The car pulls up outside of what looks like an abandoned Tube station. In the black of night, the location looks even more eerie and unwelcoming.
“We’re here,” Thiago announces. He turns towards me. “Last chance to change your mind.”
I shake my head stubbornly, looking a lot more confident than I feel. My first foray into this world scares me, but if I’m going to survive the Underworld, I need to know it.
I need to master it like I would anything else.
And if the roles were reversed, I’d want him to do everything he could to help me find my brother’s killer.
“I’m ready,” I say assertively. “What is it you’re showing me exactly?”
“Augusto Leone.”
My breath falters, but I don’t let him see it. I don’t know the name. Part of me had expected this to involve a captive of some sort, but the confirmation is still jarring to hear.
“Who is he? Is he the one who killed her?”
“He claims to know nothing about any of this,” Thiago answers, getting out of the car and extending a hand out to me. Taking it, I follow after him. “But he’s lying. And he’s the capo of the Italian mafia.”
My eyes widen in shock and dart around us to see who can hear. Arturo and two other men come out of a follow car, staying a secure distance away from us but eyeing our surroundings carefully to scope out any threats.
“You kidnapped the head of the Italian mafia?” I ask disbelievingly. I know nothing about how his world works but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that move is akin to dropping a nuclear bomb on the London Underworld. “Isn’t that insanely dangerous? Do they know you have him? Are they going to attack us?”
I don’t miss the way I refer to the cartel as us and neither does Thiago. He lifts an interested brow my way but says nothing. He simply drops my hand.
“Don’t hold my hand again once we go in,” he instructs. He turns on his heel and disappears into the abandoned station.
I try to hide the wounded expression on my face, but I’m pretty sure I fail. At least he’s gone so he doesn’t see it.
But someone else does.
“Well, are you going to follow him in or not, Barbie?” Arturo asks impatiently. “Or perhaps you’re too afraid?”
I glare at him and do something that would send my mother into a fainting spell if she ever saw me. I flip him off, coupling it with a snide expression. It feels almost therapeutic.
I might have to start doing it more often.
Without waiting for his reaction, I push into the darkness and follow after my husband. My vision adapts quickly to the dark but it doesn’t go on for long anyway. Bulkhead lights are affixed to the walls every hundred feet or so. They illuminate Thiago’s back as he waits for me at the bottom of a set of stairs that lead into a long hallway.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a decommissioned bomb shelter from World War II.”
I nod, looking around me in awe. “I heard these were all over the city, but I’ve never seen one, let alone been in one.”
“First and last time,” he notes.
He starts walking again, turning left, then right, until we’re so deep into the maze I have no idea how to get out. His comfort with the space reveals how much time he’s spent here. This must be a base of theirs, which makes sense. Although I never thought the Underworld would actually be under. It’s brilliant.
We pass a number of rooms with metallic doors sporting sliding speakeasy grills. It sends a shiver down my spine thinking about how many people must have been held here.
Footsteps behind me tell me the other three men are following us. I’m surprised there’s not more security dedicated to protecting the space, but I assume that would draw unwanted attention here.
Finally, Thiago comes to a stop in front of a large door. His palm comes up to push it open, but he pauses. His face turns to the side and then his eyes flick up to mine. There’s hesitation in them when he looks at me and that too is new. I’ve never seen him be anything other than overly confident in every one of his decisions. But now he falters, indecision flashing in his gaze and jittery energy making his fists clench restlessly as he grapples with whether or not to let me in.
“Show me,” I say encouragingly one final time.
His jaw shifts side to side, his gaze assessing for long moments. Then he nods once, sharply.
I watch in real time as his gaze shutters. He straightens and cool menace washes over his entire body. He looks like a completely different person, distant and indifferent as he stares down at me, and I realize that the man from earlier who took so much delight in giving me pleasure is gone. Standing before me instead is the ruthless cartel boss. The ease with which he shifts between the two is hair raising, but he’s doing what I asked. I’m the one who wanted to see this.
Thiago shoves the door open and strides in easily, the other men following after him with their guns drawn, leaving me alone in the hallway. I step out of my stilettos, bending to carry them in one hand by the heel. The idea of standing in that room in them makes me feel vulnerable and I need all the armor I can get right now. With a breath, I steel my shoulders and follow after Thiago.
The room is large and empty. The only thing inside it is one chair on which sits one man. Or at least, what remains of one man. He’s tied by thick lengths of rope, his head drooped forward, and he’s entirely covered in blood. There’s so much of it, my brain can’t compute where it could all possibly be coming from. Behind him, stand Marco and a man I know is named Fabian. The barbaric expression on his face terrifies me, as does the large cleaver dripping with blood that hangs from his hand.
“Leone.”
Thiago’s voice slices through the silence with the kind of authority most men only dream of having. I’m frozen to the spot, barely five feet inside the room and unable to make my body move any further. I’m completely out of my element here and my muscles shake with unease.
Augusto Leone doesn’t react for so long that I start to think he must already be dead. That would certainly explain the amount of blood. Then, so slowly I miss it at first, he starts to lift his head. He reveals his face little by little and I bite back a gasp. Joker lines have been carved into either side of his mouth, pulling it into a terrifying makeshift rictus.
Leone keeps lifting his head until his eyes are fully visible. But they don’t go to Thiago, who’s standing in front of him, and they don’t go to Arturo, who’s just off to the side, gun drawn but hanging by his side, or to Marco and Fabian who hover right over him.
They come straight to me, where I’m still hesitating by the door.
And any pity I may have started to feel evaporates in an instant because his pupils blacken sadistically and his eyes rake lewdly down my body with the promise of the kind of violence women don’t survive shining in them.
Fear grabs me by the throat and chokes me.
The eye contact ends after less than a second when Thiago shifts to the side and places his body in front of mine, completely blocking me from Leone’s view.
“Don’t look at her,” he says dispassionately. “Look at me.”
