Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
I spotted it the other night when I was in here grabbing a crowbar to break the door into Alissa’s room—her prison cell, really—at the Caterpillar Hotel. But of course I haven’t given it a second thought after everything that’s gone down.
Maybe Bianca left it for me as a birthday gift?
But she didn’t even know today was my birthday until after we found Maddox and Alissa. I’m pretty tightlipped about it anyway. It’s connected to the greenest day of the year, St. Patrick’s Day, and I can’t see anything green without thinking about the highlights in Ray Sinclair’s hair that evening at the Dimpsey house. The darkest night of my life.
Until tonight, maybe.
I pull out the gift bag. It’s on the heavy side.
I bring it back into my house and set it on the kitchen table with a thunk. I dig through the tissue paper and pull out an ornately decorated object.
I widen my eyes, set it gingerly on the table.
What the hell?
3
BIANCA
I finish my set. It wasn’t my best singing, but I’m going to forgive myself given the gruesome discovery I made not forty-five minutes ago.
Hearts.
Hearts.
Who did they belong to?
Someone who certainly didn’t consent to their organs being removed from their body.
Rouge is running an organ harvesting ring.
The patrons and servers who disappeared from Aces, from the Jade Sanctum, from Second Star and the rest of my sister’s clubs…
These are their organs.
And I bet they end up inside of Rouge’s friends. The club patrons who hold influence. Cale Calloway, the man who died on top of me a week ago, was in his late nineties. Most people that age are confined to their homes. They’re certainly not going out every weekend and bedding lots of young women. I’ll bet he’s been through a few of those hearts.
Hell, he probably died with the heart of a woman he’s fucked inside of him.
The Seven of Spades. May, her real name was. The girl whose head Alissa and Maddox found buried in that Forest Park reserve.
It could have been her heart. Calloway liked her.
Or perhaps it was Timothy Mann, the friend of Aus Waverly’s at the Jade Sanctum who went missing. Aus told us he lost everything in pursuit of a woman who didn’t love him back. And now he’s literally lost his heart.
She’s on the board of Harrison’s hospital. She could easily use that position to sell the organs she harvests to them. I’m not sure how organ donation works, but there must be a connection there.
I retreat to my dressing room and splash cold water on my face. It’ll mess up my makeup, but fuck it. I have much more to worry about right now than maintaining a perfect smoky eye.
I glance at my phone. I haven’t checked it since I went back onstage for my last set.
A text from Harrison.
Thank God. He made it home.
He left his phone there, so the fact that he’s texting means he’s okay.
And… Wait. Oh my God.
He didn’t have his phone on him when I threw him out of the ladies’ restroom. He didn’t have his wallet either. The shorts the male waitstaff wear have no pockets in them.
But he somehow made it home. Maybe he walked over to the hospital, had Dinah get him a ride home.
I unlock my phone and read the text.
Made it home safe. Let me know how you are.
A sigh of relief escapes me.
Harrison’s okay. His heart is still beating in his chest.
Same can’t be said for countless other innocents, thanks to my sister.
But he’s all right.
For now.
I quickly text him back. Better keep things vague in case anyone is tapping into our messages.
I’m okay. Will be leaving Aces soon.
I feel terrible, throwing him out on the street wearing next to nothing. But I still think he was safer out there than he was in here.
I’ve never felt unsafe at Aces.
In many ways it’s been my sanctuary.
I’ve never been head over heels in love with my position here, but it’s better than working a nine to five. I’m getting paid a living wage to sing, to perform. It wasn’t exactly what I envisioned when I first got off that plane in NYC all those years ago, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to the dream than a lot of people get.
I’ve worked here nearly five years. The Reflections callback was in early summer, and I started at Aces soon after that.
I’ve seen so many people come and go. I’ve made very few friends here—the one time I tried to do so, it failed catastrophically—because of how impermanent everything is. Once a server fulfills their contract, they go off into the world.
Or so I thought.
Just like the waitstaff at Rouge’s other clubs, we never see them again.
And now I know why.
A cooler of human hearts hidden away is damning evidence, but I have no hard proof that they’re connected to the disappearances. It could be circumstantial. They could have been planted.