Page 49 of Roma Queen
I’m notsure if Lazlo’s stopped speaking to me or I’ve just fucked up all of the speakers and hecan’tspeak to me anymore. I’m fucking reeling from the revelation that Lazlo killed my grandfather as I speed down the tunnel, toward what end I don’t know. At the same time, I’m numb.
My grandmother was mad with fever when she predicted that the Empress would be the ruination of the Rivin Clan. All this time my mother’s thought it was Zara’s arrival that spelled the end of everything for her. It looks like this started well before Zara was even born, though. Calliope was the first redheaded woman to be associated with that card. She died because my family turned their back on her. Could it be thatsheis the reason all of this has come to pass, so much death, and anguish, and heartbreak, so many decades later?
I almost don’t see the end of the tunnel looming up in front of me; I narrowly miss running straight into the twelve-foot-high wall of dirt. Skidding to a halt, I slam my fist into the shored-up earth, cursing so loud the word echoes down the tunnel, back the way I came. Where the fuck is he? He has to be here. The cots; Sarah, talking about the stars on the Petrov recording; the video camera. All of it. Lazlo is here. I fucking know he is. Clenching my jaw harder than I should, I screw my eyes closed and I think.
When Patrin and I were kids, we would come down here and haze the fuck out of each other. With only one flashlight between us, we’d beat the shit out of each other, and the victor would steal light, leaving the other to make their way back to the clan in the absolute dark. Once, I won our bout and bailed, abandoning him to find his own way back, the same way he’d abandoned me many times before. Except Patrin hadn’t returned. Until he’d been gone for so long that I’d eventually told Archie, and he’d gotten Connie, Lazlo and Ross, Patrin’s father, to go help him find the boy.
The four of them had walked into the tunnel, and only three of them had come back out. Lazlo had remained inside to look for Patrin. A long,longtime after I’d left Patrin on his own, shivering in the dark with a busted nose, he’d finally emerged from the tunnel, white as a sheet, face spattered with blood, with Lazlo following behind him. When I asked Patrin where he’d been hiding all that time…
“Fuuuuck!”I scrub my hands through my hair, pulling hard enough to tear the strands free from the roots.Where did he say he’d been hiding, Pasha? Where the fuck did he hide?
The information rises slowly. I try to grapple hold of it, to yank it to the surface of my memory quicker than it wants to hand itself over. It hovers on the outskirts of my mind, threatening to disappear altogether…
…but then I have it.
A hatch. He’d said there was ahatchin the ground. It had been open, and he’d fallen down…
He’d told me he’d found himself in some sort of boiler room, filled with huge silver pipes and large vents covered with grates. He’d refused to tell me anything more than that. He’d told me Lazlo had found him, and then he’d clammed up. Gotten angry. Refused to breathe another word about it and had hit me hard enough to give me a black eye.
I…
Fuck.
I donothave time to unpack that memory properly, or figure out what any of it might mean for Patrin. I just have to find the hatch. Now that I kind of know what I’m looking for, I come across the large slab of rusting steel pretty quickly. Set into the ground about halfway back to the station platform, I curse softly under my breath when I spy it lying flush with the ground, butted up against the left-hand wall. I know I’ve hit pay dirt when I see the number of footprints that disturb the ground surrounding it.
There’s no lock. No keypad. Nothing to stop me from taking hold of the large, square handle that protrudes from the top of the hatch and lifting…
A vertical column of light pierces the tunnel. Music drifts up from the yawning access shaft below me. It’s the same choral music that was playing through the speakers before. The rousing, high-pitched swell of the choir’s voices floats up, sweet and bright, and a wave of dread spikes through me. This feels so wrong. The music itself, the shaft, with the steel ladder bolted to the wall…I’ve always trusted my gut when it’s come to situations like this, and right now my gut is telling me to get the fuck out of here and never come back. There will be a price to pay if I step foot down—
A voice cuts up from the unknown below. “Let me save you the torturous indecision, Pasha. Yes, I’m down here. Yes, your aunt is also down here. Yes, I am armed. Am I going to kill you the moment you drop down that shaft?” Lazlo pauses. Could be for effect, or he could actually be making up his mind. Finally, he parts with the answer to the question. “No. Notimmediately. I can’t promise I’m not going to kill you, boy, but I think it’s about time we had a conversation face-to-face, don’t you?”
Well, that hardly inspires confidence. A promise not to murder me the moment my boots hit the dirt might give me time to figure out the situation, though. I huff down my nose, turning the wrench over in my hand twice, testing the weight of it as I make my decision.
A metallicclangpulses down the access shaft as the sole of my boot hits the top rung of the ladder. Anotherclangrings out as my other foot hits the second rung. There have been times when the promise of an insanely fat paycheck has tempted me to bite off more than I would normally try and chew. Occasionally, there’ll be a bruiser on the cards at the flower markets, and I’ll be approached to see if I want to pick up the fight. The guy is usually a total fucking beast. A heavier weight class than me. An undefeated record. A guy with a taste for blood, who knows how to throw his fists and doesn’t back down.
The powers-that-be come to me first, to see if I want to take on the bout, because they know something about me: no matter how badly the odds are stacked against me, I willneversay no to a fight. Backing down just isn’t an option for me. It never has been.
My circumstances have changed, though. For the first time in my life, I have someone else to consider, someone I care about more than my own damn pride. And I’m discovering, very quickly, that being in love with someone can both strengthen and weaken you in equal measure.
As I descend down the shaft, my heart is in my fucking throat. If I don’t survive this, Zara will be unprotected. She’ll be alone in the city, and I won’t be able to protect her. My feet meet solid ground, and I turn, bracing myself for what I might find…
I see the woman first. She’s awake. Alert. Her thick mane of bleach-blonde hair is mussed, all over the place, snarled, tangled, and stained bright red in places. She sits in a chair, facing me, bound to the arms and legs of the chair at the wrist and the ankle by zip ties. Her eyes are the only part of her face visible beneath the steel mask that has been strapped to her head.
“A scold’s bridle. Hard to come by in this day and age. People are so…politically correct. You can find pretty much anything on e-Bay, though, right?”
I twist, tightening my grip on the wrench, and there he is, in the flesh: Lazlo, holding a gun in his hand, aiming the business end directly at my head.
Three years has done little to the man. Connie always said the bastard was as handsome as the devil himself, and I suppose in a way I can understand why she would have thought that. Tall; still broad and muscular in the shoulders, despite being his age; hair thick, dark as jet but tinged with steel grey at his temples. Square-jawed, straight-backed, and confident in his posture. A lot of other men his age would be jealous of his appearance.
It’s his eyes that make him ugly, though—the anger and the hatred inside them, pouring outward, unguarded. When a pair of eyes like Lazlo’s are focused on you, you can’t help but feel like a part of you is withering and shriveling up inside you.
The maintenance room isn’t all that big, but Lazlo’s presence seems to command every square inch of the place. The metal grates beneath his feet creak and groan as he makes his way toward me, gun still trained on me.
“I’ve never liked a woman that talked too much,” he says, placing a hand on the back of Kezia’s chair. “And this one? Boy…” He laughs. “She knows how to talk. I thought I was going to have to glue her mouth shut. Would have made feeding her a little difficult, though. Where’s Zara?”
Kezia’s eyes go wide at the mention of Zara. She mumbles something, her words unintelligible, pulling at her restraints, and Lazlo rolls his eyes. “Here we go again.” He stoops down and peers at her through the mask’s eyeholes. Now would be the perfect moment to rush him. Try and snatch the gun. But Lazlo switches tactic, aiming the gun straight into Kezia’s stomach. The purpose for this repositioning is obvious: if I try anything, he’s going to shoot her first, and at such close quarters, there’s no way he’ll miss.
I’m fuckingstunnedwhen he reaches out and strokes his hand over Kezia’s messy hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of Zara, just like I’m gonna take care of you. Shhhh. Shhh, it’s okay.”
