Page 205 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
I wanted to own her. Hurt her. Destroy her.
That precious woman belonged to me. I needed to see her again. Soon.
I didn’t even wait to see Clark before I left Violent Delights for the night. I was on the phone to Trenton before I was even out through the door and onto the sidewalk.
“What, boss?” he asked, and I told him.
“I need two keys, and I need them right now.”
“What kind of locks?”
“An outer apartment door and an inner apartment door.”
“No problem. Where?”
“Meet me downtown, at the backstreet apartment block at the rear of Gaol Street, under the shitty overhead light.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just fucking get there,” I said.
“On my way, boss.”
My chauffeur was waiting outside the club, but I didn’t want to arrive at that dive in a car that didn’t belong there. I summoned a cab, getting far too accustomed to the cheap, stinking leather as we headed to the shitty side of town.
Trenton was already waiting when I got there. I slammed the cab door shut behind me, and my fixer didn’t wait for my approach, just met me on the sidewalk.
“What the hell are you doing here in this dive, Lucian? Just let me know who owes what, and I’ll chase it down for you. You don’t need to muddy your hands.”
“This isn’t about money,” I said, “I just want those two keys.”
He looked at me blankly. “Why the fuck would you want keys for this shithole?”
My stare must have been bristling with malice to mask my humiliated shame. “Why the fuck would you question my business? Just get me the fucking keys.”
He came to his senses, backing down with asure, sorry,yeah,before stepping right up to the main door.
Trenton had many useful skills. Picking locks was something he majored in. And when you’ve been picking locks for decades, you tend to amass a neat collection of skeleton keys. Trenton had bunches of the things.
“Looks like a sixteen,” he said before pulling a ring of keys from his pocket. He selected one, slid it in the lock and the door was open. Just like that. Once inside, he worked the key free from the ring and dropped it in my palm.
“Next?” he asked, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
I led him upstairs and down the hallway to apartment seven.
“A number three, no doubt about that,” he said and twisted the key free from its ring and dropped it into my hand without even trying it.
I slipped the key into the lock and it turned with silent ease. My skin prickled and so did my balls as I pushed the door open, hoping with some twisted little part of me that Elaine was in there, curled up in bed.
Of course she wouldn’t be in there. She was probably in her own sad little part of the Constantine compound, passed out with an empty glass of champagne in her hand.
I stepped inside and sure enough, the apartment was empty. Dark. Pathetic.
Desperate.
I flicked on the light and remembered the suicide blonde standing there in the hallway amongst her friend’s tacky little trinkets, looking so damn stunning in her fear.
Trenton was still hovering when I turned back to face him, no doubt still trying to gauge what the fuck was going on.
