Page 34 of Drowning in the Deep

Today, he had driven a much more sensible car. A black SUV. I thought that made more sense than the spaceship car he’d taken the other night to the club. He opened the door for me, and when I thanked him, he only grunted in response. Daemon Petrov was a man of few words.

“What’s the address of the first property your father and my mother are trying to get their hands on?” he asked me, preparing to punch it into his navigation system.

I rattled it off to him, and he paused, raising an eyebrow at me.

“What?” I asked him.

“Are you sure about that?” He leaned over toward me, so I showed him the paper.

“Yeah, all of the buildings are pretty close together, it looks like. Most of them are on the same couple of streets.” I shrugged, not sure what he was getting at.

“That’s not exactly the best part of town,” he told me as he finished with the address and pulled out of his parking spot, barely glancing to see if anyone was coming. He tended to drive like others should watch out for him.

“Okay.” I shrugged again. “Well, that’s what he’s buying, so maybe he’s planning on using these buildings for something that he doesn’t want people to know about, so he’s chosen properties off the beaten path.”

Daemon growled in response, but he seemed to be thinking my response over. I didn’t expect him to say anything, but he eventually did. “I haven’t been over there in years, but if it is where I think it is, it’s more like a third-world country than Chicago. You have to be careful over there. EvenIhave to be careful. In my world, there are at least rules and expectations for warfare. Over there, anything goes.”

My stomach knitted into a tight knot at his words. I’d had no idea we were going somewhere so dangerous. Maybe I should’ve worn something else—like all-black or shoes I could run in instead of these cute black boots.

Silence settled over the car, which was beginning to drive me crazy, so I decided to talk about work because I didn’t think that was something that could make him too irritated. I was happy enough just to be with him, the smile I perpetually wore giving that away. As I rambled on about what had happened with Jack and Sarah, he grunted every once in a while. It was only when I told him that I’d worked on my father’s business acquisitions most of the day that he actually said anything in words, which was mostly just a condescending, “Fun.”

Daemon pulled off the highway, and I immediately felt a shift in the atmosphere. We drove past dilapidated businesses, rundown apartments, and factories that looked like they hadn’t been occupied for decades. It was pretty clear that this place was located on the wrong side of the tracks.

I didn’t see too many people. Every once in a while, we’d pass someone who was walking in the shadows next to one of the buildings, but they faded away quickly. I felt like these were the kinds of people who’d stab you first and then ask for your wallet.

The navigation told us to turn left, so we did, winding our way through more of the same. I tried not to show Daemon how unsettled I was, but it was difficult. I really felt like I was in the middle of another country, one where people walked around with bazookas on their shoulders.

When the robot voice told us we had arrived, Daemon pulled over and looked at the building, double-checking the address. “How can this be right?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, looking at the building. The sign out front, which was chipped, faded, and missing several letters, said the building used to be an accounting firm. Now, it looked like it might topple over at any moment. Looking at some of the other addresses on the list, I saw that they were nearby.

He was buying twelve properties that looked like this? Why would my father do that?

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Daemon said as a beat-up car drove by slowly. I didn’t dare make eye contact with the driver. We hadn’t seen a lot of vehicles around here at all, but the ones we’d seen were busted up, to say the least. I was afraid someone would pull a gun on us and try to steal Daemon’s vehicle with us in it. I did trust him to keep me safe, but this was a lot to take in.

“Does it matter for drug warehouses or weapon storage?” I asked, probably showing my ignorance.

“That was my first guess. We have a lot of buildings that are out in the middle of nowhere because we don’t want people nosing around. But this takes it to another level. The cost to rejuvenate these buildings would be astronomical, just to make them functional. They could fall down at any second.” He shook his head. “I thought they might be trying to come in and establish themselves here, undercut my prices, and steal my customers. But not in this location. It wouldn’t make financial sense for him to do that.”

“Maybe he’s planning on tearing them down and rebuilding?” I asked, hazarding a guess. “Would that be cheaper?”

“It might be cheaper than trying to fix this death trap up, but it would still be extremely expensive and illogical. There are a lot of other places in the city a person could go to get property that’s out of the way but not in such horrible condition.” He shrugged, peering past me to look more closely at the building.

“It doesn’t even look like they have power,” I muttered.

“Nope. Probably full of trash, rats, and junkies,” he agreed. “Damnit. I wish I knew what your old man was thinking. I hate it when I can’t see where he’s going. That’s how people get blindsided. And getting blindsided leaves you with a bullet in your head.”

I turned to look at him. Something about the way he said that last part made me think he was talking about something specific. Had he lost one of his men recently? I knew I couldn’t ask, not if I wanted him to keep talking to me. That was just the sort of question that made him clam up.

I was still considering what he might be getting at when he unbuckled my seatbelt. “Come on.”

“What?” I asked as he began to get out of the vehicle. “We’re getting out?” I looked around, checking the shadows for the shady forms I’d seen before. By then, Daemon was out of the vehicle and on the sidewalk, waiting for me. “Fuck.”

I didn’t feel safe sitting in the car, let alone being out and about, but I knew I had no choice but to drag myself out of the SUV and follow him.

Daemon didn’t wait for me to catch up to him. Instead, he marched over to the nearest building that was on the list and climbed in through one of the broken windows. There was a piece of particle board hanging over it, but it was easy to lift out of the way. Most of the other windows were clear, though dirty as hell, and several of them had a piece or two broken out of them.

The sound of claws scratching across concrete made a chill go up my spine. There were definitely rats in here—more than one. A lot. But they didn’t come anywhere near the weak light pouring in through the windows, so I decided to stay there while Daemon made a quick look around.

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