Page 89 of Hell to Pay

I thought about it: just turning around, going back to the suite in Paris for the night, flying home, trying to get my life together.

But Rain Adakai would still be out there. Other girls would go missing, not just in Blackwell Falls, but all around the world, because there was no way this fucked-up party was held twice a year with only “inventory” from Blackwell Falls.

Would I be able to put the girls out of my mind, go on with my life like none of this had happened?

I knew I wouldn’t. I’d think about Rain and the other girls every day, ghosts of my parallel self.

“No,” I said. “I’m good.”

“We’ve got you, boss. Don’t forget that in there.”

“Masks on,” Rafe said as the limo got closer to the front of the mansion.

I slipped on my mask, then looked around the car and felt the world tilt when Rafe, Nolan, and Jude stared back at me from behind their black-and-gold skull masks. I should have been scared — they looked scary as fuck — but instead desire pulsed between my thighs and my nipples got hard under my dress.

Our driver pulled up to the front of the estate and got out to open the doors. Rafe got out first, followed by Nolan, then me and Jude.

I remembered Rafe’s coaching: “You’ve been kidnapped, subdued, maybe drugged. You have to be docile.”

I didn’t usually do docile, but since my life depended on it, I kept my head down as I followed Rafe and Nolan to the front door.

From the outside, it could have been any party, and I had the crazy thought that maybe we were wrong. Maybe thiswasjust a regular party, the murmured voices from inside just regular people chatting about their jobs and kids, the music playing from some boring background party playlist the host had queued up before the party started.

I caught glimpses of a man in front of us, his gray hair emerging in tufts from behind a featureless white mask that gave me the creeps. Next to him, a girl about my age stood in a red dress, her brown hair up, the numbered brand on the back of her neck clearly visible and slightly more healed than mine, which meant it was older.

The gray-haired man leaned in to give his name to a masked doorman holding a tablet. The man held up his phone and the doorman looked at it, then confiscated it before handing the older man in the mask a small gold notebook with an attached pencil.

He was ushered into the house with the girl by his side and Rafe and Nolan stepped forward.

I looked at the guy checking everyone in through my lashes, not wanting to be caught staring, but other than his black mask, he was just a regular guy in his thirties with black hair.

Was just a job for him? Like working as a valet for private parties or taking shifts as catering staff? Did he go home to a wife and kids? Did they ask him about his work night?

My stomach turned. I wondered if men understood how terrifying it was to live as a woman in a world where there were so many evil men hiding behind average faces. So many men who looked “nice” but could — and did — kill us on a regular basis.

Rafe gave the man his spoofed identity and I held my breath as the guy studied his iPad. He said something to Rafe and Rafe held up his phone to show him the crypto wallet. The doorman took Rafe’s phone and handed him a paddle with a number on it, the kind I’d seen bidders use at auctions in movies, and one of the gold notebooks.

Nolan followed the same procedure and was also given a paddle and notebook. Then it was my turn with Jude.

The doorman looked me up and down, his eyes clinical. “Number?”

“Um…” I hadn’t memorized it.

“I need to see it.” He said it like I was stupid.

I bit back the smart-ass retort burning my tongue and turned around, giving him a view of my neck.

He reached for something inside a wooden box on a console table by the door, wrote something on it, and took my hand.

I started to pull away, then realized he was wrapping something around my wrist: a kind of velvet bracelet, the number on the back of my neck written in elegant script on a thick piece of card stock attached to the velvet.

He cinched the velvet tight, then nodded, and I stepped into the house's foyer — twice the size of my apartment — where Rafe and Nolan waited.

My stomach turned. The velvet bracelet felt like it was cutting into my skin, like silken handcuffs, but when I looked down, it lay flat against my wrist. I felt a little unglued, my heart beating fast, my face hot, and I had to fight the urge to run.

I looked around, trying to keep my gaze casual and “submissive,” another word Rafe had used when coaching me. The ceilings soared above us, a triple-decker chandelier gleaming with crystals, and a grand curved staircase wound its way to the second and third floors.

There was nothing strange about it, nothing off, and I again had the surreal feeling that maybe I was crazy. Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing: Rain being shoved into the car, Vic and the other men on snowmobiles, Imperium Fratrum, theArtemis, the brand on the back of my neck.

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