“Ah, she’s got us all figured out, Thane,” Acid says with a smirk. Thane has moved back to prop his shoulders against the wall, his expression blank.
I’m talking about the vicious murder of four innocent women, and Acid’s smiling. “Lorenzo nearly killed himself when Sienna’s body was found. Cassius obliterated everything around him in grief and fury. Vinicius never got his lost twin sister back. Family is everything to Salvatore and you ripped his apart. You almost destroyed them over a few shitty square miles and a bar.”
Acid rubs a hand over his jaw. “You really love those men, don’t you?”
All four of them burn brightly in my heart. I want to scream and cry. I want to struggle, but I won’t give them the satisfaction. There’s probably a camera trained on me right now, and if one of my men ever sees this, I want them to know that I held it together as long as I could and I never, ever begged for mercy.
There’s no point begging. Mercy has long fled this place. Only pain and death remain.
Thane speaks in a flat, cold voice. “Strife isn’t just a bar. Strife is who we are.”
“Pieces of shit is what you are,” I snarl. If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging. “So tell me, what kind of death do you have planned for the Princess of Coldlake? You had better make this good. I want to go down in history with the grisliest death this city has ever seen. How about tying me to a throne and electrocuting me slowly? Hammering a crown of nails into my head, one by one? What’s it going to be?”
Acid gazes at me in disbelief. “Damn, girl. You’ve got a sick mind.”
The Black Orchid Killer has a sick mind. I’m just riffing to hide my terror.
Acid and Thane exchange glances, like they’re not sure what to say next, and the first trickle of doubt runs down my spine. The Black Orchid Killer would know exactly what he wanted to do next. He’s had more than a year to plan my grisly death. I barely know Acid and I don’t know Thane at all, but I do know they’re from the streets. They’re accustomed to the swift, messy justice of baseball bats and stolen guns.
So what’s really going on here?
I close my eyes and think back to the night Acid was shot and Lorenzo and I saved his life. The moment Acid woke up, he was intent on finding out who I was and what I was doing with Lorenzo. He delights in irritating Lorenzo, but even though they piss each other off, I sensed grudging respect between the two of them. Acid is curious. Smart. Opportunistic. What will he get out of torturing me to death? It seems like a lot of bother without any material gain. Surely I’m much more useful to him alive.
Relief floods through me so fast that I start to laugh, and my eyes pop open. “Oh, thank God. You’re not going to kill me. You really had me going there for a moment.”
Thane’s heavy brows lift. “You sure about that, baby?”
I stop laughing. That’s Salvatore’s pet name for me. That’s what Mom called me. “Don’t call me baby, asshole.”
“Touchy, touchy, your highness,” Acid mocks. “I guess that’s how we’ll start torturing you, by carving ‘baby’ into your pretty flesh.”
How crude. Even that feels nothing like what the Black Orchid Killer would do. “Lorenzo told me about the—” I’m about to say videos but catch myself just in time. No one knows about the videos except for the five of us and the killer. “Lorenzo told me how their sisters were killed. If you wanted to do that stuff to me, you’d be getting on with it, not sitting here having a chat.”
“We’re getting there.”
“Yeah? How are you going to do it?”
Acid shrugs. “Chop you up. Stick a flower in your mouth. Chuck you in the river.”
“And then?”
He gives me a baffled look. “Then nothing. Job done.”
I smile and shake my head. “You’re not the Black Orchid Killer. Either of you.”
They don’t know anything about the Black Orchid Killer’s MO. If they really were the killer, I’d be screaming and bleeding right now and they’d be gloating over the pain my men will be in when they find my body. We wouldn’t be sitting here bantering.
Acid and Thane exchange glances and Thane shrugs.
“Fine, we’re not the Black Orchid Killers,” Acid admits. “But we weren’t trying to make the Syndicate think we were, anyway. I didn’t drop a black flower on the street for anyone to find when we snatched you.”
“So why pretend to me?”
He gives me a smile that I may have found charming if I didn’t hate his guts. “You jumped to the conclusion. We’ve got time to kill so I thought I’d play along.”
I glare from one man to the other. If they’ve got time to kill then they’re waiting for something or someone. To ransom me to the Syndicate? Like they’ll give Acid a cent when they can storm in here and take me back. I can’t wait. “You’re so screwed, Acid. My boyfriends are crazy when it comes to me. Lorenzo’s going to personally take you apart, piece by piece.”
Acid leans forward and whispers. “Lorenzo’s dead, your highness.”
The relief I felt a moment ago is suddenly doused with ice-cold dread. “Shut your mouth. No, he’s not.” I start to struggle against the ropes out of sheer desperation. Thane’s eyes light up.
Acid smiles wider. “Cross my heart and hope to…well. Just cross my heart. I don’t want to go dying now that everything’s turning out just how I want it.”
“Just because something went down tonight, doesn’t mean anyone’s dead.”
Acid spreads his hands. “You have your proof. We all do. Orchid Protocol.”
I stop struggling. “How do you know about Orchid Protocol?”
“Lorenzo set it up a few weeks ago and told his best friends down here at Strife all about it. If something happened to him, it would trigger an alert: Lorenzo’s dead, go save his princess.”
I want to punch Acid right in his smiling mouth.
“With any luck,” Acid continues, “one or more the Coldlake Syndicate will be dead along with our dear boss, and then the Strife men and I will decide whether to exchange you for Lorenzo’s territory and power, or…”
“Or what?”
Acid smiles wider. “Or hand you over to your father. A cool million in exchange for his baby girl sounds pretty great to me.”
I killed a man recently, but I didn’t want to do it. I was protecting Vinicius and myself from a dangerous gang leader. As I look into Acid’s handsome, smirking face, I want to inflict serious bodily harm on him. “Your plan won’t work because Lorenzo isn’t dead.”
Acid rubs a hand over his jaw. “If he were alive, do you really think you’d be sitting here with us right now?”
Despair washes over me. Lorenzo is too dangerous to die. The others wouldn’t let it happen. He wouldn’t let it happen.
Acid laughs softly. “Long live the Coldlake Syndicate.”
2
Salvatore
Ninety minutes earlier
The day Ophelia’s body was found, I stopped believing in happiness.