Page 40 of The Road to Ruined

"I'm not going to sit in a dark car with a mask on like a douchebag."

He scoffs. "We're almost there. Put it on."

"You're smiling. I can hear it." I pull the mask over my face and then pull the hood over my head. "I've heard you laugh, I've heard you smile…you're at least a little bit human under there."

"Not in the way you'd like me to be," he says.

"I don't like you at all."

"Yeah, you do. It's not your fault, though. No one ever taught you any better."

"You're wrong," I tell him, but he only shrugs.

I turn back toward the window, finally spotting light on a distant hill. We head straight toward it, turning off onto a dirt road, and end up at a massive, off-grid compound. A wrought iron gate with a watchtower opens just as Bone Saw pulls the car up. Then, we head up a long, winding driveway to the main structure.

"We're going around back," he says, pulling the car to a stop. I exit the vehicle and follow him around the back of the complex to a staircase leading to a single door on a subterranean level of the home. Another masked thing waits at the bottom.

"How am I going to get in?" I ask as we descend the staircase. "Won't someone question the plus one?"

"You were invited, Teagan," he says. "The people who are important wanted you here. That's the only way in."

The things don't speak to each other, but the one waiting by the door scans Bone Saw's retinas and then my own through the mask before opening the door.

More masked things walk around the open lower level of the structure. It's a dark, unfinished basement, barely lit with a few red lights on the walls. One corner of the room is filled with wooden crates; it looks like someone is counting or checking in whatever they are. On the other side of the room, there are two bodies, one male and one female, naked and hanging by their feet. They're attached to some mechanisms I've never seen before, but they seem to be…

"Are they draining them?" I ask.

"Yes. The blood has to come from somewhere, right? Do you have a problem with that? Your boyfriend used to bathe in it."

"I'm aware that I should have a problem with it," I tell him. "But no. I don't."

"Good girl," he says. "Just follow me, Teagan. Do what I do."

"Well, what are we doing?"

"Tonight…we watch. I want to show you some things."

I follow him up a staircase, and we linger in a doorway leading to a grand, open ballroom. It's similar to the one in the house I was taken to in Portland, but the decor here is modern and sleek, whereas the other was more old-world opulence. Just like at the other house, there's a marble slab with a reservoir beneath it near the front of the room, but there's no body on it. The room fills with wealthy individuals in suits and gowns, still trickling in from a door on the opposite side. Servers move through the crowd with drinks, blood, or a mix of the two—I can't be sure.

"What is this?" I ask. "Declan and Luca brought me to a party like this once."

"They did," he says. "But they were late. See that couple over there by the Monet?"

I think I spot the couple he's referring to. There's a woman, maybe a couple of years older than me, with short dark hair, full lips and hips. She's wearing a short, thin red dress that hugs every curve and no bra, her nipples hard visible points through the fabric. The man she's with is older, maybe forty-five or fifty, tall and thin with salt-and-pepper hair and square glasses. He looks familiar; I think he may have been in one of the photos the FBI showed me in Wyoming.

"The girl with the cake and her sugar daddy? Yeah, I see them."

"They need to go," he says. "You're going to help us kill them. Not tonight—tonight, you're just here to watch."

"Why?"

"They broke the rules."

"Which rules?"

"He took two phone calls from the FBI this week. They have something on him, which means he's likely planning to turn on The Order in an attempt to save himself. He should have known they'd find out—that they know everything the FBI has and whatthey're doing. But…that's the problem with people like this. And Declan De Rossi."

"What is?"

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