“Where are these kitchens?” Mateo asked, looking towards the bar and Niall nodded.
“Through there - if my little piss-drinking friend had her facts right.” He pushed between me and Mateo, keeping Brooklyn close to him as they led the way to the bar.
Niall released Brooklyn then vaulted the thing, ignoring the shocked gasp from the man serving drinks as he turned back to offer her a hand.
I moved to lift her up so that she could stand on the bar and she flashed me a big smile before taking Niall’s fingers in her grip and dropping down on the other side of it where he spun her beneath his arm in celebration.
Mateo lifted the wooden flap so that the two of us could walk through, muttering something under his breath about showboating Irishmen before descending into a few choice Spanish curses.
Niall ignored him, strolling through the door into the kitchen without even trying to explain himself to the bartender. We followed him into the brightly lit space beyond where bottles of drinks were stored and glasses were being placed into washers or stacked up to be brought back out to the bar, none of the workers so much as looking our way as we strode between them.
Another door led into a wider kitchen intended for food preparations and on the far side of that, a beast of a man stood guarding a door.
“How’re you doing there, fella?” Niall asked loudly, striding straight up to the man with his hand outstretched and the fool automatically took it, shaking once.
He didn’t manage to get a single word out before Niall used the grip he held on the man’s hand to yank him close before shoving a taser into his gut and shocking him hard enough that he crumpled to the floor in a heap.
Brooklyn applauded him and gave a little whoop while I stepped forward to haul the man towards a large walk-in refrigerator. Brooklyn skipped past me to open the door and Mateo followed us inside, taking a ball gag and a length of rope from his pocket, which I assumed he’d acquired out in the fetish rooms. He made quick work of securing the unconscious doorman and we threw the refrigerator door closed on him as we left.
Niall led the way through the door, pressing a finger to his lips as he headed into a dark stairwell and began to descend with Brooklyn close on his heels.
Mateo and I headed down right behind him, tugging the door closed at our backs and leaving nothing but dim lighting from somewhere at the base of the stairs to light our way on.
Cheers and shouts came from below us, the roar of men watching sport or egging each other into some game reaching us.
Brooklyn stiffened suddenly, making me walk right into her and snatch hold of her arm to stop her from tumbling the whole way down the stairs.
“Are you good, Spider?” Niall’s voice came from ahead of us.
“I just can’t help but think how lucky I am that you found me, Hellfire. I was so lost before you came to take me away. And I would have been lost even worse if someone else had bought me instead of you.”
“That was never going to happen, little psycho,” Niall promised, walking on down the stairs while she lingered with us. “From the moment I laid eyes on ya, I knew I had to have ya. One way or another, we were destined.”
“Rook,” I agreed, knowing all too well the power she held to captivate wicked men like us and make them her own.
“You’re a lure set to trap sinners, mi sol,” Mateo said as he shifted to her side. “We were created by a deviant god with nothing but your pleasure in mind. There was never any other fate for you than us.”
Brooklyn looked back at me and even in the darkness I swear her blue eyes sparked with life.
“Us,” she said on a sigh which seemed to breathe purity into the air, and I inhaled my fill of it as she tugged her arm free of my grip and followed Niall down into the dark.
We made it to the foot of the stairs and found another corridor which led to a set of double doors, manned by another pair of thugs.
I rolled my shoulders back, preparing to force our way past them, but as we closed in on them, they only nodded their heads in greeting to us.
“Welcome,” one of them said. “Do you know the rules?”
“Yep,” Niall agreed brightly, tapping on his temple. “Got ‘em all filed away up here, ready for business.”
The man nodded and pushed the door wide for us, his curious gaze lingering on Brooklyn for a moment before dropping away again as we stepped through.
We strode into a dimly lit room where men in expensive suits were drinking and guffawing together, some of them sitting at small tables, while others lingered close to a platform which I assumed they used to showcase the women they were bidding on.
We made our way deeper into the space, drawing a few interested looks from the people smart enough to sense when a pack of predators entered a room, but mostly going unnoticed as a cloud of overbearing entitlement clogged the air.
“We won’t make our move in here,” Niall said in a low voice as we all gathered around a tall table and Brooklyn hopped up to take a seat on a stool between us. “We just want to pinpoint our mark and follow him out when he leaves. No need for too many witnesses.”
“I’m gonna make him squeal for me like a stuck little piggy – not that I would stick an innocent little piggy but I’d stick him alright, I’d stick him good,” Brooklyn purred, the darkness in her rising to the surface and making me edgy.
“I know ways to make a man hurt for weeks before he succumbs to death, each and every moment of his time filled with unimaginable agony,” Mateo said in a low voice. “I could teach you, mi sol.”
Brooklyn moaned low in the back of her throat and all three of us shifted closer to her on instinct.
“I know how to keep them alive for months on end, don’t I, el burro?” Niall shot at him but Mateo just scoffed.
“Keeping a prisoner alive indefinitely is easy. I’m talking about cutting pieces from a person hour after hour, day after day and refusing them the respite of death until the very end. Not locking someone in your basement and forgetting to torture them half the time.”
“If you want me to torture you some more then you only have to say the word, arsehole,” Niall shot back. “You’re yet to tell me where you hid all of that lovely treasure you stole from your boss and I haven’t forgotten about it.”
They continued to argue in low tones, and I blocked them out, my eyes drifting over the men who were moving about the room, laughing and slapping each other on the back. There were a couple of women here too, but it was by far a male dominated room.
Brooklyn sucked in a breath suddenly and I snapped my head her way, my body so in tune with hers that I was tensing for violence without even understanding the threat yet.
“What?” I asked her, scanning the crowd again and a deep frown formed on her brow.
“That man with the boot polish hair dye,” she growled in a low tone.
“He’s no Castillo,” Mateo muttered, noticing our conversation and looking over at him too.
“No,” she agreed. “He’s not my armadillo. But he did try to buy me. I remember his face. I marked him for death.”
Niall cursed and looked around briefly, muttering something to the others about needing to lay eyes on Castillo before we did anything rash, but his words slipped away like water through a crack on the inside of my skull as I fixated on the look of pain and hatred painted across my Rook’s face.