Page 101 of King of Cruelty

Together, all fourteen of them tromped out the door—leaving us alone withthem.

Debra’s smile evaporated like a puddle. “Finally. Those stupid, ignorant cunts,” she spat. “I know we needed bodies, but couldn’t we have invested in a better, and smarter, class of criminal?”

Natalya laughed. “A smarter class of criminal wouldn’t have believed us when we promised to ‘redistribute’ the wealth of Leighbridge, and share all the auction earnings equally.”

“That is true,” Debra crowed, setting them both off laughing.

“Two minutes.”

“Okay, okay.” Debra sobered quickly. “Are the recordings ready to go?”

“Ready,” Yumi confirmed, setting five different recorders on the table behind the laptops.

“Are the bombs set?”

“They’re set,” Maryann confirmed.

“Okay, the auction is on a timer with the highest bid at the end of five minutes the accepted bid. That gives us fifty minutes to get through them all. We want as much as we can milk from these fools, so we don’t blow the bombs until minute forty-eight. That way we still make a little something from the invalid,” she said, waving at Genny. “All of you need to be seen moving, talking, and being in this room until minute twenty.

“After that, they’ll only hear our voices, but they’ll be too busy focused on the auction to care about us. That’ll give us more than enough time to get out, go through the tunnel, and drive away. Don’t worry”—she held up the drive—“we’re all packed.”

“Ten seconds,” Natalya said, gun steady on me even as she watched the clock. “Nine, eight, seven...”

“For Wilson,” Debra said.

Her friends nodded. “For Wilson.”

“—three, two, one.”

From my side view, I saw the screen flick on, and the show begin.

Debra sat up high in her chair as her buddies followed her direction—moving around the room and providing the proof of life and presence that would sell the lie that they died here in the explosion with the rest of us.

“Welcome, brothers and sisters,” Debra began. “It’s taken a long time. Months for some, decades for the faithful, but at long last, we’ve finally done it. We’ve cracked the Merchants’ famed security and put them where they belonged”—she detached the webcam and turned it around—“in chains.”

“Now,” Yumi took over, leaning over Debra’s chair. “I know we promised the entire family, and that promise will be kept. With these ten neutralized, it won’t take long to track down the final two siblings, and the daughter of Liam Hunt. As soon as we have them in hand, they’ll also be put up for sale. But for now, we won’t let this opportunity pass to offer you the main set.”

“The original leaders of the Merchants,” Jillian announced, “the children chosen to lead their criminal empire after they stepped down, and the Rat King.”

“Let’s not waste any more time,” Natalya chimed in. “We begin with Adeline Redgrave, daughter of notorious gangster and fixer, Oscar Redgrave. Oscar and his gang, The Lords, were the original creators of the ledger. Adeline was its final owner. Her knowledge of the Cinco underground spans her generation, and the one before. As such, the minimum bid to own her is twenty million dollars.

“Brothers and sisters, enter your bid in denominations of millions,” she said, popping my brows to my hairline. “Meaning, the only acceptable rising bid from the base price is twenty-one million and higher.”

Debra leaned forward and fixed the camera directly on a curled-lip, glowering Adeline. “Begin.”

Debra tapped a button, which popped a huge five-minute timer on the screen that was big enough for me to see. The restof what was going on was hard to make out. It kind of looked like she was in an old-fashioned chat room with no faces, no real names, no locations, and no trace. All there was to see were usernames floating through cyberspace.

She frowned. “Everyone, you can begin placing your bids. The auction has begun.”

Behind her, Yumi and Jillian were moving around uselessly, pretending to have a conversation. They paused their charade to peer over her shoulder.

“If you accept the opening bid, simply typeaccept,” Debra said. “Twenty million dollars for the underground queen of Cinco City herself. You can keep her or ransom her. Either way, we’re practically giving this old bitch away.”

More seconds passed with Debra’s forehead crumpling further and further, fashioning deeper grooves between her temples.

“Why is no one bidding?” Natalya hissed.

“Shh!” Debra snapped back. In a louder tone, she said, “Twenty million might be a bit high. Just this once, we’ll lower the starting bid to seventeen million dollars. That’s seventeen million dollars for Adeline Redgrave—the architect of the Night of Tears, and many more tragedies since.”

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