Chapter 15

15

Well, that had not gone according to plan.

Not the sex and not his cruel comments afterward. It was a lie about the cameras recording. He always turned the cameras off whenever he was with her.

And gods knew he thought about taking her virginity. Thought about it all damn week and for the months before. But this last week, fuck, every time he teased and tasted her, every time his cock grew painful in his pants, all he could think about was finally taking her and making her his.

But he was training her and training meant discipline. Patience. Making her crave him and pleasing him above all else.

He just hadn’t expected— He never could have prepared himself for?—

He hadn’t even worn a condom. And if he had it to do again, he would have done it the same way. She’d gotten the shot almost a month ago and gods, feeling her virgin pussy, nothing between them, with how she clenched like a vise around him?—

He scrubbed a hand down his face and watched her on the monitor even though he was disgusted at himself for doing it. Every second he wasn’t in her presence, he found himself glued to this damn screen. She was supposed to be obsessed with him, not the other way around.

He was about to shove his laptop screen shut when he saw her back start to shake.

Fuck. She was crying.

She looked so tiny in the big bed.

He dragged a hand through his hair, remembering every moment of when she’d taken him into her body, so hot and tight—gods, she’d gripped him like a vise—eyes wide, without guile?—

Like an innocent. She was a virgin. He’d known she was, but knowing and experiencing were two different things.

And when her orgasm had hit, milking his climax out of him at the same time, she’d looked at him like he was a god himself, like she’d worship at his feet forever and give him her submission along with her whole self and her soul, too.

The problem was, he was terrified he might have been looking at her the same way.

So he’d shut it down and reminded them both of who they were.

And now she was crying.

Hades wanted to hit something. She wasn’t playing by the rules. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. None of this was going according to plan.

His phone rang once, loudly in the otherwise silent room. Hades snatched it out of his pocket, never more glad for the distraction.

“What?” Hades barked.

“We got a situation,” Charon’s voice rumbled.

“Don’t tell me I gotta come down.”

“You gotta come down.” Charon confirmed.

He gave a sharp nod even though Charon couldn’t see him. Maybe getting out of here was exactly what he needed. He needed to get his head together, that was for damn sure.

“Be there in twenty.” Hades hung up and stood. He went to his bedroom and dressed in quick, practiced movements.

He meant to leave right then and there. But, without fully intending to, his feet took him to Persephone’s door.

Leave. You only did what had to be done. She’s the enemy.

He stood frozen for several more moments. And then he quietly opened the door.

Persephone was lying down now and he walked to the bed. He didn’t know what he meant to say when he got close, but then he saw it didn’t matter. She’d cried herself to sleep.

She was beautiful in repose, but then she was beautiful no matter what she was doing. Sleep didn’t erase the furrow of distress on her brow. Was she dreaming of him?

His eyes squeezed shut. Sentimental idiot.

Still, he couldn’t leave without giving her something. She’d be sore when she woke. Even though it had been her first time, he hadn’t taken it easy on her. The least he could do was give her the means to take a bath in peace.

He ran a hand gently down her calf and when she didn’t wake, he undid the ankle cuff and freed her from the bed post.

“Sleep well, wife,” he murmured. She didn’t so much as twitch.

Without another word, he turned and flipped the lock he’d had installed outside her door as he left. Then he strode for the front door and soon he was in his Bentley, his driver speeding toward the Styx.

No, tonight had not gone according to plan.

But nothing with Persephone ever had. She was never supposed to show up in his office that night, bedraggled and beautiful. She was never supposed to flash him that trusting, adoring smile afterward, day after day after day.

He’d made a new plan, of course. Marrying Demeter’s daughter had struck him as an even better means of revenge than the simple kidnap and ransom he’d initially intended.

It all served the same purpose: to draw the Titans out into the open and make them pay for their crimes. Persephone’s father had been the one holding the knife, but his brothers had been there, too.

Hades had waited a long time for his vengeance, but he would have it now.

None of the remaining Titan brothers had children. Persephone was the only heir. Demeter would go to the brothers. She had no choice, no power on her own.

And if he could make her suffer in the meantime, imagining the horrors he’d visit upon her daughter? All the better.

But there was still no sign or word from any of them.

And today he’d crossed a line he didn’t know how to come back from.

Innocents ought to be spared.

Hades lived his life by a code and that was its bedrock. He mired himself neck deep in shit doing what had to be done because at least when he was in charge, he could make sure that only the guilty paid.

But it was never meant to touch the innocent.

Like his sister.

Chiara was beautiful. Delicate and pale, her head in the clouds all the time, she’d never seemed to fully inhabit the same grimy reality as the rest of the world.

And that was as it ought to have been.

What should never have been was finding her bleeding out on a dirty mattress in a filthy crack house where the Titan brothers had taken and discarded her.

His parent’s death, he’d understood. His father had started as a lowly immigrant shopkeeper, and built an empire. Vito Ubeli had faced injustices and fought in the face of it, and built an army to protect the weak. That didn’t mean he wasn’t brutal, and one day found death at the hands of an enemy he’d crushed. And when he’d died, his son Hades was meant to assume control.

But Hades was only fifteen at the time and he’d waited, thinking someone more qualified would take the lead in his stead. In another year’s time, his sister was dead. He’d never forgotten the lesson: strike first and strike fast, and seize any power to be had.

He was a necessary evil to hold back the chaos.

He watched the city lights fly by as they drove. East of the city, the streets grew narrow together. Hades had his driver stop at an alleyway too small to fit a car into.

“Cover me,” Hades said, after scanning every corner of the intersection.

“You sure?” The man in black also looked suspiciously down the alley.

A door opened in the side of one building and Charon’s unmistakable silhouette stepped into the pool of light.

“Wait for me. Should be under an hour,” Hades told his soldier, and got out of the car.

“Picked one of our men up tonight, late to a drop,” Charon said. “Went looking for him and found him in a bar on the Westside.”

Charon emphasized the name of the territory between New Olympus and their sister city, Metropolis. Like Hades ran the Underworld of New Olympus, the Titans ran Metropolis. And the Westside was currently a no man’s land where Hades still battled for the same control he enjoyed over the rest of New Olympus.

“Said someone stopped him and took his shipment, so he was hiding out, trying to figure out how to tell us.”

“You believe his story?”

As usual, Charon’s face held no expression. Lesser men cracked after an hour staring into the mask of rich, midnight skin and fathomless eyes. Like staring into the fucking abyss, Roscoe, one of the capos, would say.

“His story doesn’t add up. And there’s been suspicious activity on his route before, which is why we had eyes on him. We think he handed over the goods to our old friends out West, but got them to cash him out and make it look like a hold up.”

“If it’s our old friends,” Hades used the euphemism for the Titans, his blood heating, “then this driver isn’t just passing on goods. He’s feeding them information.”

The two men walked through the warehouse, passing by rows and racks of garments, until they reached the stairs to the basement. The air reeked from the stench of the fabric dyes and detergents. The chemical smells did a good job of masking the scent of blood.

Charon paused at the foot of the stairs. “Got the boys to soften him up a bit. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Alright,” Hades said. “We play it like we did with that last switch—what was his name? The Frenchman.”

“Le Mouchard,” Charon pronounced perfectly, and stood aside, letting Hades lead the way between the dye vats to the cleared space where they’d tied the snitch up.

A few men all in black stood around a wretched figure blindfolded and hanging from the ceiling so that his feet barely brushed the floor.

The Shades were Hades’s soldiers, loyal enforcers who ran his massive empire. They were recruited young off the streets, trained in a central facility, and given every opportunity to rise through the ranks. You can tell a leader by the men who follow him, Hades’s father had told him time and time again.

The Shades all nodded to acknowledge their leader and Hades let himself almost grin, before slipping into character.

“What the fuck?” he shouted, and his voice rang out in the empty space. The snitch, a doughy man in a stained wife beater and khaki shorts that had seen better days, started shivering. Sweat ran down under his blindfold, into his sparse beard. Hades knew the Shades had worked him over a little bit, but left nothing more than painful bruises. His blood had yet to flow.

Hades directed his false anger around the circle of Shades. “I ask you to bring him in for questions and this is what you do?”

“Fuck, sorry, boss.”

“Cut him down. For fuck’s sake. Now.”

The men scrambled to bring a chair and loosen the ropes that held the man suspended from a few exposed ceiling pipes.

“Give him some water.”

Hades sat in the chair that was provided for him and continued to study the traitor.

“Take that fucking thing off.” He nodded at the blindfold. “Gods, this isn’t an interrogation. This how you treat my employees?”

A Shade handed Hades a bottle of water and the boss waited until the blindfold was cut away.

The man before him was breathing heavily, trembling with relief. As soon as the filthy scrap of cloth was gone, Hades leaned forward, filling the snitch’s vision.

“Here.” Hades handed over the water bottle, and rested his forearms on his knees, studying the snitch.

“T–t-thank you,” the traitor said. “I thought I was a dead man.”

“Marty, right?”

The man nodded.

“I’m Hades Ubeli.”

“Yessir, I know you, Mr. Ubeli.” The man took a sloppy swig of water, holding the bottle with shaking hands.

Hades smiled. “I remember you. You took that gun shipment up to Eyrie, when the suits were putting in checkpoints at the weigh-in stations up and down 95.”

“Yeah, yeah, that was me.”

“You took back roads around all the points, and when a local cop stopped you at two am, you told him you were looking for a place that was open so you could take a dump.”

“Right, that’s it,” the man guffawed half-heartedly, his beady eyes darting around the room at the silent circle of Shades.

“That was good thinking.” Hades raised a finger and shook it at Marty. “Real good.”

“Thank you, sir. Can I ask?—”

“No muss, no fuss, no questions asked,” Hades cut him off, and the man fell silent. Bingo, Hades thought. “So what happened to my shipment?”

“Your shipment?”

“Yes, Marty, all the goods that go in the back of your truck belong to me. I’m ultimately responsible for them, so if there’s a break in the chain, I need to know about it.”

“Uh…I told them, sir, and they didn’t believe me. Someone took it.”

“Someone? Do you know who?”

“No, fuck, I’d tell you if I could,” the man’s voice strained with sincerity, and he never broke eye contact. A sure sign he was lying. “They wore masks.”

“Of course,” Hades motioned toward his water bottle. “You need another of those?”

“What?” the man stared at it like it had sprouted from his hand, then took another swig. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”

“Marty, I hope you don’t mind if I keep you here, talk to you some more. See, I have to figure out where this shipment got to, so I can go and retrieve it. I need your help to do that. You willing to help me?”

“Of course, yeah.” The man wiped his mouth, but couldn’t stop his eyes shifting around the stone-faced enforcers surrounding him and Hades.

“It may take a while. You want me to get a message to someone who’s waiting up for you? A woman or something?”

“Uh, no, my wife, she’s used to my late hours.”

“Alright.” Hades glanced around the circle of waiting men. One Shade, looming over Marty’s right shoulder, cracked his knuckles, massaging his beefy hands. With a subtle shake of Hades’s head, the thug backed down.

Interrogation of a suspect couldn’t be done with force. The man would give false information, would say anything to stop the pain. Manipulation led to much more reliable information. Befriend someone, and they will tell you what you want.

Every time.

“Thanks for helping me out, Marty. I appreciate it. And I have a beautiful woman waiting for me in my bed, so I’m sufficiently motivated to finish this.”

A chuckle ran around the circle and even Marty’s features relaxed.

“So here’s the thing that I don’t understand,” Hades leaned forward in his chair. “Why didn’t they kill you? I mean, that’s what I would do. Shoot the driver, take the goods, dump the body.”

Marty mopped the sweat from his forehead. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Lucky break for you, though. Seeing as you’re breathing and not dead in a ditch.”

“Look, I ran over something, drove a mile and the rig, she was pulling weird, so I stopped to check it out. The car came out of nowhere and these men jumped out waving guns. They had me outnumbered.”

“Of course.” Hades closed his eyes. “How many men?”

“Don’t know how many, saw two waving guns, another on the other side, maybe two in the back. They got me out and on my knees and told me not to move. Thank the gods your guys were looking out for me.”

“Why were you on the back road and not the Ape?” Hades mentioned the Appian Way, the main artery out of New Olympus.

“Thought I knew a quicker route.”

“Even though your orders were to meet up at the abandoned rest stop on the Ape? I’m told you went ten miles out of your way for this shortcut.”

The man licked his lips. “Listen, I know it looks bad. I know it looks like I was headed to Metropolis.”

Hades’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t interrupt.

“But I ran over something and I didn’t want the load at risk. If I had an accident, fuck, the suits would be all over it. I didn’t want that to happen so I took a shorter route. I mean, it’s been years and the Titans ain’t done nothing?—”

“The Titans? I thought you said you didn’t know who jumped you.”

“I don’t, I mean, I just guessed. They’re your enemies.”

“That’s also a little out of their way to pick up a shipment, but the road you chose was wooded, secluded. Not a bad place for a meet.”

“Or an ambush.” Marty corrected.

Hades let the silence stretch. Marty nailed his story airtight, maybe was briefed by the Metropolis gang. The Titans were nasty fuckers. If Marty was dealing with them, maybe there were balls of steel under his worn khakis.

Time for a crowbar.

“Listen, Marty, it’s getting late. I’m a man who values my time; I’m sure you’re the same way. So I’m going to tell you: I already sent someone to your house. Charon, you know him? Big guy. Doesn’t say much. His fists do the talking, although he’s a keen hand with a wet saw.”

“Oh gods.” The man’s pasty skin went white.

“They call him the Undertaker. Kinda cliché, I know, but it gets the point across.”

Marty’s mouth flapped open like a dying fish, but no sound came out. Hades kept talking.

“Anyway, Charon’s not a big fan of waiting, either, and he’s standing in your wife’s bedroom now, watching her sleep. In a minute I’m going to text him instructions, and what I tell him depends on what you say.”

“Oh gods, no. Not my Sadie.” The man fell forward out of the chair, onto his knees. “Please, please, don’t hurt her. I’ll tell you.”

Hades nodded. “You have two minutes. Start talking.”

Ten minutes later, Hades walked back out to the stairwell where Charon was waiting.

“Fucking Titans,” Charon growled.

“Send out a patrol. Shipment’s long gone, but maybe we can still track it, be ready next time.”

“Already done. We’re bugging up the rest of the goods. If another trucker flips, we’ll have ears inside.”

Hades rubbed his stubbled jaw as if he could wipe away the night. “This is the second incursion into our territory this month,” he said. A man’s broken cry echoed out from the metal dye vats behind him. “After all these years, they’re finally making their play. It’s got to be because of her.”

Persephone’s mother. She must have gone to the Titans and pleaded her case just like Hades had known she would.

Charon nodded.

“They’re not gonna stop. Not until we end it.” Charon’s midnight skin shone even in the shadows.

“It’s about time.” Marty’s screams rang out again, and Hades headed for the stairs. “Tell them to turn the fans on. Drown out the noise.”