Page 90 of Red Dreams

She nods, pressing into my side.

“There's one more thing you need to do,” I tell Cassie as she observes these people in her usual nonplussed fashion. “These fathers and daughters you imprisoned. It's time to let them go.”

Cassie’s eyes flash. “Why? They’re leverage. Insurance.”

“No, they're innocents that you tortured to manipulate me and teach the Oracle’s algorithm. If you truly want to step out of Morelli's shadow, this is how you do it. Prove that you can let go of his methods, not just his tech.”

“But they’ve seen our faces. They could report us.” Cassie taps a finger against her chin in thought. “I should just kill them.”

Cassie’s benign tone causes the girl nearest us to mewl and scramble back, clutching her knees to her chest.

I fix Cassie with a hard stare. “No. You will not. They will each be paid handsomely for their silence. And I have connections in the police force and FBI who will bury any attempt to report us.”

Cassie regards me for a long moment. With a sigh, she reaches for the key ring. “Fine. But if this bites us in the ass later, remember it was your call.”

She moves to the first cage, unlocking it with a metallic click. “You're free to go. Courtesy of the Scythe's bleeding heart.”

The father inside stumbles out, blinking rapidly in the dim light. He reaches a trembling hand toward his daughter in the adjacent cell.

Cassie makes quick work of the other locks, the prisoners emerging one by one. They huddle together, clinging to each other like lifelines in a storm-tossed sea.

I turn to address them. “You're free to go. But let me make one thing abundantly clear. If any of you breathes a word of what happened here, I will find you. And I promise, my methods will make you yearn for the mercy of Cassie's cages. Understood?”

A chorus of frantic nods and whispered assents meets my words. I gesture for them to leave through a back exit, and they scramble toward it, the echoes of their retreating footsteps soon swallowed by the damp air.

One of the fathers, a grizzled man with a beard flecked in gray, pauses at the threshold. He looks back at Layla, his gaze lingering on the tattoo at her throat.

A growl builds in my chest, and I step forward, placing a possessive hand on Layla's shoulder and grazing the handle of my knife with my other hand.

The man's eyes snap to mine, and he blanches at the lethal promise in my gaze. He quickly turns and disappears into the dark tunnel, his footsteps fading.

“I don't like the way he looked at you,” I mutter, pulling Layla flush against me. She tilts her head back, a teasing glint in her eyes despite our macabre environment.

“I'm yours, Kaden. Thoroughly and completely. No wayward glance from a broken man will ever change that.”

The truth of her words sinks into my marrow, and I seal my lips against hers. She opens for me, our tongues entwining with the rhythm of desire and dominance.

I stop kissing her long enough to say against her lips, “You've come a long way from the frightened girl in the lighthouse. You're a force to be reckoned with now.”

A smile tugs at her lips. “I had a good teacher.”

Cassie audibly gags, but there’s less venom in her response to our intimacy.

“If you two are quite finished, I need a drink. Or five,” she says.

She stalks past us, heading back up into the main level of the club. Layla and I follow, my hand resting on the small of her back.

We emerge out of the muted anguish of the dungeon to the pulsing vibrancy of the nightclub.

Gothic arches of weathered driftwood entwine above the dance floor, their keystones carved into snarling sea monsters. Antique ship lanterns in the ceiling cast a seductive glow. The bar is carved from the bow of an old schooner, its sails repurposed into artful canopies. Bartenders in tight black shirts and nautical tattoos slide drinks across the polished surface to the patrons perched on salvaged boat seats, and sheer curtains billow in an artificial breeze, giving the impression of sails whipped by a tempestuous wind.

It’s a far cry from when I broke into it and was surrounded by Morelli’s men, laying waste to them on the very floor so many of Greycliff’s residents are now gyrating on.

Cassie bellies up to the bar, signaling for a whiskey, neat. She tosses it back in one fluid motion, the amber liquid catching the light before disappearing down her throat. She orders another, and I watch as she tries to drown whatever feelings were stirred up in the dungeon below.

“Should we be worried?” Layla asks, nodding toward Cassie as she throws back a third drink.

I shake my head. “She needs to numb herself for a bit. At her age, facing the atrocities she committed, even if they were under Morelli's influence, isn't easy.”

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