Page 180 of Beautifully Ruined

The guard puts an arm around her and talks softly to her, and gets her calm in seconds flat, but he doesn’t let her go.

“Macy borrowed the swipe card for upstairs. We came down here for the training, I was meant to go off duty, but I got a bad feeling, so I followed her here. In here.”

“To fuck the girls?” I snarl, lip curling.

“No, asshole, to protect them. This is more going over scenarios with them, working out how to get out of trouble and not upsetting the club members and that kind of crap. I don’t know. I’m a guard. This—” He swing a free hand in the air. “Is new to me. But she’s right, I didn’t get the card back. Maybe she just left.”

“I saw her.” I look at her but ask him. “Do you work down in this part?”

“No.”

I nod. “Macy, you do, though, don’t you? You come down here?”

She nods against the guard.

“Okay. Now, this is very fucking important. Violet needs your help, okay? There must be some rooms you’re not allowed in down here?”

Enzo sends me a sharp look. “Are you thinking there’s some off blueprint places?”

“What the fuck do you think?” I ask him.

“It could be any of these rooms, though,” Enzo says. “A lot of this was build prohibition times, so there are areas that were closed and could have been reopened.”

I don’t have time to kick down every fucking door in this place. We get too close, and they might kill her if they hear us.

If she’s still here.

But…she’s got to be here, right? Because otherwise, Macy and her guard friend would have heard something.

It’s not much, it’s thinner than thread, and it’s all I’ve got, so I cling to it.

Suddenly, I think of something.

What if they had some insulated rooms. For human kind of storage. For rape, torture, who the fuck knows? The things they don’t want the girls who train here to know about, the stuff they don’t want the guards to know about.

If they knocked Vi out, it’d be easy to get her down here, and who knows where old stairways are.

“Macy, think. If they wanted to take someone somewhere private, maybe someone freaks out and needs alone time, where would they take them?”

She shakes her head. “Upstairs, there’s a nice room with a sofa, where someone can calm down.”

Fuck. “What about somewhere off limits. Have you…any of you…” Now I look at the guard because I find it hard to believe he doesn’t know. “Have you seen anywhere where they take shipments to. Anything they don’t want you to know about?”

He scratches his head. “Not my paygrade. Most of us here work security at other clubs owned by Mr. Allistair. I rarely come down here.”

“But…you’re not here sometimes when I am. There’s a part down here where I once was sent to see Thomas. I was only allowed in the room for a second, and he sent me out, but…there looked like a bigger area…if…if I wanted to do something on the downlow, it’d be there.”

“Show me? Please?” I ask.

She doesn’t move. And it takes me a few moments to realize she’s terrified and that sends pricks of cold lighting all over my skin.

“I-it’s a secret area, like I said. It’s off limits to everyone, including me. Except for that one time. And-and I don’t think I saw more than just the room he was sitting in.” She looks like she wants to cry, but she’s calmer now.

And I’m running pretty fucking empty on my patience. Because this is Vi. Every second in here is every second something might happen to her, or—if something has happened—I’m not there to help.

“Please? Take me there.”

She nods, and she heads off her guard with her, and it takes everything I am not to have him forced to stay behind.