When it reaches the lowest circle of hell, I step out of the elevator and into the concrete corridor that runs beneath Olympus’s gleaming kitchens. It’s not pretty down here. It’s ugly, intentionally so. Raw-edged concrete and metal pipes. The flickering fluorescent lights are daggers to the eyeball, but they’re better than the darkness. It could be anything hiding in the darkness.
My footsteps echo as I walk toward the storage room at the far end. The door is steel and windowless. I unlock it with a key that lives on a separate ring from all my others.
Inside, Aleksei’s latest problem is zip-tied to a folding chair.
He’s already been worked over—ribs mottled purple and black, lip split so deep I can see the pink of inner tissue, head lolling forward like his neck has already given up t
