hades and Meg and me is our business, but it feels like they’re playing on a different game board than I am.
Like they’re playing an entirely different fucking game.
I would ask Tink if she were here, but she’s not.
I scrub my hands over my face. “We’re submissives, right? ”
“Yes.”
“So a Dom gives you an order and you obey it.”
Aurora holds up a finger. “A couple caveats. We don’t answer to all Doms. We answer to ours and the ones we’re in a scene with. That’s it. It’s not a blanket rule.”
Am I Hades’s? It sure as fuck feels like it. But it feels like I’m Meg’s too, and that’s where things get confusing. “Okay. So your Dom gives you an order. Is breaking it really so bad?”
“Every relationship is different. Some subs—like Tink—are brats. They get off on pushing against the boundaries and breaking the rules and mouthing off. The Doms they partner with usually also get off on that sort of thing. That’s not how I operate.
It makes me uncomfortable to act out like that with clients. ” She shrugs. “Your mileage may vary.”
“That…doesn’t really help.” The deeper I get into this world, the more I’m realizing that there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules beyond consent of all parties. That’s it. The scope is staggering if I let myself think too hard about it.
Sympathy flashes in her dark eyes. “Look at it a different way. He gave you an order. You obviously thought about disobeying it, even if you didn’t. What would you feel like if you did go through with disobeying?”
My stomach turns even as my skin heats. I regretted rejecting Meg the second I did it. If I could go back… “Conflicted.”
She smiles. “A lot of this stuff is feeling your way, especially if you’re in something more intense than a single scene. Talk to him about it. Or her. Or them. Communication is everything.”
“Thanks.” I manage a smile of my own. “How long have you been working in the Underworld?”
“A little over a year now, though I’ve been involved with the world for longer.” Her expression dims. “Hades helped me out when I needed it the most.”
Another deal on his part, though at least this one appears to have benefited the person working here. I don’t ask her the details of it. Deals seem to be a private thing, and I’m not really willing to go into my reasons either. I take a deep breath. “Should we get out there?”