Page 3 of Diamonds (Aces Underground #2)

ALISSA

M etallic clinks. The sounds of soil moving around.

It’s cold.

And I’m not in my bed. I’m lying on a hard surface. Concrete.

Heavy breaths. Coming closer to me.

My heart pounds, and I flutter my eyes open.

Everything is blurry at first, but it slowly comes into focus.

A man with a spade, quickly shoveling dirt back into a small hole.

And it all comes barreling back to me.

We found that hatbox. And inside it…

Oh my God.

Did I dream that? Did I hit my head while we were digging and have some terrible, gruesome nightmare?

But I already know that’s not the case.

The image of May’s severed head is one I will carry with me to my grave.

The skin of her once-beautiful face now stretched tight over the bones of her skull.

Her long dark hair matted with soil and tangled beyond recognition.

Her eyes robbed of all light, slightly sunken into their sockets.

Her jaw slightly unhinged, as if she too is in an eternal state of shock to have ended up buried in a hatbox in this park by the airport.

I should feel nauseated at the thought, but I just feel…sad.

I stifle a sob. Several tears silently flow down my cheeks as I sit up.

“M-Maddox?”

He turns around, dropping his shovel as he rushes to my side. “Alissa! Thank God, you’re okay.”

I rub at the back of my head. “I’m alive, but I’m not okay.”

He kneels and strokes my hair. “I know, baby. I’m not either.” He darts his gaze around the area, frowning. “But if we want to get out of this park alive, we need to leave everything as we found it. Rouge can’t know that we were here.”

“Do you need help?”

“No. I’m almost done,” he says. “You just keep an eye on the parking lot.” He hands me the keys to my car out of his pocket. “If anyone— anyone —pulls into that lot, I want you to grab your car and run. Leave me behind.”

“No! I won’t leave you, Maddox. I’m the reason we’re here in the first place. I was the one who wanted to check things out tonight.”

“And I was the one who had the riddle. I could have chosen not to share it with you.” He rubs my shoulder. “Alissa, please. Don’t fight me on this.”

“Fine.”

But I’m not going to abandon Maddox here. If anyone discovers us here, we’re going down together.

Because I’m in love with this man.

I was doubting it at first, but the sight of May’s severed head, as ghastly as it was to behold, gave me a much-needed reminder.

We’re all going to die sometime.

And I want to die in the arms of Maddox Hathaway. I want to marry him, grow old with him, watch our children and grandchildren grow up.

Poor May.

She’ll never get to have a husband. Grow old. Have kids.

An anvil sinks in my stomach.

Is this… Is this my fault?

I was the one who got her in trouble. She broke the rules and spoke to me while she was working.

Of course, no one could have known that this was the penalty for breaking the rules. Rouge certainly seemed a little odd—though she’s normal-looking compared to Chet or the bartenders—but I could never imagine that she would be capable of committing such an act of evil.

Then again, maybe she wasn’t the one who did this. Maybe it was someone else. That riddle probably came from one of May’s fellow employees. Someone who would have been able to discreetly slip it into Maddox’s jacket while his attention was on something else.

But I can’t shake the thought that this is Rouge’s doing. She was the one who was so angry about May talking to me.

And I was the one who spoke to her. Invited her to speak to me. Despite knowing the rules.

So in a roundabout way, May’s head is in that hatbox because of me.

I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t know my actions would lead to her demise, but the fact remains that if it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive, working at Aces, earning money to live the American Dream.

And I can’t help it.

I start crying again.

Maddox turns around—he’s placed the bush back into the ground by now—and walks over to me. “Alissa, baby, what’s wrong?”

I whip my gaze up to meet his. “What do you think?”

He scratches his head. “Good point.”

“Oh, Maddox.” I grab his hand. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“But I was the one who spoke to her. Who got her to speak to me.”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth.

” He crouches down next to me. “First of all, we don’t know that May’s death has anything to do with her breaking the rules of the club.

Second of all, even if that is the case, you had nothing to do with killing her.

No one could have foreseen something like this happening. ”

Then his eyes twitch slightly.

“Maddox, what is it?”

“What is what, baby?”

“That last thing you said.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Your eye twitched.”

He frowns. “Did it?”

I slowly get to my feet. “Do you know something I don’t know about this?”

He gestures to the hatbox on the picnic table. “About May? Of course not. I was as surprised as you when I opened that box.”

“But you’re not shocked , are you?”

He runs his hands through his hair. “I mean… Let’s just say, I’ve had a feeling about Rouge for some time.”

I widen my eyes. “Then why do you still keep going to her club?”

He blinks. “Because it was just that, Alissa. A feeling. I had no evidence to back up my thoughts about her. Innocent until proven guilty.”

“I think you’ll find enough evidence in that damned hatbox.”

“Of course, baby.” He grabs my hands. “And now that we have proof that Rouge is evil incarnate, we’re going to take the bitch down.”

* * *

I can’t believe it. The day has finally come.

I’m going to be free of my mother forever. The wicked witch who made my childhood a living hell will no longer have any power over me.

Yes, I understand that she’s sick. She has OCD and a personality disorder.

An explanation isn’t an excuse.

Things have never gotten quite as bad as the day she broke every dish in the kitchen, but they’ve come close.

For instance, the day I told her that I had decided to pursue a degree in flute performance at university, she broke a window.

Just one window, not every window in the house. So I suppose that’s progress.

She’s been trying to talk me out of it ever since.

We finally came to a compromise. I told her I’d fill in my extra credit hours with classes for an anatomy minor.

I was decent at biology in secondary school, and I’ve always found the human body fascinating.

And the anatomy minor won’t require any labs, so I won’t have to dissect anything.

But the flute is my calling. That I know.

Dad started me on lessons five years ago.

He said he had read that learning to play a musical instrument was good for my mental development, but honestly?

I think he just wanted to give me an excuse to get out of the house once a week.

My teacher, Mrs. Beach, used to play with the Royal Philharmonic, and she’s been very pleased with my progress, said I had real career potential, especially if I could get into a school in the States.

But even more than that, something takes over me when I perform. It’s like a light from within envelops my entire body. A light that my mother did her damnedest to snuff out the first eighteen years of my life, but it never quite dissipated.

And hell. Flute lessons are cheaper than therapy.

So I’m jumping in with both feet. Pursue it full time. Once I finish with undergrad, I’ll get a master’s degree. If things don’t pan out in the performance arena, I can always teach. And I’ll have that stupid anatomy minor to fall back on as well, I suppose.

The last few days, I’ve noticed that Mum drinks a few glasses of wine every evening.

She and Dad normally only drink on the weekends, and even then they try to keep it to a minimum.

Dad told me that drinking can aggravate her condition.

Typically he keeps an eye on her when she drinks, makes sure she doesn’t fly off the handle.

But Dad has also checked out a bit the last few months.

He’s going to miss me, and I worry that once I’m gone, he’ll be trapped with Mum.

I asked him once why he never considered getting a divorce.

He told me that he couldn’t risk Mum getting full custody of me.

If he stayed with her, he could make sure I was safe.

You’re safer in the lion’s den if you have a lion on your side.

But here I am, leaving him alone with her. Years of tending to my mother have left him a shell of his former self. Most days he ends up snoring on the couch with a half-empty can of beer in his hand within an hour of coming home from work.

I’ll come back for holidays, of course. And hell, now that I’m out of the house, he can leave her. I’ll stay with him whenever I visit. I’m an adult now. No one can dictate with whom I choose to stay.

“Darling, could you come up here for a second?”

Shit. Mum’s calling from the bathroom. Probably a last-ditch attempt to get me to change my mind about school.

But that ship has sailed. I’ve already paid the deposit for my on-campus housing—tuition is fully covered, thank goodness—and the flight from Heathrow to O’Hare departs in a few hours. It’s too late to change anything.

Still, though, I walk up the stairs to her and Dad’s master suite, where the shower is running at full force, steaming up the entire bathroom.

Mum is at the counter, staring at the fogged-over mirror.

She’s wearing a ratty green bathrobe, and her hair, which she normally brushes perfectly every morning, is tangled wildly.

There’s an unhinged look in her eyes, and she has that same sweet-and-sour smile on her face that she did that day in the kitchen.

Oh, no.

I walk into the bathroom. The steam hits me like a wall, and I feel it condensing on my skin.

“Yes, Mum?”

She slowly turns her head toward me, her smile not faltering. “Sweetness, Mummy has something for you. Something for you to take to America. Something to remind you of your poor mummy, keep you from forgetting her.”

I squint through the fog of the room. A gift? I wasn’t expecting that.

She reaches under her counter and pulls out a fine crystal duck. One she bought while she and Dad were on holiday in Venice.

I drop my jaw. “Mum. That duck cost you a fortune. I couldn’t possibly ? —”

She raises a hand to silence me. “Hush, my pumpkin. Your father and I have discussed it, and we want you to have this.” She clutches at the lapel of her bathrobe. “ I want you to have this.”

I shake my head. “But Mum, that duck has to be the most expensive thing you own. I really think it would be safer here, not in some student dorm.”

She bursts into tears.

“Nothing I do is good enough for you, is it? I’ve slaved over you since the day you were conceived.

Do you know how bad my morning sickness was?

” She glares at me, poking me sharply in the chest. “How much time I had to spend cleaning up every ounce of vomit that you forced out of my body? How I gave up my career to raise you, only for you to pursue a fruitless degree?”

“Mum, we’ve talked about this.”

“Enough.” She forces the crystal duck into my hands. “You’re taking this.”

I swallow. “Okay, Mum. Thank you for such a thoughtful gift.”

I’m not going to take this with me. First of all, I have no room left in the three suitcases I’m taking with me to Northwestern. And even if I did, I have no way of wrapping it to ensure it’ll arrive safely. I know how haphazardly the Yanks handle luggage coming off a plane.

I’ll leave it with Dad, let him know to leave it in a safe place. Some place where Mum won’t find it if she goes looking around. I know they have a safe-deposit box at the bank. Maybe there.

But all that matters is that Mum thinks I took the gift. I’ve learned after all these years to concede to her demands when she gets like this. Once she’s lucid again, she’ll understand why I can’t take this priceless object with me.

“Is that all, Mum?”

She narrows her eyes nearly into slits at my words. “Just one more thing, my pet.”

And she curls her fingers into a fist and punches the mirror, sending glass flying everywhere.