Page 75 of To Curse A Knight

He’d been fucking forever, though. Nearly an hour, and unless he’d risked castration and get a rub-n-tug while he was in there—something that wouldreallyget him killed by Blondie—my spidey senses were telling me something was off.

I’d parked out of the way from the parking lot cameras peeping eyes at the rear of the building with a full view of the back door. For the first time in my life, I wished my car was a wee bit more discreet than M&M blue, but I hadn’t considered my work would evolve into hacking with assassins.

I still didn’t have a plan for my painting situation. I’d placed all my eggs in Hillary’s basket like a happy little Easter bunny, but now I had to come up with something to get out of my contract with The Six. I was conniving on the best of days, but I was still sitting on a fat zero for a solution. And I wasn’t going to find it in a brothel parking lot.

I’d turned on the radio to bide my time; Americans loved their talk radio. News, news, and more news, except none of it wasactuallynews—just the same rubbish shyte on repeat.

A shadow filled my driver’s side window and nearly tore me out of my skin. The door was yanked open and two large hands gripped my jacket and lifted me off my seat.

“What. In. The. Fuck. Are you doing here?” Kellan snarled through gritted teeth, his voice hovering between murderous and double murderous. I should be terrified of him—this Cartel killer who broke my beautiful nose and was double my size with triple the Big Dick Energy—but I wasn’t. The man was becoming a growly teddy bear toward me.

I was in for a world of pain, though.

“Before you kill me...” I held up one finger to stop him, as pointless as it was. “Yeh should know this was not my idea,” I pointed the finger toward the building behind him, “and Roboto hasn’t come out in a while.”

“Fuck.” The Viking released me and dropped me to the ground, turning toward the building instead. “Fucking Rodriguez,” he cursed again. “Grab your fucking gun. We’re going in.”

Three musketeers for the win today. Never would have predicted this outcome, but I was down to clown.

“Okay, so there’ll be three funerals on the docket today.” I reached for the gun under my seat and slid out from between the car and Kellan’s massive bulk, ready for the showdown of a lifetime. “Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t. Might as well go out with a bang.”

The blond baddie was ignoring me, glaring at the building like it owed him money.

“I know the layout of this club,” he said in a low growl. “It was originally built with Antonio’s blessing. We’ll start with the private suites on the lower levels—it's where they beat the shit out of the Johns who get too carried away.”

“What makes you think he’ll be there?” I followed his lead as we walked casually to the rear door as if we belonged there. I attempted to hide my face from the cameras by burying my nose in my coat collar.

“It’s where I’d take him.”

Fair enough.

He attached a slick device onto the electronic keypad, and numbers lined up in sequence like we were in the mafia version of the Matrix.

“Fecking sweet!” I exclaimed, impressed. “I need to get my hands on one of those.”

“Come on,” Kellan beckoned me inside, then closed the heavy steel door behind us. We were at the end of a long, dark corridor, with not a single soul to be seen.

Thank you, universe.

I enjoyed a good adventure like the best of con men, but I was unprepared to die today. I’d suddenly found a few things to live for, and I hoped to enjoy a few more tastes of Hillary’s heaven before I was put into the dirt. Or a pond or… whatever method of death Aaron’s family liked to deal in.

I really wasn’t keen to find out either way.

“Wait,” I hissed, realization dawning on me. “How did you find us? Weren’t you with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum-Dum today?”

“I had them come to me,” he grunted, creeping down the hallway on stealthy feet for such a big fuck. “I don’t like being too far away from Killer right now.”

“And you tracked me?” I guessed as I pointed to my arm, knowing full well the broody, controlling motherfucker would have been watching my every move now he knew my true identity. “Can’t keep your eyes off me, eh, Conan?”

I received a serious case of pissed-off mafia man side-eye, and it only made the man hotter than Hell in a heat wave. But he ignored me, because the man had the self-control of a vegan on a bacon farm.

We rounded a corner, still seeing no one—did anyone actuallyworkhere?—and he led us down another short hallway to a gloomy concrete set of stairs. “Good thing I am. Thanks to you, this stupid fucker is going to get himself killed.”

We descended the super creepy steps into the sex dungeon below.The Barbarian was riveting to watch in action. All muscles bunching and radiating “don’t fuck with me” energy while he prowled through the building like we were on an episode ofBlue Lights.Had there ever been a mafia-man/FBI combo before? Stuff of a Hollywood movie, that. And fuck me, I wanted to know the story.

At the bottom of the stairs was another windowless corridor that looked like it had been intentionally left to look creepy, down to the swinging bare bulbs from the ceiling and the crumbling plaster walls. I held my gun tighter, keeping my guard up as I heard the soundtrack in my head to some horror film where the daft brunette gets gutted by the killer.

I covered his back while he peered into the tiny windows at the top of each metal door on either side of us.

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