by Elena Monroe
Growing a conscience out of nothing wasn’t easy, especially not when it was finally starting to stick and me bailing felt a lot like guilt.
This was easily one of my only contributions to the Clave: my name and my illusion of being death—only ¼ of the apocalypse we all desperately needed to happen, even though we were here to keep that from happening.
I gave myself enough time to feel sorry for myself and spin into the anxiety that I could easily fix with two pills. If I took it now, I would peek at Sins and Forgiveness, instead of taking one pill and letting it fade there.
Sins and Forgiveness wasn’t for the faint of heart. It was an underground playground for the rich, some famous, and all-powerful to live out their fantasies.
Everyone couldn’t be the Clave. We didn’t invite the unstable, the crazy, the loudmouths, or the ones with no pedigree. Thoroughbreds only.
I didn’t care who the fuck this guy was, I was wearing what I always do: comfortable-ass clothes.
Popping the two bars of Xan into my mouth and drowning them down with a big gulp of water, I sat up, pressing the lid back down on the bottle with my thumb trying to mentally prepare myself to hold my tongue all night.
I chose black Champion joggers that weren’t too loose, with Gucci sneakers, because I liked how much they reminded me of bondage, and a shirt I was pretty sure wasn’t entirely clean. It had been in a ball on the floor, which was really a 50/50 shot at clean.
With a shrug, I pushed my arm through the armhole and tugged it down my abs that were covered in ink. My fingers combed through my messy hair, letting it fall to one side in loose curls. As long as it stayed out of my face, I was fine, even though I normally combed it back while it was wet, letting it dissolve into my fade. I looked at my watch, the single piece of material items that held some piece of Jason—my grandfather’s watch.
He died when I turned 18. It was like the world knew only so many Rothschild men could walk the earth at a time. Just one of us could do enough damage to last a lifetime.
I should be leaving, but I paid a great deal of money for my car that goes well above the speed limit, and if I didn’t ever test those limits, why get a car that can go 217 MPH in the first place?
Zeus wanted someone who reminded him of Hades. Pretty sure that he’s a guy after my own heart… and never on time.
Spraying some cologne over the anxiety-induced sweat, I sighed heavily. I wasn’t in the mood to be social, be fun, or be whatever the Clave asked for this time. It didn’t involve my gun or showering blood off me, so I didn’t know how to be this.
Grabbing my keys, I headed for the door. All I had to do was get through dinner, which shouldn’t be hard if their mouths were full and busy chewing.
LA was a different world from Manhattan Beach, where I stayed. There were no lights, no life outside the beach bums and mommies in yoga pants scoping out the one of a kind smoothie shops lining the beach.
This city screamed, “Fuck me! Tease me! Show me just how you like it…”
Every time I stepped foot in this city, I felt the monster inside me grinning and biding his time until I let him out.
Chow was another piece of Jason’s life that bled into mine. It was a Japanese restaurant I would go to more than any kid should, but when you’re left to fend for yourself in a giant house with a staff that hates you enough, you learn to find your own food. Chow’s was the only place that didn’t care when I was ten and took a cab there. Rothschild was probably louder.
Pulling up to the curb, I made a shitty attempt to spare my rims of curb rash. I got out of my car and tossed my keys to the valet kid with his jaw on the floor. He must be new by the still impressed attitude no one sported in LA.
Looking at my phone, I smirked at Abigail’s texts. I wasn’t dumb. I knew it wasn’t her period, although that was a great assumption, being a guy who knows not a whole lot beyond kinks and no two women being the same.
Blaming her period was easier than telling her she needed to get laid. Men can always tell when a woman needs to get laid.
It’s never as obvious as the last girl at the bar or the girl who hits on you with no nerves; it’s the girls who pick a fight with you that are truly asking for it.
They need to stop teaching kids when the guy picks on you in grade school that means he likes you. Wrong. It means we're assholes, but when a girl does it in adulthood, that means some shit: You fucked up somewhere, or they need to be piped down… literally.
I knew I was in the clear with doing anything wrong. I had the best get-out-of-jail-free card by being her boss. I could tell her to do pretty much anything, and I would still be in the clear.
I don’t make the rules. I just break them.
The hostess at the front knew me, and she smiled when she saw me. “Your party is waiting for you in the upstairs lounge.”
I didn’t acknowledge her, which was a dangerous game that forced me to remember her name, when all I could remember about her was the way she moaned. It was a deal breaker in ever fucking her again. Too high pitched and frequent, it made it seem fake as fuck, and I was already two feet in a world that prided themselves on keeping up appearances.
Upstairs was the private area not offered to the public. You had to know it existed in the first place. Each step creaked and strained under my quick steps. I could relate; the anxiety was still beating under the Xan, just a lot duller now.
Rounding the corner, I knew the room was only a few feet away. A few more steps and there was no escape.
A guy in a leather jacket sat there with his foot on the booth’s edge and an arm laying over his knee. Tattoos covered his knuckles and so did gold jewelry that screamed old money. He had a full white beard trimmed up nicely with matching white hair. Well, ain’t this a fucking surprise.
He looked nothing like the Clave’s standards. Hell, I knew from experience, from the harsh looks and disapproving talks happening around me, instead of to me.
I thought I had met the owner of the Clave before, but if I were in the same room as this guy, we would have been a magnet yanking a paperclip to its side, trying to find each other.
“There he is! The spitfire. Come! Sit! We ordered sake...” He motioned to the chair next to him, and I sat down, pulling it out further, giving us enough room to adjust to each other. I was still stunned and didn’t know how to conceal it. My brows were a question mark on my face.
The man sitting with him was giant. The kind of tall that seemed like sitting had to be uncomfortable.
His skin was shimmering against the dim lighting, and his eyebrows were thick but sparse at the ends. His eyes held something that caught your attention and didn’t let go. One eye looked so dark it seemed black, and the other was icy blue rimmed with a dark color, confirming how unusual it was. His eyes begged you to draw conclusions, and I found myself asking if he was blind in one eye, if it was an accident, if he was straddling good and evil the way his eyes seemed to be.
The one I assumed was Zeus, the badass I didn’t remember, spoke again, while reaching out to slap my thigh. “Relax, Grimm.”
The big guy who I didn’t know at all leaned forward, as the girl with the tray of sake entered the room, and he almost whispered, “Alba… A little accident. I can still see with two eyes. What an icebreaker, right?” His hearty laugh caught me off guard as Zeus pushed a shot glass into my hand.
I had been worried that I was going to be bored babysitting the stuffed shirts of the Clave, but now I was worried about catching up.
“I don’t drink. Mixes with my meds,” I explained. Setting down the shot glass on the table, I noticed my hand shaking already. The meds were trying to battle the anxiety firing up, and I didn’t know which one was winning.
Zeus stopped lifting the shot to his lips, giving me a hard stare, trying to figure me out. “I chose you for a reason, Grimm. Savage, unapologetic, fun… unlike your brothers. They all bore me.”
He pushed the shot glass towards me again, and I had no choice. He o
wned the Clave, and the Clave owned my ass. Drink or perish.
That was exactly why I told Abigail to drop off my card at the club. I could handle them, but her in close proximity? Hard pass. The two men sitting in front of me would stain your soul and piss on your grave.
I was still protecting her with no real idea why.
Lifting my watch, I said into it: Hey Siri, remind me to talk to my therapist about protecting people.
Alba poured the sake into the shot glasses, and both of them started laughing at nothing, or maybe I missed it. They were like teenagers on the loose, instead of what I expected. It could have almost been refreshing, if I weren’t so on edge.
“I got us a table at Sins and Forgiveness. Did you guys eat?”
I could see the laughter evaporate between them, and they both look unamused. Even I knew that social cue. Sake was the only thing we were consuming besides bad behavior.
Healthy diets were for the fucked up of the world.
Standing up and leading the way, I felt Zeus’s heavy hand and rings slap down on my shoulder. “Business first. I have a problem I hear you’re good at fixing, Reaper.”
“I’m listening. Not agreeing… but I’ll hear you out.”
He let go of my shoulder and leaned against the wall, looking at me in the same harsh way, sizing me up, and trying to figure out how I became death instead of conquest, chaos, and famine. “There’s this group we oversee called the Cloth. Well, they’re getting messy and making up their own rules now. They were supposed to find this group for me and now there’s talks of some bodies.”
“And where do I come in? Don’t you have more power than I do?”
“Different talents, my boy. I need you to go check things out up there, and then we will see if your talents can fix things for me.” His fingers grazed his bottom lip as he spoke, and his head dipped just enough to make me think I could react freely, when I knew I couldn’t.
Drink or perish.
Kill or perish.
Bring about death like you chose to or perish.
And by “perish” I meant die in a way that looked accidental, but wasn’t. It would be like I never existed.
Nothing in my life was a choice when I was for hire, and the Clave owned my virgin ass.
“I have a feeling I’ll barely remember this conversation. Just text me what you need tomorrow.” I didn’t wait for an agreement when I followed Alba down the stairs. I wanted to avoid all talks of killing and what I do for the Clave as much as possible, at least until the Xan and sake mix had worn off.
Pulling out my phone, I shot Abigail a text that only read: Heading to S&F now.
Downstairs, their car pulled up before they even made it to the valet stand. Owning the Clave, or any secret society really, probably gave you the kind of clout that allowed you to twirl your fingers in dead air and someone knew exactly what that meant.
Stop talking.
The check.
Bring my car around.
I was downright envying this man’s skills to live amongst everyone and yet have minimal human contact.
That’s what I was striving for, but I was sandwiched in between Jason and the monster, leaving three of us competing for daylight.
“I’ll meet you guys there,” I tossed their way as Alba opened the car door for Zeus to climb in the back.
So there was dynamics. There always was.
Waiting by the valet stand, I handed the kid my ticket, and an enthused look came to the surface, realizing my car was the McLaren. “Can’t forget a car like that!”
I smiled, even though I didn’t want to. It was the thought that counted, right?
LA wasn’t so bad. People liked to complain for the sake of complaining. Transplants like Abigail weren’t supposed to love it, but she liked it enough to move here.
With a grin still attached to his thin lips, the kid stood next to the door, waiting for me to slip inside as I stepped off the sidewalk. I slipped him whatever cash I had in my wallet. My card was being held hostage by my assistant, my lifeline along with my last name. Money and power were the two things saving my ass these days.
Sins and Forgiveness was still opened to the public. The elite could rub elbows all they wanted, but the sinning was never solo. They needed the mundane, the working class, to be their puppets.
The club had two entrances, one on either side, like segregation. Sins was the entrance for the elite, while Forgiveness was how the public entered.
Parking in the back, my car was cloaked in darkness, with the only light coming from above the exit door of the club. I sat in my car for a few moments, questioning how exactly I made it there in one piece.
The alcohol was definitely fighting the Xanax in my system and creating fireworks. Combustible wasn’t even a good enough word for this, when it was so much worse.
Walking around the building that looked nondescript, I saw their Mercedes SUV sticking out like a sore thumb. Half of me wasn’t surprised, but the other half was hoping they’d get lost on the way here from Chow.
Regretting the Xan now, I let my knuckles knock against the window, and I headed towards the wall to pull out a smoke. I didn’t normally smoke either, but desperate times called for desperate fucking ways to deal with the stress.
Oleg, the owner of S&F, was a long-time enemy turned friend after he stopped his hobbies in trafficking people. He was a long-time Clave supporter, with or without the bad habits.
He was a mutt—mom was Russian and dad was a Kiwi. Not enough pedigree to get you a seat at Clave meetings, but enough to be in the inner circle.
I wasn’t surprised when the hostess’s hand landed on my forearm as I walked in. If we were being honest, I had probably fucked all the women here. They were safe bets with safe-word experience.
“Grimm, long time no see. Up in VIP?”
I knew smirking her direction was considered toying with her. She could take it. “Show us to my regular table?”
I spoke with my eyes as she looked behind me climbing the small set of three stairs up to the platform. She seemingly understood when she looked around me at my guests.
Everything was equal here, VIP or not. No upstairs. That was Oleg’s office, and only he saw it all.
There was still tons of privacy, with rooms branching off everywhere like a maze. A lot of sin… the forgiveness was for you to figure out Sunday.
We settled into the booth, and got the drinks flowing. The gangster version of Zeus and his creepy sidekick laughed at nothing again.
Looking at my phone for a warning text from Abigail, I grew more callous with every minute she disregarded me. Maybe the forced drinks on top and meds were to blame. I was feeling shit I was used to numbing. I was feeling shit I didn’t know what to do with. I wasn’t an ironic mess, but all my calculated neuroticism was all skewed.
I didn’t even notice the girl standing between Zeus’s legs. His hands snaked up the sides of her leather pants. “Am I peeking, or is she as sweet as butter?”
Neither of us answered him as she showed him off to the rest of the playground—the maze of sinning. From the platform, you could see all those who were not afraid to show you their sins, where normally a dance floor would be. Instead of a dance floor, there were cages hanging low, girls on silk ropes, and beds with black satin sheets. It didn’t stop anyone from dancing.
The bar was on the other side, glowing red, with all the bottles on display backlit with red too.
The DJ always wore a mask from behind his decks. Every time I saw him, it was a different mask. Tonight was Phantom of the Opera. How fitting.
Looking at everything, scanning my surroundings like I always did, I noticed a girl in a white, plain shirt tucked into her light wash jeans. Abigail was hard to miss in her outstandingly pure choice of clothing color.
Everyone was pure fucking black here, while she looked like the forgiveness we all were searching for.
Still no text message. She disregarded me again and chased the storm I am, f
earlessly.
Quickly texting her, all I wrote was: Look up.
Leaning into the railing blocking off the VIP, I left my face unamused. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
Babysitting just got interesting.
With the same pissed off attitude still tightly stretched on her face, I knew she wasn’t done picking fights before one word was said.
Zeus poured back into the VIP area at the worst possible time ever. Only now, he had a girl under each arm, and they all fell into the booth a thud.
Handing me my card, she looked around curiously at everything around her. Curiosity was the hardest emotion to conceal when it lit up every feature in a glow.
“This is above your paygrade, Abigail. Scamper home now.”
Not bothering to take out my wallet, I tossed the card onto the table next to me. Eventually someone would need to run it through the scanner to charge me for whatever damage they were going to do.
“I could have dropped your card off at dinner.”
I chuckled directly in her face, and I saw how the mad mixed with the curiosity she was having swirl in the depths of her stomach. Pushing her against the railing, I caged her in the exact way I wanted to.
“Why? Then I wouldn’t have been able see how uncomfortable you are right now.”
“I’m not… I’m not uncomfortable. I just didn’t know places like this really existed.”
I could feel her uneven breath against my neck at our close proximity. I could smell her green apple perfume. I could almost taste her on my tongue, but it wasn’t good enough. “Don’t look so down. It’s okay to be afraid, dirty up the white you’re so fond of wearing, be curious… and be the kind of wet I know you are right now.”
She looked mortified as she shuffled through her comebacks in her mind for one before I placed my finger ever-so-lightly against her full lips. “We’ve come this far… let’s not lie to each other. No one looks at me as hungry as you do. It’s a dead giveaway.” It wasn’t a full-blown lie.
She tried to lean further back into the railing, which had probably already been digging into her back. She cleared her throat slightly and tried to put on a brave face, just before she said, “You’re my boss.” Her features all tried so hard to look disgusted, when I knew she wasn’t.
