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  Kitty waited a couple of minutes after Dante’s last words before she finally unwound the garrote from around Nadia’s neck.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nadia half expected Dante to leap out of his chair the moment Kitty released her, but unfortunately, he wasn’t faking his paralysis. There was nothing he or Agnes could do to help, and Nadia was in no shape to help herself. So much for the safety they’d bought and paid for.

  Kitty shoved Nadia down onto the couch and kept a wary eye on Dante as she retrieved his gun from the floor. She examined it quickly, then gave a nod of approval and stuffed it into the back of her miniskirt. Nadia wondered how the woman was planning to get her down all those flights of stairs, sneak her past Maiden’s patrolling enforcers, and get her all the way to one of the checkpoints to turn her in. Nadia would be dead weight, and Kitty didn’t look like the athletic type. Nadia wasn’t even sure if the other woman could lift her, much less carry her all that way.

  “You all just sit tight,” Kitty said with a self-satisfied smile. She’d claimed she was sorry about what she was doing, but as far as Nadia could tell, she was enjoying herself quite a bit. Her eyes in the candlelight gleamed with excitement, though the perspiration that beaded on her upper lip said she was still scared under it all. She was far from home free, and she knew it.

  With what felt like a Herculean effort, Nadia managed to turn her head so she could keep an eye on Kitty. She hadn’t drunk much of the wine, and she probably didn’t have a full dose in her system. Unfortunately, the partial dose was more than enough.

  Kitty’s high heels clicked as she stepped off the living room rug and onto the hardwood floor of the entryway. The woman must have at least one accomplice, someone who could help transport Nadia out of the building and out of Red Death territory. Someone who had stayed well out of sight when Nadia was looking through the peephole and was patiently waiting for Kitty to let him in.

  Kitty flung the door open, and Nadia’s heart leapt up into her throat.

  The man standing in the hallway, waiting for Kitty’s signal, the man who was going to turn Nadia in to get the reward money … was Shrimp.

  At least, that was Nadia’s first thought when she saw him standing there. She made a choked sound of protest, but Kitty cried out in terror, her hand reaching frantically for the gun. Her fingers had barely even touched the butt before Shrimp’s fist made solid contact with her face and sent her sprawling to the floor. He followed up with a kick to her belly that sent her curling into fetal position—making it easy for him to bend over and pluck the gun out of her skirt.

  Behind Shrimp was one of Maiden’s enforcers, dressed in body armor and carrying the customary machine gun, and behind him were Nate and Bishop. Kitty was still in no shape to protest when the enforcer hauled her arms behind her back and fastened her wrists together with a zip tie.

  “Stupid bitch,” Shrimp said, shaking his head as he stood over her. “It ever occur to you that I might have my place watched when I leave, just in case someone got any funny ideas about collecting the reward? When you bring an accomplice and he lurks in the stairwell, it’s pretty much a dead giveaway.”

  Kitty moaned pitifully as Maiden’s enforcer hauled her to her feet. Her lip was split and bleeding from Shrimp’s blow, and her hair stuck to the blood and tear tracks on her face. The terror in her eyes struck pity into Nadia’s heart, despite what the woman had just tried to do.

  “Get her upstairs,” Shrimp ordered the enforcer. “I’m sure Maiden’s gonna be real anxious to talk to her.”

  “No!” Kitty screamed. She struggled against the enforcer’s hold, twisting and kicking and shrieking. “Kill me now! Please!”

  “No can do,” Shrimp said, his face a frozen mask. He punched her again, knocking her out and stilling her struggles. The enforcer grunted something that may have been a thank-you and hauled her limp body over his shoulder.

  Shrimp gestured Nate and Bishop inside, closed the door, and locked it after the enforcer carried Kitty away. Nate ran to Nadia’s side and dropped to his knees, his face pale and strained.

  “Nadia!” he cried, reaching out to grab her shoulders and looking even more wild-eyed when she failed to respond. “What’s wrong?” He turned his head to Agnes and Dante, neither of whom had moved, naturally.

  “They’ll be okay,” Bishop said, laying a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Looks like there was something in the wine.” He gestured toward the bottle on the coffee table.

  Shrimp had disappeared into the bathroom and soon returned, carrying a small glass bottle with a dropper lid. “I know what she gave them,” he said, gently lifting Agnes from the floor and putting her on the sofa. He sat beside her and unscrewed the lid of the little bottle. He drew a few drops into the dropper, then positioned its end between Agnes’s lips.

  “This stuff tastes like shit,” he said, “but it’ll counteract the roofie.”

  Agnes made a little sound that probably indicated acceptance, though she made a face when the antidote hit her tongue.

  “Give it a minute,” Shrimp said, then came over to Nadia.

  Nadia didn’t care what the antidote tasted like if it would allow her to move again. Shrimp had to help her open her mouth, and it wasn’t easy to swallow the unbelievably bitter liquid he dropped onto her tongue. Her throat didn’t want to work, and her floppy, out-of-control tongue didn’t help, but eventually she got it down, and Shrimp administered the antidote to Dante. Nate took Nadia’s hand in silent support. The color had not returned to his face, and there was a haunted look in his eyes. She wondered why he and Bishop had arrived at the apartment at the same time as Shrimp. Surely if Shrimp had gotten word about Kitty’s attack, he wouldn’t have stopped by the boys’ apartment to roust them out of bed before coming to the rescue.

  “Should I ask why you just happen to have that antidote sitting around your apartment, or is that one of those questions I won’t like the answer to?” Nate asked Shrimp without turning.

  Nadia winced internally—her face still wasn’t up to creating the expression—at the undertone of hostility in Nate’s voice. She wanted to give him a piece of her mind for yelling at the person who had just saved her life, but of course, she couldn’t.

  Since Nate hadn’t turned his head, he didn’t see the dirty look Shrimp cast his way while he poured the remainder of Kitty’s wine down the drain in the kitchen.

  “I’ve never dosed anyone with Dollbaby, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “That’s Maiden’s kinda thing.”

  Nadia shuddered. Dollbaby. The drug was nasty and disturbing enough without the name.

  “But because it’s his kinda thing, I like to have antidote around. Sometimes I can help out one of his girls when he’s through.”

  If Nadia had ever doubted that they were taking shelter with a monster, she didn’t anymore.

  Shrimp looked almost as unhappy as Nate did when he came back into the living room. “Looks like I took y’all out tonight for nothing,” he said.

  Nadia wished the antidote would hurry up and work so she could ask what he was talking about.

  “Y’all are gonna get to see Maiden in action anyway,” Shrimp continued.

  From the look on his face, Nadia was quite certain that was not going to be a good thing.

  * * *

  “You are not making the girls witness a murder!” Nate told Shrimp the next evening, using the tone of command he was so used to having obeyed in his days as Chairman Heir. He didn’t even care that Nadia was giving him one of her most scathing looks. She probably thought he was being a paternalistic asshole, but that was just too bad.

  “You don’t have any say in it,” Shrimp responded coolly. “Maiden wants you there, so you’ll be there. All of you. The end.”

  Nate hoped that someone would be on his side in this discussion, but so far, he seemed to be the only one arguing. He and Nadia had witnessed two murders already in the past month or so, and he would happily go the rest of his lif
e without seeing another. In his mind’s eye, he saw his father’s still form, lying on his office floor in a pool of blood as Dorothy gloated. He hadn’t told anyone, not even Kurt, but more than once in the past week he had awakened with the vestiges of a nightmare clawing at the edges of his mind. After seeing how Maiden had punished Handy, Nate knew the “execution” wasn’t going to be quick and neat, and his brain had enough nightmare fodder already.

  “He’s right, Nate,” Kurt said, giving Nate’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Maiden’ll never let us get out of this. He wants to make sure we’re as scared of him as everyone else is, and this’ll do the trick.”

  “Isn’t it enough that we know he’s going to kill them?” Nate asked, but he knew a lost cause when he saw one. Kitty and her accomplice, one of Maiden’s drug dealers, were going to die for their attempt to kidnap Nadia and turn her in. Not, of course, because Maiden was doing his part in protecting Nadia, but because betrayal was a crime punishable by death. Nate supposed the two of them were lucky they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives chained outside with their eyes gone and their fingers bending the wrong way.

  “For what it’s worth, I tried to talk him out of it,” Shrimp said with an apologetic shrug. “Sometimes he listens to me, but not this time. Trust me when I say you hafta go.”

  Nate’s stomach felt queasy. He’d made it sound like he was trying to protect the girls from having to witness the execution, but deep down inside he knew he was more worried about himself. Nadia was made of steel, and Agnes had surprised him so many times that he couldn’t assume she would faint at the sight of blood. His own nerves were much more questionable, and he worried about his ability to control himself. He’d seen people die before, but both times it had been a shocking surprise, over before he could even think to protest or do anything about it. This would be a different story, and he wasn’t sure if he was more likely to puke, or do something stupid because he couldn’t just stand by and watch.

  “How long do we have?” Kurt asked.

  Kitty and her accomplice—Nate didn’t know the guy’s name and didn’t want to—had been in “custody” for almost twenty-four hours, and Nate doubted Maiden was planning to keep them alive much longer.

  He was right.

  “It’s going down at midnight,” Shrimp said.

  Less than an hour. Shrimp had waited until after dinner to tell them, probably hoping not to spoil their appetites. Nate didn’t think he was the only one who’d picked at his food anyway, and right now he regretted doing even that. He wasn’t going to get much in the way of street cred if he puked in front of everyone.

  * * *

  Nate had expected the “executions” to be ugly—as, he suspected, had everyone else—but it was still a shock to the system when he and his friends followed Shrimp down the endless stairs onto the street below and saw what fate awaited Nadia’s would-be kidnappers.

  The lights, of course, were still out, and the scene was illuminated by a circle of metal trash barrels serving as torches. In the center of that circle stood an iron maiden, its teeth so long and lethal there was no chance of anyone surviving their bite. Nate didn’t know if this was part of Maiden’s collection—if so, getting it down from the top floor without an elevator had to have been a bitch—or whether it came from some easier-to-access storage area, but it hardly mattered. His stomach rolled, and he closed his eyes, but that didn’t help. In his mind’s eye, he saw the bodies of Dirk Mosely and of his father, smelled the coppery tang of their blood, felt the brain-scrambling shock of recoil that had hit him when he realized they were dead.

  A hand slipped into his, a firm grip on his sweaty palm. He opened his eyes to meet Kurt’s solemn gaze. “You can’t stop this,” Kurt said. “Shit like this happens in Debasement all the time. You’ve seen the ugly side of Exec society and you survived. Now you’ll see the ugliest side of ours, and you’ll survive that, too.”

  Nate swallowed hard, hoping to keep his gorge down. Shit like this happens in Debasement all the time. Kurt was the only one who didn’t look like the prospect of seeing a couple of people killed in front of his eyes was making him sick. Even Dante, the tough guy with military training, looked a little green. But to Kurt, who’d grown up in the Basement, this whole thing didn’t have much shock value at all.

  What would it be like to grow up in an environment where seeing someone “executed” in an iron maiden didn’t register as something out of the ordinary?

  Nate had thought he’d long ago come to terms with how oblivious he had been to the real world when he had been the Chairman Heir, but he’d been wrong. Right now, he wanted to go back in time and beat some sense into the original Nate Hayes, make him see the corruption and injustice all around him, make him at least try to do something about it instead of putting it off until his mythical future.

  He felt the pressure of Kurt’s eyes on him and knew his thoughts were written across his face, at least to someone who knew him so well.

  “I coulda told you what Debasement was really like,” Kurt said. “I chose not to.”

  “Because you knew I was too blind to see it even if you shoved it in my face,” he responded bitterly.

  “No, because I knew there was nothing you could do about it. There was no point rubbing your nose in it.”

  Nate shook his head. It didn’t matter what Kurt said. He had brought Nate to Angel’s and watched as Nate treated the Basement like some kind of playground, never bothering to give more than a passing thought to how the people trapped here lived. There had to have been moments when he had hated Nate, at least a little.

  Right now, Nate hated himself enough for the both of them. Maybe he should consider bearing witness to the atrocity that was about to happen his penance for all those years of blindness.

  Determination eased some of the turmoil in his stomach, and though he still desperately wished he could be anywhere but here, he knew he would not turn his head and look away, no matter how much it cost him.

  Raising his head, he glanced around at the crowd that had gathered in the street. It was quite a mixed bag, consisting of Maiden’s enforcers and gangbangers of all descriptions, but also of senior citizens who were well past the age of cruising the streets, as well as children too young to be more than errand runners. A couple of the women in the crowd even held babies. Giving them early exposure to the hell that was destined to be their lives, perhaps.

  Many of the people in the crowd were looking at Nate and his friends with expressions of curiosity, or disdain, or even hatred. Outsiders were not well loved here in the Basement. Nate couldn’t blame them for it, though he hoped Maiden and Shrimp would discourage any overt hostility.

  Nate wasn’t sure whether he expected Kitty and her accomplice to be brought kicking and screaming to their deaths, or whether he expected some form of resignation. What he hadn’t expected was to see them both being carried out of the building, limp and unresisting. The crowd started to murmur, and Nate’s stomach threatened to start acting up again.

  Both the soon-to-be victims were naked, and when the enforcers carrying them dumped them unceremoniously on the street in front of the iron maiden, the firelight revealed bodies that were covered from head to foot with bruises and cuts and burns. Nate was glad Kurt was still holding his hand, because he needed that sense of connection. Especially when he saw that despite the fact that they had to be carried to their deaths and had obviously been tortured for who knew how long, both of them were conscious.

  Kurt uttered something foul under his breath. “He gave them the same shit Kitty put in the wine,” he said.

  “Oh dear God,” Nadia whispered, covering her mouth with her hand as if to hold in a gasp.

  To Nate’s horror, only he and his friends seemed even remotely bothered by what they saw. He saw some people whispering together and laughing. A couple of the men even shouted suggestions for what further tortures should be inflicted on the unfortunate duo before they died.

  The
crowd seemed to be gathering steam, the murmur of conversation growing louder. More people were emboldened by their neighbors and added their own suggestions, and someone started a rhythmic stomping that soon spread through the crowd like a drumbeat. It was like something out of an old historical movie, where unruly mobs gathered to view executions as entertainment. Come one, come all, bring the kiddies. What could be more fun?

  When the stomping got loud enough, Maiden emerged from the red tower, dressed in full Executive regalia, though no Executive Nate had ever seen would wear that much jewelry. Still stomping, the crowd cheered his appearance, watching him with an expression somewhere between worship and terror.

  It went without saying that Nate and his friends did not join in the stomping or cheering, though from what he could tell they were the only ones not participating. Even Shrimp was stomping one foot to the beat, though he was also saying something under his breath to Agnes, who stood nearest to him.

  Maiden sauntered casually into the center of the circle, followed closely by two of his enforcers. He looked down at the motionless figures at his feet and smiled, the gleam in his eye proving how much he enjoyed flaunting his power.

  “Ladies first, don’t you think?” he asked the crowd, who responded with another resounding cheer.

  One of the enforcers bent down and grabbed Kitty’s arm, hauling her up and over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing. She didn’t have enough control of her muscles to scream, but a piteous mewl of pain and terror escaped her.

  “Remember one thing,” Kurt whispered in Nate’s ear. “This isn’t the first time Maiden has done this, so Kitty knew exactly what she was risking.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Never said it did.”

  Somewhere amid all the spikes, there were restraints within the iron maiden, and Kitty was strapped in, unable to resist. The other enforcer grabbed her accomplice’s arm and turned him so he was facing the iron maiden and could see the fate that awaited him.