Page 52 of King of the Cage

He turned to me, and I folded my arms over my chest and nodded tightly. I wasn’t kissing up to Enrico’s brother. I didn’ttrust either of those motherfuckers, especially after digging deeper into Aldo’s connection to The Enclave.

“Is Enrico here tonight?” I asked, already mentally preparing to leave.

Did Aldo know what had happened with his brother? Did he know that the O’Connors had Enrico, and that and Sol and me were involved?

Aldo stared at me, a muscle leaping madly in his jaw, before he forced a smile. “No, I’m afraid he’s out of town. Family business.”

There was no mistaking the dark tinge in his emotionless eyes. He knew.

“So, do you know the artist?” Sol jumped in to change the subject. She had no memory of what had happened with Enrico, apart from what I’d told her, so it wasn’t that surprising that she was open to Aldo making amends. This was exactly what happened when you tried to protect people “for their own good.” It always backfired.

Aldo nodded. “I do, actually. She’s a close friend of mine. We met in our investment club, strangely, but she was harboring a deep creative well that no one knew about, not even her husband. She’s made quite the splash in the art community.”

“It’s a woman! I’d never have guessed,” Sol continued.

I drifted away from the conversation to study another painting.

This one was of a hotel. It seemed to be raining in the painting, and only the lights of the hotel lit up the dark streets around it. The strange thing about it were the faces at the windows. Hundreds of faces, one at each window, staring out.

There was something haunting about the painting.

“That hotel looks familiar,” Sol said, appearing at my shoulder.

Aldo nodded. “Does it? It’s a rather well-kept secret. It belongs to one of the investors in my club. He likes to invite all sorts of interesting guests. S, the artist, always attends. It’s a meeting place of like-minded intellectuals.”

“Sounds like a cult… or, I don’t know, a secret society,” I teased.

The shadow of a smirk passed across Aldo’s lips. Was it smart to be goading this fucker in plain sight? Probably not, but men like Aldo were the worst. Smug men who were so convinced of their own superiority, they thought they were bulletproof. It figured that a man like that would be involved with Z Juice and human branding. Why not? The rest of us were just animals to people like him.

“Hardly anything so exciting as all that,” Aldo said, a beat too late. “They’re having one of their events tonight, actually, to celebrate the artist.”

“That sounds amazing,” Sol enthused. She was a sucker for exclusive things.

“It gets a little wild, I can’t lie.” Aldo smirked mysteriously.

Sol was caught like a fish on a hook. “Wild in what way?”

“In every way.”

“A wild after-party for someone like you sounds like bad PR,” I pointed out. “Aren’t you scared of making the tabloids?”

“Guests are mostly part of the investment club and know how to be discreet. We’re talking about some of the richest people in the city. Privacy is taken very seriously.”

“How fun. It sounds about as wild as doing my tax return early.”

Aldo turned his dark eyes to me. There was something off about his smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. It was as fake as his smooth political persona.

“Not at all. You should both come, if you’d like to see firsthand.”

“Really! But we can’t invest… I mean, my papa handles all that stuff,” Sol said.

I watched Aldo, and he watched me right back. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two stiff invitation cards.

“That’s not a problem. You can be my plus-ones. Full membership is a complicated process. But the party really is my highlight of the year. You should both consider coming.”

“I’m busy,” I blurted at the same time as Sol spoke.

“We will!” She elbowed me hard in the side. “We’ll talk it over.”

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