Scandal:The Complete Series(57)

I nod at Nate. “I don’t know what to do.”

“All right,” Nate says, standing up. “Let’s go take a peek.”

It takes me a second to actually believe that not only is he letting me go but he’s actually going with me. I brush aside the thought he might be misleading me or, worse, setting me up, because I can’t believe Jax would have left me with him if he didn’t trust him.

I follow Nate silently down the steps to the basement, my heart straining to keep up with the adrenaline flood. When we get down to the long hallway, Nate opens the first door on the right and pushes me inside.

“Wait a second,” I begin saying when he turns on the light in the dark room. It’s an office with a wall plastered with monitors.

“We’ll have to find out where they are first,” he says as he sits down at the console that controls all the feeds.

My eyes haze over the unusual scenes on the monitors: a girl performing a private dance for a man whose face is hidden in the dark, another girl bent over someone’s knee getting spanked, a man in chains and a leather outfit sitting on the floor, waiting for someone. I blush a little as Nate brings up the feed from an orgy room but then my eyes catch sight of Jax.

“Bingo,” Nate says, “the Shadow Room.”

“Is that where they are?”

“Yes, we can watch them without being watched.”

He takes us through a door in the back to a narrow hallway that must be parallel to the main one. The doors I see must be backdoors of sorts. Nate opens one of them just a crack and sticks his head in. “Nope,” he says, “wrong rabbit hole.”

“You said you’re a guest but you know your way around. Are you sure that’s all there is to it?”

“Different lifetime,” is all he says as he opens a second door. “That’s it,” he says, “go inside.”

“Ahem, Nate? This is an empty room,” I say as soon as he closes the door but then he turns a switch on and as light floods the room, the back wall is transformed into a window to the Shadow Room.

“This is where customers can sit and watch without being seen,” he says.

“Watch? You mean things like sex?”

Nate grins at me. “Things exactly like sex, yes. Let’s turn the sound on.”

With that he flips a switch and almost instantly, I hear Jax talk. “You know how Lucius does it,” he’s saying. “He protects his own.”

I walk to the window, practically gluing my nose to it. My eyes go from Jax to Brad to the man whose name is Wolf. I hold my breath as I take in the details of his demeanor and size. A good head taller than Jaxson, built like an armored vehicle, steely eyes on a hard, angular face that’s not without its barbarian charms. I get goosebumps thinking that’s the kind of man Maddy preferred to date.

“Lucius can go fuck himself,” Wolf says now, his voice as rigid as the rest of him. “I’m talking to you, flower boy. What are you willing to sacrifice to get to the truth?”

“Nobody has to sacrifice anything,” Brad says. “Take it easy, Wolf.”

Wolf turns to Brad. “You little weasel, you brought him here, didn’t you? You fucking told him about Madison, didn’t you, you fucking cunt?”

My muscles twitch in my abdomen, and sweat beads cover my forehead and palms at his words.

“Wolf, c’mon, man,” Brad says. “It’s a fair question he’s asking.”

“You fucking want to trap me? You got another think coming,” Wolf says, pulling a gun out of his back pocket to put to Brad’s head.

My head spins as Jax pulls a gun out fast as lightning from somewhere, faster than Wolf, faster than anyone alive I would think.

“We have to do something,” I scream.

“Fuck.” Nate says. “I have to get you out of here.”

“Help him,” I shriek, out of control.

Nate puts his arms around me to calm me down. “Quiet, it’ll be all right. Jax can handle this.”

“Stay the fuck out of my way, you fucking cunts,” I hear Wolf’s voice as he’s backing away.

Jax’s gun is still trained on Wolf until he exits the room. I don’t know how to still my frenzied heart, how to make my blood stop buzzing. Jax has been armed this whole time? How? Why didn’t he tell me? He’s like a magician to always keep the gun out of my sight.

Nate hurries me up the stairs and physically places me in my seat. The noise and the sexual music and the glistening dancers and the threatening eyes everywhere in the dark spin in my vision.

I think I might throw up. My stomach pushes against my lungs.

“Just act cool,” Nate says finally, touching his hand to mine.