Page 44 of House of Cards (The Devil’s Den #2)

Zoey

The moment I hear the door lock, a wall inside me collapses. Even when I clap a hand over my mouth, it barely stifles the ragged sob that bursts out. I try to push back the fear and the turmoil swirling around in my head, but my emotions are done being repressed.

After what that psychopath just said to me, I can’t even blame them. I just saw the predator lurking behind those polished glasses and impeccable wardrobe, and I’m fucking shook.

“Fuck!” I turn, trying to see through tear-blurred eyes as I head in the vague direction of the bathroom. My throat burns with each sob that rips itself free. Tears wobble my vision, making it impossible to see where I’m going.

No wonder I catch my hip against the sideboard beside the bathroom door.

“Fuck!” Even though the impact is hard enough to throw me off balance, the pain barely registers.

My hand flies out to steady myself. Landing on the floor is not an option, because I know that’s where I’ll stay until I’ve cried myself out.

Until Smith comes back and makes good on his obscene threat.

Something clatters onto the walnut sideboard, then bashes into my waist before hitting my leg.

Jesus, now the furniture’s attacking me?

I swipe a hand over my eyes, staring at the phone receiver dangling on its curled cord as it bounces a few times, bumping gently against the sideboard.

A lot of things happen all at once.

My brain is suddenly in overdrive as I fight back another surge of tears. My hand fumbles with the cord, twisting it in my stupid fingers as I try to pick up the phone with one hand. The other is stabbing down on the cradle?—

clack—clack—clack

—while I’m desperately trying to remember the code, I saw Smith key into this keypad the other day when he made a call. It feels like a fucking lifetime ago, and my brain is still cowering in the corner calculating just how many ways there are to make someone scream.

I press the cool plastic receiver to my ear, stabbing out four numbers. The dial tone doesn’t change. I tap the cradle again a few times, try a different number sequence.

Again.

“Come on!” I sob, tears damming up my eyes before spilling over. “Fuck!”

The dial tone changes.

I freeze, staring at the phone, my mind a blank.

Who?

Who the fuck do I call?

The police? Ha. As if they’d just barge into this casino and start raiding the place.

I’m not an idiot. Places like this must grease a lot of palms to keep flying under the radar. At the very least, it’ll lead to nothing. At worst, Smith would get wind of this call and punish me.

I swallow hard, shoving away the insidious thought of just how he’d?—

Danika from the diner. We’re…well, I wouldn’t really call us friends, but she’s the closest thing to it.

I’ll call her, explain everything. She knows about Ricky’s latest disappearing act, about the money I need. I didn’t tell her everything, of course, just that Ricky got into shit with one of his bookies. She covered for me when I went to the bank to speak to them about the second mortgage.

It’s a huge jump from ‘I need some money’ to ‘Ricky owes some thug money and now I’m being sex trafficked by a depraved psycho in a thousand dollar suit because he caught me counting cards in his casino’…but Danika smokes weed, so I’m hoping she’ll believe me.

My hovering hand falls to my side.

I should really start memorizing people’s phone numbers.

There’s one number I’ll never forget. And that’s because I’ve dialed it from the diner’s landline so many times, I know it off by heart.

Not that he’ll pick up. He’s been ghosting me for weeks.

Calling him is better than choking on my tears as I throw a fucking pity party for myself. So I type out his number anyway, hoping against all hope that he’s still checking his voice mails.

Not that it will help. In a few hours, Smith will be back, and then?—

I don’t dare continue the thought.

After three rings, I still don’t have a clue what I’m going to say if he does answer, so I go to hang up the receiver.

Ring, ring, ri ? —

My ears prick up at the sudden silence. I’m fully expecting his voice mail, but there’s just silence.

Not an empty silence, either.

He’s on the other end of the line. Probably only picked up because he doesn’t recognize the number, the fucking asshole.

“Ricky?” I blurt out. “You there?”

Why isn’t he saying anything?

“Answer me, asshole!”

And that’s when the real dam bursts. The one that’s been building ever since Buzzcut shoved my mother’s pearl necklace into his pocket like a drugstore receipt.

“It’s the least I fucking deserve after the shit you pulled!”

I’m yelling now. Should care. Don’t.

“You know the diner’s gone? Your fucking loan shark or whatever he is burned it down because of you !

” The tears are fighting to come back, making every word tight and forced, but I battle them as valiantly as I battle the urge to slam the phone down just to make Ricky’s ear ring for the next two days.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the money, huh? We could have worked something out. Because you’re a fucking coward, Ricky, that’s why! My life is ruined because of you, you motherfucking piece of shit!”

I sound like a fucking lunatic. Sweet, worried, then all-out berserk. I take a breath, because I’m lightheaded from lack of oxygen, and in that beat, hear something on the other end of the line.

Someone chuckling.

My breath hitches in my throat, and the receiver creaks as my hand tightens knuckle-white around the plastic casing.

That…

Jesus, that’s not Ricky.

“You miss me, mamacita ?” Buzzcut— Elonzo —rasps into the phone. “’Cos I sure missed you.”

“Wh—” My voice is so thick it’s barely legible. The dizziness is back. It makes my knees so weak I don’t have a choice but to sink to the ground.

“Wh-why are you answering Ricky’s phone?”

“You set fire to shit, las ratas ? 1 come running out. Isn’t that right, Ricky?”

Something changes in his tone. I’d have expected anger, but Elonzo sounds almost…disappointed. As if their now-ruined relationship runs deeper than just an unpaid debt.

My heart plummets fifty thousand feet below sea level when I hear a rustle, a loud rip, and a bleat of pain in a voice that could only be Ricky’s.

“Ricky!” I wail, pressing the phone so hard against my ear it aches.

“Zoey? Fuck, Zoey, I’m so sorry!” Ricky sounds desperate, and guilty. Like there’s more to apologize for than just borrowing money. What the fuck is going on? “This shit wasn’t supposed to?—“

A meaty thud ends Ricky’s sentence. My entire body flinches at the groan of pain he lets out before Elonzo’s smug voice oozes into my ear again.

“Ricky can’t come to the phone right now, but?—“

“You cheated! I had two weeks to get you your fucking money!” I yell into the receiver. “So you put him back on, and you let me speak to him, you motherfucker!”

There’s a beat of silence. “Interrupt me again, perra ? 2 , and Ricky’s losing his dick.”

Cold flashes through my arteries, forcing me to clamp my arms around my knees and hug them to my chest to stop a violent shiver. I suppress a whimper, trying to keep my shit together, but feeling like I’m about to explode into sobs.

“Want to know why your cute diner went up in flames? You broke the golden rule, Zoey.”

“You think I’m stupid? I didn’t go to the cops!”

“Mob falls in the same category.” He laughs, but the sound cuts off too soon.

The mob?

“I…that’s…” My eyes flick around the hotel room I’m trapped in. “I had no idea about any of that! I came to the casino to get you your money?—”

I have to stop because Elonzo’s laughing so loud he can’t possibly hear me.

“You were planning on robbing the place?”

“I was counting cards,” I push through gritted teeth, my face heating. “And I would have had more than enough if you’d?—“

“Yeah, well, deal’s changed,” he cuts in. “Luis was trying to tell you, but then you went and bit off his fucking ear.”

I suck in a breath and valiantly fight the manic giggle creeping up my throat.

I was right. I was fucking right!

Good job, Zoey. You’ll make detective one day. If you survive this. Which you won’t. But good job.

“You, me,” Elonzo says in a throaty whisper. “The diner, midnight.” It almost sounds like he’s asking me out on a fucking date.

Guess he is.

If you swap out the roses and chocolates for gasoline and matches.

I stay silent, because God forbid I interrupt him again.

“Bring me my money, honey, and I’ll reunite you with your little rat brother. Then the two of you can scurry away and live happily ever after inside a little hill in the countryside.” Elonzo chuckles. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Marconi?”

Marconi?

That’s our step-father Franco’s last name. We’re Dennens, through and through.

Jesus, could this just be a case of mistaken identity?

Ricky’s whimper annihilates the frantic thought.

There’s a scrape, a loud clatter, before Elonzo’s voice comes back on the line.

“I said , you’d like. That. Wouldn’t. You?”

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Every unseen punch makes my body flinch, my eyes squeezing closed tighter and tighter. “Stop!” I yell into the receiver, clutching it so tightly the plastic digs into my palm. “Please, stop!”

“Pain is how we learn,” Elonzo says, his voice strained.

Thud. Crack.

“Please!” I scream.

The punching stops. There’s a wet, ragged rasp, another loud scrape. Someone slaps their hands together like they’re dusting them off.

“ Pucha .”? 3 Elonzo laughs, the sound cutting off too soon, like someone flicking a switch. “Only a mother could love that face now.”

Ricky makes a blubbering sound, says something that might have been, “I’m sorry.”

I want to double down on hating him, but I can’t. Not when he’s getting the shit kicked out of him. Ricky might be the biggest asshole this side of the equator, but I won’t be able to live with myself if something happened to my brother.

He was always there for me, helping me with homework in the corner booth of the diner while Mom worked.

Despite our step-dad hardly being around, Ricky took it hard when Franco disappeared.

He started drinking, gambling. It only got worse after Mom, Ricky disappearing for longer and longer stretches, sometimes coming back with money, sometimes only coming back with black eyes and broken ribs.

“Please stop hurting him!” And then, because poor working conditions and stress frayed my last thread of common sense, I blurt out, “I’ve got your money!”

Elonzo’s laugh was nasty, but his sudden silence is worse. It stretches for so long, I wonder if the call got disconnected.

“I—I have your money,” I repeat quietly.

Elonzo’s voice sounds nothing like him now, deep and stripped of any humor.

“And instead of bringing it to me, you hide in those fucks’ basement like a sneaky little rat?”

I want to tell him I’m not hiding, but the alternative appears to be that I’m cahoots with the fucking mob. So I stay quiet, trying to keep down the nausea. This guy is bat shit crazy, and what’s worse, he has my brother.

My mind is screaming at me to tell him I’m not a rat, that I’m a fucking nobody. Wrong place, wrong time, that’s all this is. But I can’t find my voice. Can barely scrape together my thoughts.

“Come alone, and don’t be late, Zoey. I hate the smell of burning rat.”

Elonzo hangs up before I can reply.

I sit frozen on the floor, the receiver still clutched in my hand, my brother’s whimpers echoing in my ears.

Midnight. The diner. With money I don’t have, for a psychopath who’s going to kill my brother if I don’t show up.

And here I am, locked in a hotel room, waiting for a different monster to return.

… I’m going to fuck every hole you have until you’re raw and bleeding...

My stomach heaves, and I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m retching into the toilet. I stagger out on weak legs, slumping against the nearest wall.

There’s a clock opposite me.

8:37 PM.

Less than four hours until Ricky dies.

Possibly less until Smith returns to make good on his promises. His threat.

…pray I get bored quickly…

I lean my head back against the silky wallpaper, a hysterical laugh bubbling up my throat. Of the two men threatening to destroy me tonight, I don’t know which of them scares me more.

But I do know one thing.

Still shaking, but jaw clenched, I shove myself to my feet.

I’m sure as fuck not hanging around to find out.