To her absolute horror, when he pulled her down the stairs to the street, he pressed a gun to her neck. Instantly, memories of bullets tearing into her sister, niece and nephew flooded her mind. She could feel the shock and pain of the three bullets smashing into her chest all over again. The memories were vivid. Terrifying.
Azelie was certain Billows was so incredibly angry that he would pull the trigger before he told her what was happening. She sent up a silent prayer that Andrii was safe. He shoved her into a black SUV and climbed into the back seat after her. The driver turned his head, and to her horror, there was a second Billows at the wheel. Twins.
She pressed her lips together to keep from saying a word. That there were two of them certainly explained the mood swings and personality changes. It was no wonder she could never figure Billows out completely.
“Who did you give your key to?” Billows roared the question in her ear, his fingers biting into her arms as he shook her.
The driver floored the vehicle, muttering a curse under his breath. “Several of the people from the apartment saw you put her in the car, Derrick.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who saw me,” Derrick Billows snapped, giving her another shake. “There was no other way for anyone to get into the maze or tunnels. It had to be her, Patrick.”
Patrick? For a moment she couldn’t think, and then it hit her. Alan had distinctive personalities. She’d even considered the possibility of him having some disorder.
“Where’s Alan?” She sounded like a forlorn frog croaking.
Derrick shook her again, this time hard enough that her head hurt. “Not here. Dead, you bitch. As if you didn’t know.”
She gasped in alarm. Triplets. Three, not two. Why hadn’t she figured that out? Alan hadn’t known how much money she made. He kept acting as if they were going to be a couple. He treated her differently than either Patrick or Derrick. Clearly, Derrick didn’t have social skills and didn’t want to have them. He was vicious and cruel, most likely the one she’d observed being abrupt and rude to his employees. Patrick had to be the charming one, who went out on dates with known celebrities and influential politicians. He enjoyed mingling with those in positions of power. Each of the triplets had played a role in their rise in money and influence.
“Alan’s dead?” she echoed. Derrick would never believe her, but she had a slight chance with Patrick. “But he…we…” She trailed off and pressed her fingertips to her mouth. She didn’t have to fake fear or the tears in her eyes. She didn’t want to appear defiant, but rather as if the news had crushed her.
Patrick glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “How did someone get your key, Azelie?”
She shook her head, allowing tears to track down her face. “I always put it in the same spot, that tiny knot in the wooden panel. I’ve never carried it out of the building. Not once. I thought it was safe with Bobby and whoever the security guard is in front of the door.” She sobbed again and ducked her head. “It doesn’t make sense that someone would know where my key was hidden. Alan is the only one who knew.”
“We knew,” Patrick declared. “I personally showed the knot to you.”
“You’re right, you little slut. No one else knew, but they used your key to get in,” Derrick snapped. His fingers were vicious, biting into her arm. She would worry about bruises later; right now she had to think about how she was going to stay alive.
“How do you know Alan’s dead?” she whispered. “Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s at home.” Her voice shook naturally from fear and stress. The hope she poured into it was acting. She knew Alan had to be dead for his brothers to act the way they were. They had to have seen him. Did that mean Andrii had killed him? Were they aware of Andrii? She was certain they were going to kill her. She might have had a chance with Patrick but not with Derrick. He was still in a killing rage.
“We saw his body and what those fuckers did to him before he died,” Derrick snarled. “If you had anything to do with this, every single thing done to him I’m going to do to you. I know ways to keep you alive even when you’re begging for death.”
“Why would I want Alan dead?” That seemed like a fair enough question. “None of this makes any sense.” She wailed the last, sounding scared and bereft.
“You tell me why you would want my brother dead,” Derrick demanded. “He was pissed as hell on your behalf when you went running to him about not getting enough money. Every chance he got he stood up for you, but you turned on him. Was it because you saw Patrick at the club, and he was with someone else? You got jealous and had him killed?”
“You’re absolutely crazy to think that,” she whispered. “Insane.”
Derrick slapped her right on the same cheek where he’d punched her earlier. Her face felt like it had exploded. She didn’t make a sound. Even her tears stopped. She might know it was prudent to be scared and give them anything they wanted—as long as it wasn’t Andrii—but all Derrick was doing was making her want to fight back.
“Derrick.” Patrick’s tone was cautionary. Reasonable. “We’re coming up on the club. I’ve beefed up security on the outside and closed both Pleasure Train and Adventure for the rest of the week. We need to find out who our enemies are and take them out before we reopen. No one else has been down in the offices.”
The fact that Patrick used the term offices gave her a tiny bit of hope. He was still trying to act as if things were more normal than they were.
“We know someone stole our money. She does the books,” Derrick said, but he sounded less threatening.
“We can talk about that when we’re inside,” Patrick said. He drove the SUV up close to the private employee entrance.
When Derrick hauled her none too gently out of the vehicle, she caught sight of three guards in uniform as the two Billows men took her straight up to the door and unlocked it. Derrick slammed it closed on the startled faces of the guards and went straight to the knot where her key should have been. It wasn’t there.
“They may have to disappear,” Derrick announced as he shoved Azelie down the hall toward the door leading down to the offices.
He said it so casually she realized that for Derrick, making people disappear was commonplace. It also meant that those three guards had seen her with Derrick and Patrick. They would remember if she disappeared and the cops went looking for her. His statement made her believe they were going to kill her; otherwise why threaten perfectly innocent security guards? Also, the fingers surrounding her bicep were biting into her flesh viciously. Derrick was deliberately inflicting pain.
Azelie refused to give Derrick the satisfaction of her crying out in pain, nor did she try to fight as they took her down the stairs to the rooms below. Instead of taking her into her appointed office, they hurried her along the same corridor she had taken to try to find the woman screaming out in agony so many months earlier. She thought about the woman now. Which of the triplets had come out to confront her? Someone, maybe all of them, had been with that woman, and they’d hurt her. Maybe killed her. She felt terrible that she’d let that woman down.
Derrick opened the lock in the wooden panel and marched her down the corridor until they came to a room with an open door. She smelled blood. He shoved her inside and snapped on a bright overhead light. The bodies of two men lay like broken life-sized dolls in one corner. Close to the center of the room, Bobby Aspen lay next to Andrew McGrady. McGrady had clearly been tortured before he died, while the two men in the corner and Bobby appeared to have been killed quickly.
Derrick gripped her arm and forced her forward, stepping right into blood on the floor. Blood and fingers. Her stomach lurched as he stopped, looming over the body in the center of the room. Alan Billows had been tortured too, but what he’d gone through looked to be far worse than what McGrady had been put through. It was Billows’ fingers strewn all over the floor. Whoever had tortured Billows knew what they were doing. She tried to drown out Andrii’s voice telling her he was a trained assassin. He had learned how to take people apart at an early age. She found herself praying Andrii hadn’t been the one to do this horrible, cruel thing to Billows.
“I’m going to be sick,” she whispered.
“Be as sick as you want.” Derrick was entirely unsympathetic.
Azelie didn’t blame him. The man, who looked as if he’d been carved up like a turkey, was nearly unrecognizable, and he was their brother. She was positive they would kill her now. How could they not? She would want to kill someone who did that to someone she loved. She had to brace herself for what would come next. No matter what they did, she could never reveal her connection to Andrii.
There was a very uncomfortable chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room, just behind Alan’s body. It appeared as if he’d been in that chair when he was tortured. There was blood and what looked suspiciously like urine on and below it. Fingers were strewn on the floor around it.
Azelie tried to hold her breath so she wouldn’t take in the horrendous stench. Derrick shoved her toward the chair, and for the first time she couldn’t overcome her panic and horror. She struggled against him. There was nowhere to go, no possible way to run, but her fight instincts kicked in and she couldn’t stop the hysteria welling up.
Derrick backhanded her, punched her stomach to double her over and slammed her into the chair. Azelie froze when her bottom landed on the seat, which was covered in the blood and urine of a dead man. Her stomach lurched again, protesting the smells and the vicious punch. She leaned over the steel arm of the chair and vomited.
Derrick swore and stepped back, but Patrick went to the sink, wet a cloth and brought it to her. He wiped her face with surprising gentleness.
“Derrick, cool off. We have no idea if Azelie is involved. It could be that someone took advantage of her. That man at the club, the one with your friend, do you go out with him?”
“No. I met him for the first time that night. He’s Lana’s brother. The only thing I know about him is that he works as a bartender. I don’t even know where.”
