Page 78 of Cruel Riches

The room beyond the door was pitch black, but that changed when Nate lit a rusted old lantern in the corner.

I half expected to see some sort of sex dungeon with whips and paddles and floggers. But this wasn’t a room for pleasure. It was a room for pain. Cruel, agonizing, vicious pain.

I shuffled forward and blinked, trying to take it all in. It was a large space with cinderblock walls covered in plastic. The floor was covered in plastic too. I could see old brown stains beneath the transparent cellophane.

Blood. Just like the cell I woke in earlier.

Against the wall to my right, a stainless steel cabinet displayed a black knife roll with a range of knives, scalpels, and ice picks sitting on it. A small freezer sat next to it, unplugged and unused for what must’ve been years, judging by its faded, cobwebbed appearance. A rack on the left wall displayed bigger knives, saws, and cleavers.

In the middle of the room was a large wooden table, and next to that was a smaller examination table with stirrups. Chains and shackles hung from the ceiling.

“What is this place?” I asked. My breath caught in my throat as I spoke, making my words sound husky.

Nate ignored my question and ran a hand over the edge of the black fabric that the knives and scalpels were resting on. “Some of the stuff here is mine. The rest was already here, though.”

“Why?” I kept looking around, not knowing what to make of the place.

“You see the blood on the walls?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“This was where your dad killed his victims,” he said, upper lip curling with disgust. “And the cells along the way, including yours—that’s where he kept them before he killed them.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “They never found the Butcher’s killing spot.”

“No. But I did.” Nate’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been exploring this place for years.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police if you were so sure you’d found it?”

One shoulder went up in a shrug. “What’s the point? They caught the guy ten years ago, and he’s dead. Why open old wounds for everyone on the island by creating a big media sensation about the discovery of his killing grounds?” he asked. “You know that’s exactly what would happen.”

“I guess so.” I pursed my lips and looked around again. “So where are we?”

“You’ve heard of the Avalon tunnels, right?”

I nodded. They were quite famous—a warren of tunnels, galleries and passages spreading all over the island. They dated back to the early settlement period, and some of the bigger ones up in the city were a common spot for tourists and adventurers to trek through when it was too cold to hike outside.

I’d never been in any of them before, but Sascha once went on a date with a guy who showed them to her. When she told me how cool they were afterwards, we’d planned to go exploring in them together one day.

We might never get the chance to do that now.

My stomach lurched at the thought.

“What do you know about them?” Nate asked.

“I know they’re huge, and they go all over the island,” I said, brows furrowing. “I also know a lot of them were used by bootleggers during Prohibition. And a lot of the ones that ran onto private properties got blocked off from the main tunnels and turned into private bunkers during the second world war, in case the island got bombed.”

Nate smirked. “So you know the basics, then. I bet you don’t know what happened to the main Arcadia Bay tunnels, do you?”

“No, but I’m guessing that’s where we are,” I said, gesturing at the dank space around us.

“Yeah. They used the tunnels up in the city for all the liquor smuggling during Prohibition, but they had another problem aside from distribution. Snitches.” He ran a hand along the plastic-coated wall as he paced around the room. “All those cells along the tunnels here—they were originally just open rooms and alcoves. But during Prohibition, the smugglers came and added the bars in. Anyone who was deemed a threat to the industry was thrown in one of those cells to rot.”

“What a lovely story,” I muttered, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Nate pulled me out of the room and padlocked the door behind us, leaving me shivering in the dark, damp passage outside. Then he started pushing me back through the tunnels in the direction we originally came from.

“This part of the tunnels is right under Blackthorne,” he said. “I bet you had no idea about that, huh?”

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