Chapter 52
CRAZY BITCH
Later Evening Day 26
Jess skipped ahead of all the waiting women in line, none of them protesting when they looked at her. She locked the bathroom door and turned to me.
I wretched into the sink, a bright green liquid like my drink. The food we had ordered never arrived and I had too much alcohol on an empty stomach.
Jess held my frizzy hair back and sighed. "I need your help, Ruby."
I nodded but I wasn't sure she could tell. My stomach emptied and I rinsed my mouth out with water from the sink faucet. I inhaled several deep cleansing breaths and my body was back to a tolerable level of intoxication. I'd still remember all this tomorrow. I looked at Jess in the mirror.
"You're not going to do it willingly though." Her bloody tears pooled in her bottom eyelids but didn't fall.
"Then it will backfire." I shrugged.
She nodded and wiped the tears gingerly. She fixed her lipstick, a bright red like blood and I flashed back to holding the deputy's ears in my hands. Ripping them from his head as he tried to attack Jess, Cherry, and myself. The camera that live-streamed the entire thing. The bright red blood that dried all over my hands. My dress.
"That's the point." The lights flickered and dimmed to a sickly green. Jess flashed from a grisly decaying skeleton, flesh falling from her in clumps with smacks to the floor, to the beautiful young woman I had known at the Lodge.
I swallowed back my scream as the lights went dark.
The door swung open and bounced off the wall before slamming shut. Leaving me alone in the restroom.
The lights turned on too bright and the door was pulled open by a tiny but stern-looking woman, her dark hair pulled back into a slick ponytail. She had multiple weapons on her. Two swords behind her shoulders. A leather hip belt with at least two guns and various sizes of knives hung around her waist. A leather pocket strapped around her thigh which held only the goddesses knew what.
I didn't want to be on this woman's bad side.
"Mr. Lopez would like to speak with you." Her tone gave no room to argue.
I nodded and wiped my mouth and hands with a paper towel. Throwing it in the trash before I followed her down a thin hallway away from the crowded club. I sobered more and more as we went deeper under Caballero's which meant no windows. I tried not to think about it.
I opened my mind to find Keiran being escorted by several of Jonny's men on their way to the club. Jonny and his brother, Diego, ahead of them and already on their way.
I relayed my location to him quickly, along with my drunkenness.
Alejandro sat behind a stately redwood desk as I entered his office. He stood and poured a drink from a small matching bar cart and lifted the glass to me in offering.
I shook my head. "No thanks, I've had enough for the night."
He shot the amber liquid back and placed the glass down. He walked over to me and studied my face. "I meant what I said earlier."
At first, I was confused but remembered on the dance floor. "You'd pay that much money for me, just to let me go?" I didn't believe him.
He smirked. "Humans shouldn't be for sale."
I laughed. "Yet, there you were, buying them. Like that was your first time at Elenora's people auction." I scoffed.
He chuckled. "I'm not here to convince you."