41. Riley
Riley
T he medieval door opens with an agonized creak, groaning as if it hasn’t tasted fresh air since the Crusades. I half expect a moat and drawbridge awaiting me on the other side.
I step through, the moron tailing closely—no doubt eager for another pathetic glimpse of my ass.
The darkness is immediate, heavy and thick and different to every other area of The Inferno I’ve seen. Haunted house aesthetics, eat your heart out.
Three steps in, and the air twists, laced with oranges, spices, and the nauseating, chemical burn of whatever god-awful aftershave my so-called sponsor drowned himself in.
I chance a glance over my shoulder.
He smirks back, teeth gleaming with all the charm of a carnival clown hiding a knife.
Fake candles flicker along the walls. Atmospheric in a way that’s warm and disturbing. The brocade walls? Smeared red like blood.
Either someone here has a hard-on for Anne Rice novels, or I’ve willingly strolled into a crime scene.
And still—because sanity checked out on me years ago—I stretch my hand, fingers gliding along crushed velvet ridges, yielding to the twisted compulsion Kennedy always mocked as my incurable need to touch shit.
It’s childish. Pathetic, even.
The texture grounds me—bumps and valleys pulling me back from the edge. Until I can breathe.
Hell, the splintered banister hidden in my childhood closet is probably still stained with enough blood to make a CSI unit take heed.
A defiant nine-year-old’s fucked-up insurance policy, carving proof into wood just in case step-monster Jimmy finally decided to lock me in and throw away the key for good.
Not that it matters now.
Because tonight, by some miracle from whichever deity hasn’t completely written me off, I see a flicker of light at the end of this suffocating hellhole.
And standing dead-center, bathed in the ghostly glow of more fake-ass candlelight, is a woman so stunning, so obscenely flawless, she might as well be chiseled from marble—or worse, some creepily lifelike blow-up doll custom-made for a billionaire bastard with too much cash and the personality of a serial killer.
Her scarlet lips curl in lazy amusement, like a bored queen watching her cat toy with yet another helpless mouse.
We close the distance.
“Color?” she asks.
“Color?” I echo, my mind snagging on the word like a broken fingernail on expensive lace.
Is this some twisted code? A secret password to an underground fuck-knows-what? Or is she genuinely fascinated by my hot takes on the Crayola spectrum?
Once, Mila asked me what color I’d choose to wear forever if some psycho held a gun to my head. For the record, my commitment issues extend even to shades—I’m eternally torn between blue-green and green-blue.
And yes, they’re fucking different.
I swing my focus back to her loaded question.
I need context. Details. Something—anything—to claw my way out of this quicksand I’ve willingly stepped into.
She taps her necklace, jeweled in every shade of sin the rainbow offers—sparkling in the candlelight.
But before I can drag the question past my lips, my asshole escort’s voice slices through.
“She’ll take black.”