Romeo The Mafia Casanova

The door snicked closed as determination pushed her deeper into the half-lit room. Hunched over as not to be seen, she carefully clung to the shadows undetected. Papers were stacked neatly along one side of the desk, Indigo’s doing no doubt, while the other end was clear of all but two empty tumblers. The lack of personal photos that normally cluttered offices didn’t go unnoticed. The scent of the space plus the sight of those abandoned glasses told her exactly who inhabited this room. She could almost see Sevastyan’s long, elegant fingers wrapped around that glass, Roman standing by the window looking down on his people.

She weaved around the leather armchairs and grabbed the first folder off the top of the pile. The club’s name sprawled across the front in midnight black ink. Nothing of importance. She set it aside and went for another. Receipts, order slips, and stockroom reports filled each of the files. “Damn it. This can’t be it.”

With trembling fingers, Rhia pulled out the match case from her bodice. There wasn’t a lot of time, but she knew she was in the right place.

She peeled back the creased and worn cardboard flap. “Come on, Father, speak to me. Show me what I’m looking for.”

Her father’s familiar scribble and a detailed penciled version of Sevastyan’s spider tattoo graced the inside flap of the matchbook. Beneath it sat the cold case number she found in all her research of unsolved missing girl cases. The one Maya mistook for a phone number.

But so far neither had helped her find answers to why her father was dead.

Chimes knifed the silence, signaling half past the hour from some clock hidden in the darkened room.

She swore softly.

Indigo would be back soon. With her heart hitting warp speed, she restacked the files. There had to be more than this, but where?

Offices usually had filing cabinets, but the only thing Volkov seemed to favor was cold stone walls and a fetish for plush furniture in leather. She turned to the bookcase and traced her fingers over the rough spines. Some were long and about three-quarters of an inch thick, resembling the same kind of ledgers she recalled from her father’s offices.

She plucked one from the shelf at eye level and cracked it open. Name after name filled the lines of each page followed by date and country and position in society. Some she recognized-a movie star or two, a rock star is known for having wild parties, and a handful of politicians who made the news frequently. All the others were a mystery, but her imagination could fill in the blanks given the dollar signs beside their names. Not many people made that kind of money to throw away. Not legally anyway.

But that wasn’t the oddest part. Why would they want to keep a record of names and amounts? And family members were listed, too, in another column-uncle, mother, sibling, and the list went on to name children and any of their offspring, each category marked.Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

Rhia flipped several more pages until she came to a section and her heart stopped cold.

With her fingers pressed to the crease, she ripped and tucked the first piece of evidence she feared didn’t exist inside her bodice and thanked the Universe for the first time the restrictive contraption was tight enough to hold the pages in place against her abdomen.

Rhia placed the book on the desk and quickly snapped pictures of the other pages with her phone, not wanting to risk taking too many for fear of being noticed.

Finished, she grabbed another and repeated the process. The information inside is identical, only the names changed.

Her father’s office once had mountains of things dating back a couple of decades that held all kinds of information on her father’s dealings. When she stepped in as the company’s accountant, it had taken her a good six months to transfer everything over to a modern digital system and database. As the world’s leading international shipping company, they dealt with millions of pieces of information, but her father’s records looked nothing like what she saw here.

She placed the book back on the shelf. Unsure what a list of names would get her, she checked her watch. With quick motions, she made sure everything was as she found it on the desk. Choppy emotions, nerves, or a combination of both sent her off-kilter, and she caught herself on the edge of the shelf.

A hinge creaked and she tightened her fingers around a heavy gargoyle-shaped bookend, scared soulless someone was walking through the door. She didn’t dare breathe. Cold air caressed her bare thighs and backside. She jolted upright.

She blinked into the dim room when no one appeared. “What the hell?”

Her eyes shot to the space of the wall at her back. Beams of light splintered along the right-angled edges of the shelf from floor to ceiling. With a little effort, the heavy case and a third of the wall shifted toward her on a hinge and opened to reveal large, flat slabs of stone that spiraled downward into the unknown.

This couldn’t be good. Not for her anyway.

She pulled the door open farther until the arch of the doomed ceiling came into full view.

Brightened by sconces fastened to the curved walls, Rhia considered her options. Descend into the bowels of Haven or cut her losses and get the hell out of there?

She mentally ran over the various schematics she’d procured from the local library. Decades of updates and remodeling showed several additional sections, but none of them showed secret passages within the walls of the former convent.

She pulled her lips between her teeth and dragged her gaze around in a panic. What if one of the men came in to find her standing at the mouth of their secret cave? She didn’t need to guess what would happen next. The last things she’d need to worry about were hidden rooms in a centuries-old building and more about what secret room they’d stuff her in.

Curiosity, and a bit of lunacy, pulled her over the threshold despite her less-than-favorable odds. The answers she needed could be down there. Everything in her pointed to that conclusion. Her last hope lay at the bottom of these darkened stairs.

Determination and dedication drove her forward one step, and then another, and the deeper she descended the farther back in time she traveled. Smooth rock against her bare palms anchored her to reality and helped tame her wild imagination that threatened to rebel against her better judgment if she were not careful.

“This is a bad idea. Very bad,” she reprimanded herself in a hushed whisper, still weighing a bad idea versus the worst option before her. Getting killed for being reckless didn’t sit high on that list, but she needed answers.

She wasn’t blind to the fact every step she took could lead straight into danger. Her gut and her less-than-nerves of steel pushed her forward.

When the light of the sconces vanished, she let out a shaky breath and took two more stairs, pushed flush against the cool rock wall that spiraled downward in a sweeping curve.

Motion sensors buried somewhere within the walls triggered a string of lights to flicker on and flood the end of the stairwell. That or someone awaited her at the bottom of the stairs. She hoped for the former option.

It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness.

Slowly Rhia took the last step and her entire body wanted to clench with fear, but she refused to give in.

Three walls towered over her by a good six feet. From stone ceilings to marble flooring, high-tech computers attached to wall-mounted banks of monitors gleamed back at her with a heavy hum of electricity.

In case she wasn’t alone, Rhia edged deeper into the room, dungeon, cellar… her coffin- only to find the space void of other life. Rhia had no idea if the room was monitored, but if no sirens and flashing red lights signaled anyone to her presence, it was probably a safe bet to say this section of the club didn’t have the same level of security.

Whatever this place was, not a hint of the deep rich hues and tones used upstairs to bring about thoughts of sexual delights and decadent rendezvous could be found. Void of color, the stone walls arched over her, their mighty force oppressive, if not a shade menacing.

She simply couldn’t believe what her eyes saw. Situated dead center, a long mahogany table ate two-thirds of the room. A damp chill clung to the air and forced a shiver up her spine. Trying to ignore all the sensory input, she shoved aside the unsettling feeling and scrubbed her palms down the length of her leather skirt, but it didn’t do much good. The day she could kiss this deplorable outfit goodbye couldn’t get here soon enough.

She scanned over every chair, piece of paper, and crack in the wall, taking a mental picture, unable to believe any of what lay before her. Not what she expected to find in the basement of a sex club. Not a flogger, gag, or spanking bench in sight.

Anything warm and inviting began and ended with the several leather chairs that encompassed the heavy table. From there everything else came off as cold, hard, and mysterious. State-of-the-art equipment flashed images of persons she couldn’t identify.