Page 33 of Phantom Mine

Weirdly enough, Guido seems to despise Matteo. Anytime he’s mentioned, Guido sneers and glares my way.

A voice in my head whispers at me to focus on Rocco and I choose to listen to it. Even though I’ve been warned to stay away from Matteo by no less than four people, it’s his brother’s office that I decide to investigate first.

I don one of my dance outfits, a black lace bodysuit with cutouts that start beneath my waist and wrap around my back, so that if I’m caught, I can just play dumb and say I got lost on my way to one of the VIP rooms.

Thanks to the couple of weeks I spent familiarizing myself with the club, I’m now proficient at moving about it without drawing suspicion to myself. Using the back hallways, I slink in the shadows and avoid the high traffic areas until I reach the door to Rocco’s office.

I grab the handle and press, but the door doesn’t budge.

Mierda.

Naively, I hadn’t accounted for it being locked. I should have known better. Throwing an anxious look over my shoulder, I kneel in front of the lock and examine it. It’s just a basic tumbler lock and not one with a complex mechanism. It would be relatively easy to open if I had tools on me.

With my heart in my throat, I reach for one of the bobby pins in my hair. Closing my lips around one end, I pull it open with my fingers and bend it into an L shape. I grab another and flatten it, then I jimmy them both into the lock and start to feel for the pins, raising them one at a time in a painstakingly slow process. My hand slips just as I go to lift the last one. Muttering a curse under my breath, I go back to work when footsteps sound down the hall, approaching quickly.

My body freezes in terror, my knees stuck in their positions like they’ve been welded to the floor. It takes near superhumaneffort to force myself to move. The footsteps get closer and sweat beads at my temples.

I can’t fail before I’ve even started.

The last pin slots into place, sounding my deliverance with a softclick. My entire body sags in relief when the door opens. I crawl stealthily inside and shut the door quietly just in time to hear the footsteps pass by.

A quiet, somewhat hysterical laugh bubbles out of me.

I did it.

It’s my first win.

My heart pounds loudly in my ears, my vision blurry. I stay on the floor with my back against the wall for a few minutes, working to calm the panic inside me as I examine his office.

It’s very large and masculine in a way that screams ‘I have a small penis’. A giant painting that I assume is a self-portrait hangs on one wall. There’s an entertainment area to the right with a couch opposite two chairs separated by a coffee table.

In the middle of the room is a large metallic desk with a Rodin-like bust of the same man from the painting and a massive computer. Behind it, a cubed display of drawers.

I stand and head for the desk. There’s nothing overtly wrong with the office and yet something about it makes me shiver. There’s bad energy here.

As I start rifling through his desk drawers, I quickly realize that this is going to be incredibly hard. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Short of finding a penned letter confessing to Adriana’s murder with a map pointing exactly to where her body is buried—which seems highly unlikely—I’m looking for anything. Any evidence that points to her having been here. Photos, emails, a weapon,anything. That kind of search requires time and meticulous attention, not rummaging quickly through a stranger’s drawers and hoping I’ll be able to spot when something is incriminating.

Unfortunately, the one thing Idon’thave is time. When I don’t find anything in the drawers, I move to the standing ones behind his desk.

They all open easily, except one.

Leveraging the same bobby pins I used on the office door, I unlock it and pull it open.

It’s full of… Polaroids.

Loose polaroids just haphazardly thrown in a locked drawer.

That same shiver rolls down my spine again.

I reach in and grab one, studying it. It’s a mid-size shot of a girl I don’t recognize. She’s fully clothed, has blond, curly hair and glasses, and nothing is weird or overtly wrong about the photo except that she has an openly terror-stricken look on her face. I can’t put my finger on it, but a tingle at the back of my neck tells me something is very wrong.

Or maybe that was my body’s way of trying to warn me.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

The blood drains from my face. Ice creeps down my back and freezes every muscle in its path until I can’t move. A moment of clarity makes me tuck the photo into one of the cutouts of my bodysuit.

He’s not supposed to be here.

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