If he were dressing for a business meeting or a media event, Nate would undoubtedly have skipped the bland red tie and pocket square that came with the outfit, but tonight was not the time to show his usual attitude, so he put on the tie and stuffed the pocket square into its proper place, then examined himself in the bathroom mirror. Except for the imperfect fit of the suit, he wouldn’t have looked out of place stepping into a boardroom. Not at all the look he’d have chosen when going to meet a Basement gang lord who was named after his favorite torture device.
Nate stopped dead in his tracks when he stepped out of the bathroom and got a look at the girls, who were waiting in the hallway for him. Nadia looked like her old, elegant self in a conservative black cocktail dress accented with red lace, though she wore no makeup, and her hair was styled in a simple bun that cried out for a dose of hair spray.
Agnes, however, looked like a different person in a look-at-me red dress that accented her figure perfectly. The skirt’s slit revealed a generous glimpse of thigh, and the red heels made her legs look long and sexy. The mousy brown hair with baby blue highlights detracted slightly from the look, as did her guarded, closed-off body language. This was not her usual camouflage attire, and she wasn’t exactly wearing it with confidence.
“You look amazing,” he told her, triggering one of her easy blushes.
“Hot enough to burn,” Shrimp agreed, emerging from the bedroom at the end of the hall. His suit was a tailored pinstripe, under which he was wearing a red tuxedo shirt that was a good match to Agnes’s dress. Nate wondered if that was by accident or by design.
Agnes was no good at taking compliments—Nate had the impression she hadn’t received a whole lot of them during her life. Instead of answering, she just stood there and blushed, her gaze fixed on the floor. He wanted to say something to put her at ease—not that he’d ever had much success with that before—but Shrimp brushed by him before he could think of anything.
“Let’s not keep Maiden waiting,” Shrimp said, holding out his elbow to Agnes. Nate wondered if he practiced these gentlemanly manners with the women of Red Death, or whether this was something special for Agnes. He suspected the latter.
Nate held his elbow out for Nadia, and together they followed Shrimp and Agnes to the door, where Dante and Bishop were waiting to see them off.
“Be good,” Bishop reminded him, only half joking.
Nate wished everyone would stop treating him like some out-of-control hothead determined to run his mouth no matter what the consequences. He understood why they saw him that way, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting. And it sure as hell got under his skin that no one seemed to have noticed how much he had changed. He would never be as quiet as Agnes or as cautious as Nadia, but he wasn’t about to put everyone in danger by antagonizing Maiden.
They took the stairs to the top floor, because no one wanted to risk having a power outage while they were in the elevator.
As soon as they stepped out of the stairwell, it was obvious that Maiden had done a massive renovation of the whole floor. The kind of renovation that required knocking down walls and ripping out appliances and wiring.
The stairwell opened out into what in an office building Nate would have called a reception area. The reception here, however, was far from warm and friendly. Four guards with machine guns and body armor were stationed around the room, and their first reaction when the door had opened was to train their guns on it. Shrimp took it completely in stride, no doubt used to the reception, and the machine guns lowered.
“This way,” he prompted, giving Agnes’s arm a little tug when she initially stayed rooted to the floor. Unlike Nate and Nadia, this was almost certainly the first time she’d had a gun pointed at her, and Nate couldn’t blame her for being unsettled.
Shrimp led them toward a long hallway, and Agnes balked again. Nate and Nadia moved forward, and that was when Nate saw the reason for Agnes’s hesitation.
Lining the hallway on both sides was a grisly array of coffin-like metal cases, their insides bristling with spikes. The iron maidens for which Maiden was named. Some were rusted, corroded antiques, and some were polished and shiny as if made yesterday, but all of them had vicious teeth. A couple of them had teeth so long that it was obviously impossible for anyone to survive if they were closed, but most were short enough that it seemed possible their victims could survive and suffer for a long time.
“You’re safe with me,” Nate heard Shrimp tell Agnes in a soothing voice, and then the two of them stepped into the hallway.
Nate shared a long look with Nadia. Her hand tightened on his arm, but by silent mutual agreement, they moved forward. The iron maidens had obviously been put there specifically for their intimidation factor. Nate glared at the back of Shrimp’s head.
“He could have warned us,” Nate muttered under his breath to Nadia.
“Yes, he could have,” she agreed with a grim set to her jaw.
Maybe Shrimp wasn’t as nice and easygoing as he seemed. He was a member of the Red Death, after all. Or maybe he just wanted to make absolutely certain they knew how dangerous his brother was.
Nate forced himself to keep moving, even when he noticed what looked suspiciously like dried blood on the spikes of the first iron maiden they passed. And he worked really hard to avoid speculating when they passed one in the middle that was closed.
If the hall of iron maidens was meant to scare the crap out of you, then the spacious living room into which it led was meant to trigger drop-jawed awe. The floor was of red marble, with several marble faux pillars set into the walls. The walls were papered in what looked like raw silk fabric in a warm golden hue that matched the velvet drapes. A marble fireplace big enough to double as a walk-in closet was the focal point of the room, and there were lamps and vases and various knickknacks everywhere—all antique, all gold or crystal or shiny red lacquer. A fussy antique sofa and love seat fronted the fireplace, and when Nate glanced upward, he saw that the edges of the ceiling were covered in gold leaf, and the center contained a bad imitation of the Sistine Chapel painting of God reaching out to Adam.
Perhaps the room succeeded in inspiring awe in Basement-dwellers who were used to small, squalid apartments decorated with Dumpster finds, but Nate had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing. He’d been in the homes of some of the richest people in the entire Corporate States—had in fact grown up in his father’s mansion, which cost more than the gross national product of certain small countries—but he had never seen anything as ridiculously over-the-top as Maiden’s home base. Clearly, being a gang lord paid well, and thanks to the black market—of which Maiden no doubt owned a large portion—any extravagance Maiden might desire was within easy reach.
“Do you like my home?” a voice asked from behind them, and Nate couldn’t help his jerk of surprise.
Maiden obviously had a flair for the dramatic, first parading them through his hall of horrors, then dazzling them with his gaudy eyesore of a living room, then sneaking up on them from behind. If Nate hadn’t learned to contain his temper, he might have lost it right then and there.
Turning around, he saw a tall, handsome black man in his thirties wearing a red suit as gaudy as his living room. A huge diamond sparkled in his earlobe, and his tie clasp was a skull and crossbones composed of diamonds and rubies. Several of his fingers sported diamond and/or ruby rings, and his watch sparkled ostentatiously as it poked out from under his cuff. Subtlety was obviously not one of his virtues, and Nate wondered if he ventured out into the streets with all that bling. Then he thought about the iron maidens and wondered who in the Basement would be stupid enough to even think about stealing from him.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Nadia answered.
It should have come out as sarcasm worthy of Nate, and he knew that’s exactly how Nadia meant it, but she had said it in such a breathless tone that Maiden took it as the compliment he’d been expecting and beamed. Nate swallowed hard, reminding
himself of the blood on the spikes in the hallway in hopes it would quell his urge to laugh. He very much doubted Maiden would take that well, especially when he realized what Nate was laughing at.
Maiden approached them with a predatory grace, intelligent eyes looking them each up and down with thinly veiled calculation. He stopped in front of Nate, just a hair closer than was comfortable. Nate didn’t appreciate the invasion of his personal space, but he knew better than to take a step back. Running away from predators was almost never a good thing to do.
“You must be Nathaniel,” Maiden said, holding out his hand to shake. “I am the Maiden.”
Nate knew he was about to be subjected to a crushing handshake, the kind of handshake meant to establish dominance, but he took Maiden’s hand anyway. He wondered if he should insist that Maiden call him Ghost, since that was his Basement name. Was Maiden calling him by his real name as a subtle put-down, suggesting he considered Nate a child? Or was it just another affectation, a lowlife trying to act like he had genteel Executive manners and was greeting an equal?
“Pleased to meet you,” Nate lied, then tried to keep his face from giving anything away when Maiden gave him the expected vise-grip squeeze. He decided against making an issue of his name.
“Yes, a pleasure,” Maiden said, finally letting go of Nate’s hand. Nate wondered if he’d be able to create replicas of Maiden’s rings from the impressions they’d left in his flesh.
Maiden turned his oily smile to Nadia, who kept her right hand firmly in the crook of Nate’s elbow.
“And Nadia,” Maiden said. “You are even more lovely in person than you are on television.”
“You’re too kind,” she replied with a modest smile, once again smoothly hiding the sarcasm behind her words. Nate was going to end up with strained abdominal muscles from trying to restrain his urge to laugh. Nadia was treating Maiden with just the kind of barbed courtesy she used to reserve for the Terrible Trio. And Maiden apparently thought that not using contractions made him sound upper class.
Maiden raised an eyebrow when he saw that not only was Agnes’s hand tucked into Shrimp’s elbow, but Shrimp had also covered her hand with his own as if to make sure Maiden didn’t shake it. Or, worse, try to kiss it. Maiden was pretentious enough that Nate wouldn’t put it past him.
“And our esteemed visitor from Synchrony,” Maiden said, inclining his head regally.
Agnes mirrored his gesture but kept her mouth shut. Over the course of the past week, she had seemed to be coming out of her shell, relaxing as she adjusted to the relief of being out of the public eye, but it seemed now all of her defenses had sprung back up.
“Your timing is impeccable,” Maiden said. “Dinner is almost ready. Please join me.”
He waved his hand toward an arched doorway at the far side of the room, and they obediently filed into a dining room every bit as overdone as the living room, complete with a crystal chandelier, a fancy flower arrangement, a candelabra, and antique silver utensils. Two places were set on each side of the table, with one place at the head and one place at the foot. Nate wondered if someone else would be joining them. He automatically pulled back Nadia’s chair, and the two of them shared another look as they sat. For all of Maiden’s fancy fake manners, he didn’t know which side of the plate the forks were supposed to go on.
Maiden stood behind his chair at the head of the table, looking over the tableau with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. Maybe he thought this was how Executives dined every night. Admittedly, there had been many a formal dinner in Nate’s past, but rarely with such a small group. Formal dinners were nine-tenths theater, and what good was theater without a large and appreciative audience?
Maiden still didn’t sit down, and Nate wondered what he was waiting for. Until he heard the click of high heels approaching from the far hall. Maiden stood up a little straighter. Preening?
A proper Executive man would rise to his feet to greet a woman, but Nate noticed Shrimp remained seated. Eschewing Executive manners even in this false setting made Nate squirm, but he judged that following Shrimp’s lead would be the wiser move, so he resisted the urge to push back his chair.
The woman who soon appeared in the doorway was completely stunning, the kind of woman he’d expect to see gracing the covers of fashion magazines. Tall, slender, with honey-colored skin and lustrous blue-black hair, she wore a low-cut red silk gown that clung enticingly to her every curve. Maiden smiled, but the expression held too much lust and greed to be anything resembling pleasant.
“Turn around,” he said in a low purr. “Let us see the whole package.”
The woman raised her chin and did as she was told, revealing that the dress was completely backless, dipping so low it showed the first swell of her butt and clinging so tightly you could see every contour of the rest. The tiny spaghetti straps were barely holding the front of the dress up, and one wrong move would have her flashing the room. As stunning as she was, she didn’t exactly seem comfortable in the outfit, nor did she seem to be looking forward to a wonderful dinner. In fact, she looked like she’d rather be anywhere else, and she watched Maiden with wary eyes.
“Beautiful,” Maiden declared with a satisfied, possessive sigh. “This is my girl, Kitty,” he said to no one in particular, and that was the only introduction he made. Nate had the impression Maiden considered Kitty just one more beautiful object to show off, and it made him angry on the girl’s behalf.
Kitty took her place at the foot of the table, moving gingerly and sitting up painfully straight in order to keep the dress in place. When she sat, Nate noticed the bands of tattoos that circled her wrists and her throat. Her skin was just dark enough—and her dress just distracting enough—that he hadn’t at first seen the lines of red skull and crossbones that marked her in a disturbingly permanent way as one of the Red Death.
Not long after Kitty entered the room, another woman appeared, but this one was dressed in a plain white shirt tucked into a microscopic miniskirt that revealed a set of red garters. Maiden looked her up and down with evident appreciation, the look in his eyes making Nate want to squirm in his seat.
The woman carried a bottle of wine, and said not a word as she poured for each of them in turn. It was red wine, and she was pouring it into glasses meant for white—another false note in Maiden’s attempt to ape a formal dinner. Nate wondered why he was bothering with the charade. Maybe he expected them to be awed by the grandeur, but you’d think if that had been his aim he’d have done a little research to get the details right. And the parade of beautiful women who were obviously scared of him overshadowed any other impression he wished to make.
“Has my little brother been taking good care of you?” Maiden asked, swirling his ruby red wine around in its narrow white-wine glass.
“He’s been great,” Nadia answered for them. Short, but sweet.
“I am glad to hear that,” Maiden said. He sniffed his wine, then swirled it around a little more.
Nate had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the pretension. He reached for his own glass and took a sip without any of the swirling and sniffing. The sharp look Maiden gave him said he’d sensed the disrespect. Under the table, Nadia stepped on his foot in warning.
Maiden put his glass down without having tasted the wine. “You should know I have certain … concerns about hosting you in my territory.”
Another woman, dressed in the same miniskirt-and-garters outfit as the last, entered the room with a tray of salad plates. She, too, bore the tattoos. She also bore a black eye and had angry red ligature marks marring the bands on her wrists. It was now abundantly clear to Nate why Kurt had been concerned about the girls’ safety around Maiden. He had the nasty feeling those tattoos weren’t meant to be decorative, that they were Maiden’s version of a brand, marking those women as belonging to him.
Nate’s temper stirred, but he tamped it down. Now was not the time to play the heroic defender of women, especially not given Maiden’s words.
&nb
sp; “I was under the impression Angel is paying you well enough to overlook those concerns,” Nate said in an even tone of voice.
Maiden smirked and indicated the room with a sweep of his hand. “Does it look to you like I need the money?”
“No,” Nate admitted, “but presumably you want the money, or you wouldn’t have agreed to take us in the first place.”
“True. But the price on your head keeps going up. Perhaps I can reduce my risk and maximize my profit by turning you in.”
The lights suddenly went out, and Maiden uttered a foul curse. Thanks to the candles, it wasn’t completely dark in the room, and Nate could see the way Kitty shrank in on herself in the face of Maiden’s anger. Considering how banged up the “waitress” had been, Nate couldn’t blame her. Maiden seemed like the kind of man who always looked for an outlet for his anger, even if that outlet was an innocent bystander.
“You don’t want to turn us in,” Nadia said smoothly, as if she hadn’t even noticed the lights going out—or Maiden’s outburst.
Maiden turned to her and cocked his head. “Oh no?”
“No. Right now, Dorothy has no idea where we are or who has us. If you turn us in for the reward, she’ll know we were with you. She’s after us because we know secrets and she’s afraid we’ll tell people. If she finds out you have us, she’ll assume we’ve told you our secrets and she’ll come after you.”
Maiden laughed. “Am I supposed to believe that?”
Nate found it interesting that Maiden hadn’t asked what the big secret was. Did he not care? Or did he already know? It was possible Angel could have told him when she arranged this whole thing, though she hardly seemed the type to volunteer information.
“You wouldn’t be where you are if you weren’t smart,” Nadia said. “Tell me, when an offer sounds too good to be true, is it a good idea to take it?”