A sound of excruciating pain rips through my chest, echoing in the night.
In seconds, she hits the pavement, and a red pool crawls over the cement creating a halo of blood around her head that’s visible in the triggered floodlights.
Balling my trembling hands into tight fists, I rest them against my temples and slide down the edge of the wall. The world slices me open once again, and I bleed out the misery trapped inside of me.
Chapter 53
Isadora
Present day …
I have to know. It’s a nagging, needling thought inside my head that won’t go away. Did Nell really overdose? Was she a regular at my aunt’s bar? Was she lying the whole time? What the hell was the warning before she left all about? And why was she working with a private investigator?
So many questions slamming around inside my head.
If I come right out and tell Aunt Midge about what happened, it’ll just be more gossip about the Blackthornes. She’ll warn me to stay away from this place, and tell me I’m asking for trouble with Lucian.
But what if Nell didn’t overdose? What if something happened to her? Maybe Aunt Midge saw her at the bar. Maybe she saw her leave with someone.
I can at least put my mind at ease a little by asking.
I’m sure, by now, the whole town knows a woman was found dead in a motel room. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen frequently enough in Tempest Cove to get swept under the rug entirely. And if there’s one person I know who’s gotten the skinny on it, particularly as it’s only a little over a mile up the road, it’s Aunt Midge.
I shove a couple outfits into my bag for the weekend, my mind made up about taking a couple days away from this place, but pause at a knock at the door.
Shit. Lucian.
He seemed insistent earlier that I stay, and I’ve been trying to formulate a non-suspicious excuse for him for the last hour.
“Isa?” Giulia’s voice bleeds through the door, and I exhale a relieved breath.
“Come in.”
The door clicks as she enters the room, her face etched with worry. “You heard the news of Nell?”
Nodding, I sit down on the bed, resting my hands in my lap. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t believe it, either.” The skepticism in her voice proves the point. “I’ve known Nell for a couple years now. There’s no way she would’ve thrown everything away. I watched her work so hard through school.”
Unfortunately, I happen to know how easily an addict will throw everything away to feed their craving. Even at the expense of losing what they love most. I wish that was the most troubling part about this, because at least I’d be able to dismiss that. It’d make sense to me. The problem is, if Nell was just another junkie out to ruin what she worked hard for, why would she go out of her way to work with a private investigator, and to warn me away from the Blackthornes? Addicts don’t give a shit about anything but their next fix.
“She was fired last week. Maybe that triggered a craving.”
“Maybe.” After glancing back at the door, she shuffles across the room and sits beside me on the bed. “Can I tell you something? You have to promise me you won’t say a word.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
The way she glances around the room makes her look almost paranoid, but then again, maybe rightly so after the nights I’ve spent here. “I told her things,” she whispers. “Things I shouldn’t have talked about. She asked me about that secret group and the men involved. What if they found out?” Wringing the apron of her dress, she lowers her head and exhales a sharp breath. “What if they come for me next?”
“Why would they come for you?”
“You don’t know who these men are, Isa. What they’ll do to remain anonymous. To protect their identity. What they do. And they know everything about me. And Jackie.” Face screwed up in panic, she clutches her stomach and leans forward as if she might throw up. “Oh, God, what if they go after my daughter?”
Go after her daughter? “Lucian is part of this group, as well?”
“Yes. But it’s different with Lucian. He doesn’t entirely share their philosophies.”
“On what?”
Releasing a sharp exhale, she looks up at me. “They pay money to torture others.”
Tendrils of ice crawl up my spine. “What do you mean? Like … hurt people?” All this time, I was under the impression they were some high-rolling escort service.
“People come to them with problems. Say me, for example. I needed a way out. So some, they physically hurt for money. Others might be used in other ways.” She casts her gaze from mine, as if she can’t look at me. “For money. The common thread is pain. These men get off on doling it out and watching it.”
What she’s saying makes no sense. A group that pays to torture people? It’s the kind of thing that only happens in the dark recesses of the internet. Not here. Not in a small fishing community like Tempest Cove.
“People come to them to be hurt? You went to them for this? And worse yet, you suggested I go to them for this?”
“Remember how desperate you were? Imagine thousands of dollars paid to you. Money you don’t have to pay back. All your debts and problems? Gone.”
“Desperate, or not, I was trying to avoid being tortured and killed.”
“Because you didn’t know the terms, or the limits.” She turns toward me, her eyes imploring. “But imagine if that drug dealer had outlined exactly what he would do to you, and afterward, your debts were clear. You never had to see him again.”
Maybe. Maybe I was desperate in the moment. Who knows? I was certainly willing, at the time, to proposition the Devil of Bonesalt.
“Lucian does this? He pays to hurt people?”
“I don’t think he participates. I think he’s just one who provides the funding.”
“Why? What could he possibly get in return for that?”
“I don’t know, okay? I shouldn’t even be telling you.”
“How did you even learn about this group?”
“I heard through someone else about them. On the streets, they’re like … gods.” There’s a sparkle in her eyes when she says it, as if she believes it herself. “To be chosen is a lifesaver, for some.”
“They tortured you?”
“My circumstances were such that … they weren’t interested. I was a single mother with a child. For what I was willing to do, they weren’t willing to take both of us in. I’ll admit, it was stupid. But we were starving, and you don’t realize the depths you’ll sink to when you have a hungry child. Had Rand not approached me, I’d be walking the streets of Boston looking for Johns. I’m not proud of that, but I’ll do anything for my little girl. Anything.”
“So you made a deal with Lucian …” I was aware from the start that he was fucking her, but to hear the reasons behind it somehow doesn’t sit well with me.
“Yes. But that was before you came along. He hasn’t touched me since.”
“And has he ever physically hurt you?”