by Kailin Gow
Blue Room Confidentials
Blue Room Confidentials
VOL. 3
Kailin Gow
Blue Room Confidentials (Blue Room Confidentials Vol 3)
Published by Kailin Gow Books
Copyright © 2016 Kailin Gow
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, please contact:
Kailingowbooks(at)aol(dot)com.
First Edition.
Printed in the United States of America.
Note
If you haven’t read The Blue Room Series, this series may contain some spoilers.
Although this series can be read separately from The Blue Room, it is highly recommended that you also read The Blue Room Series.
DEDICATION
To My Readers, Betas, and Kailin Krusaders, Thank You for All Your Love, Support, and Encouragement.
Prologue
Staci
A wave of shock and sadness hits me. I can't breathe. My breath catches in my throat. My heart is beating so quickly, like a hummingbird trapped inside my chest, pressing its wings again and again against my ribcage, struggling to get out. Is this really how it ends? Double-crossed by the one woman in this whole Blue Room whom I thought was my friend? I'd trusted Jaymie. Since Rita died she'd been the only person I knew how to trust. Losing Rita had been a blow – maybe even the first great and agonizing blow of my entire life.
My mother's sickness hadn't hit me as hard – perhaps because I'd never let myself lose hope. Even when she was in the hospice, even when the doctors told us there was no hope left, I'd clung on to something – something intangible, something unnamable, some conviction that there was more to the story than what I was told. I'd refused to let myself believe anything but that there would be hope – for my mother, for me, that she would survive, despite all odds, despite how little money we had, despite the fact she was getting sicker and sicker every day. But Rita – that was final. She was dead – dead is dead – I'd said goodbye to her, in the end, and known in the sickening pit of my stomach that there was nothing we could do for her.
I'd met Jaymie at Rita's funeral. Jaymie had cried – I remember that much. That was what had drawn me to her. Knowing that Jaymie had cried for Rita – just as I had. Seeing someone else crying for Rita, someone else's tears trickling down their cheeks and onto the end of their nose, made the pain of losing Rita for good a little bit easier. How couldn't I have trusted her? She was the one person in my life who really understood Rita's other life, the other world Rita had left behind, the world of the PI I could never enter. I suppose in a way I'd projected a lot of my feelings about Rita onto her. I'd trusted her immediately – too soon, I supposed – because she reminded me so much of the woman I had loved and lost. I'd treated her the way I would have treated Rita – if she were here. The way she would never be here again – because she was dead, lost, gone. I'd treated her like my dearest friend. And I know now how wrong that was. The way she'd betrayed me – sneaking Ben in here, ambushing me with him, and now stopping me from fighting him myself, defending Terrence, who is now locked in mortal combat with Ben, the two of them pummeling each other, slamming each other's heads against the furniture, throwing each other across the room with an intensity and a force I'd never before seen.
What does this mean? Is Jaymie in league with Ben? Is she in league with Roni Taylor – the woman who once tried to kill me and relished every moment of the suffering she brought me? Is she in league with Gloria Tannenbaum – the woman willing to kill her own grandchild if it meant preserving what she saw as her family honor, her superior family name?
I brought this witch into our lives. I brought her into the world of me and Terrence and Xander and Danny – and it's my job to get her out.
I'm not going to let this happen to me, I think. I'm through with being a victim – through with letting others hurt me, take advantage of me, use me for their own deceitful ends. After I left the Blue Room I hired a martial artists and a personal self-defense expert to teach me their ways – to train me in how to take care of myself. I was sick of letting others – even people I loved – take care of me. Time to fight my own way. And so I grab the wrist of Jaymie's hand that's holding me back and twist it as hard as I can. Jaymie gives out a loud and shocked yowl – a sound I relish. It means that she knows I mean business.
“What the hell, Staci?” She struggles, but the element of surprise beats her superior strength. I've twisted her wrist, turning it all the way around her long and slender back, yanking it upwards so that she feels the full force of my rage in her arm. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”
“What the hell you think you're doing is the question I should be asking. You set us up. I trusted you – I brought you into my confidence – I brought you into all our lives – and look at how you've repaid me. Who are you really working for? Who are you in league with?”
Jaymie looks up at me with big, dark, pool-like eyes? “What are you talking about?” she asks me, her lips forming a round red O. “I'm providing you exactly the information you asked for. The information you wanted to know about...”
“No – you brought me to Ben. The man who tried to get me killed before thanks to Roni Taylor. And who's clearly here to kill me again.”
“Ben?” Jaymie looks confused. Her eyes are blank.
“Yes, Ben. That asshole over there who is pummeling the shit out of my fiancé thank you very much.” I nod towards Ben, who is still grappling like a wrestler with Terrence.
“Right,” Jaymie says vaguely. “No, no Staci you don't understand. That's not who he really is.”
'What isn't who he really is?”
“He's not really Ben. His name is Rick. At least, that's the name I call him by. Ben's just his undercover name.”
“Undercover name?” I drop Jaymie's arms in shock. What's going on here? “What are you talking about? What do you mean – undercover name? Who is this man – and who are you?”
Jaymie lets out a sigh of deep and utter, profound exasperation. “That's what I've been trying to tell you, Staci!” She rolls her eyes. “That's why I brought you here in the first place. Ben – or Rick – whatever you want to call him. He's...”
A big groan sounds from across the room, echoing through the suite. Jaymie and I look over in unison, catching a glimpse of Ben just as he falls to the floor. Terrence stands triumphantly above him. Terrence had gotten Ben right in the jaw, knocking him plain out cold. He's unconscious on the floor. Terrence raises his foot, making as if to kick him.
“Rick!” Jaymie cries in shock, rising from the bed and running over to where his prone unconscious body lies on the silk carpeting.
“Jesus...” Her face has gone white. All the color is drained out of it, like she's been sucked dry. “I can't get a strong pulse. He's fading...shit.”
“What are you talking about?” Terrence rolls his eyes. “Don't be ridiculous. I just punched him – that's all – it's not going to do any serious damage.”
“He just got out of the Ward. He's not in good shape – he shouldn't even have been here in the first place...”
“The Ward?” Terrence's voice mingles with my own.
Jaymie looks annoyed and impatient. She raises an eyebrow. “The Ward,” she says simply, “where other undercover agents are brought in after being wounded. It's where they get a change in identities and move on. And that's what we
did with Rick. Brought him in there instead of a normal hospital – where they'd ask too many questions. After being shot and left for dead by your stepmother, Roni, I might add,” she says looking straight at Terrence.
“No way,” Terrence's jaw drops open. “You mean...Ben was an undercover agent too? Working at the Blue Room and everything?”
“Like Rita?” I'm getting more and more confused.
“I don't understand,” Terrence says, furrowing his brow. “Who was Ben – I mean Rick – working for?”
“I think he was Rita's backup,” Jaymie says, her lips pursed in serious contemplation. “I'm not sure. Rita called him in later on, when things got more dangerous and complicated. She realized a lot was afoot. I think that's when she realized that she was in over her head and couldn't handle it on her own. Called in backup from the agency.”
“So Ben was working for Xander too?” I ask. That can't be right. “I know Rita was for a while, but...”
“That's what I thought at first,” Jaymie said. “I've been on his trail for a while. But when I met him recently after having started at the Blue Room, I scheduled a meeting with him. Needed him to tell me what he knew. He said he wouldn't tell me. That he had to see you in person, to tell you directly. I guess he developed a soft spot for you after all – what do you know? He wouldn't tell me one single solitary word unless he got to see you first. I guess he wanted to explain – what he was doing mixed in with Roni Taylor. He seemed to be on her side but I get the picture the story was a lot more complicated than that.”
“So he was a double agent?” I put the pieces together. 'Is that it? He pretended to be working for Roni – but he was secretly working with Rita all along....” I shook my head. “But I don't understand. Why couldn't he just tell me what happened to Rita once he realized that was my mission.”
“Because,” Terrence comes over to sit by me, “He probably didn't even know himself. He was hired as a bartender back when Rita was still doing escorting shifts at the Blue Room. Then when she was attacked, he came to me. He told me he wanted to get more money – and was willing to do what Rita and the girls were doing. So he asked for a chance – working the Blue Room, getting dates. I gave him that chance. I should have known, or at least suspected, it was to be working undercover.”
I look at Ben, lying there on the floor. He looks so weak, so sick. I almost feel sorry for him. Does that mean Ben was on my side the whole time – even when I thought he wanted me dead?
“When will he gain consciousness?” I ask.
“Soon, I hope,” says Jaymie. She feels his pulse. “I think he'll pull through.”
“He said he knew who Roz's killer was.”
At that, both Terrence and Jaymie both look nervous. And I'm nervous too. Does one of them know something that I don't?
Chapter 1
Xander Blue
I stay up all night staring at the ceiling. Not that I would have minded – once upon a time. I used to take such pleasure in this house, in its beauty, in the delicately marbled ceiling with its perfectly crafted Californian claire de lune moldings. Just looking at it meant that I'd succeeded in the world: that I was a Blue, possessed of no less wealth and no less power than any of my half brothers or nephews. This house was once a symbol of my wealth, my power, my success. I used to look up at that ceiling and think damn, Xander, you've done well. The expensive light fixtures, all shiny and chrome, the antique chandeliers I'd imported from the Marche aux Puces in Paris, the Italian marble peering and shimmering out at me from the bathroom across the room – all these were things I relished.
Once. Before I met Marina – before I fell in love and lost her. Before I met Staci. In another life, all I cared about was money, was power, was business. I lived for the thrill of closing a deal, the adrenaline rush that only comes when you've managed to shake a hand worth millions of dollars and know that at least even figures of that tremendous and unbelievable wealth would soon belong to you. It was my obsession with business, with making it, with amounting a vast fortune that I didn't even need that stopped me from boarding that plane with Marina the day it disappeared over the cresting blue of the waves. And ever since then, this house has been her tomb. A reminder that I am only alive because I cared more about yammering on the phone with some hedge fund hot shot honcho than going on a seaplane flight with my wife. That I would have been dead – if I had gone – but at least I would have died with her. In her final moments, she would not have been alone...
Final moments...or were they?
I'm still not sure what to make of Jaymie. Without her blonde wig, she was the spitting image of Marina. Sure, her nose was a little different, her lips slightly fuller, but there was something so mistakably Marina about the way she moved, the way she smiled. It's crazy to think it – that I could have been speaking to my own wife, fucking my own wife, and never even notice that they were the same person? It was unbelievable.
And yet, with her in my arms, I had felt like I was holding a stranger. In bed, the wild animal way with which she conducted herself, the passionate savagery – it was so unlike Marina. Marina had been a natural at sex, but she'd always been half-surprised at how much she enjoyed it: a whole feast for the senses entirely new to her. She used to laugh with joy and delight every time she had an orgasm, as if the feeling had just snuck up on her. Not Jaymie. Jaymie moved with clear intention, knowing what she wanted, making sure she'd get it no matter what.
But what if they were the same person? What a fool that would make me, I thought. Seeing my wife and not knowing it.
But if Jaymie is Marina – what is she doing here? Why take the chance that I would recognize her by getting close to me, sleeping with me, doing everything possible to ensure that I would find out it was her – if it was her. Wasn't it more likely that the two women just looked really similar – more so with their hair the same color – and that my agonizing longing for Marina is making me see thing sin Jaymie's face, Jaymie's voice, Jaymie's eyes that aren't even there in the first place?
I sigh heavily as I stare at the cracks in my ceiling. I've really made a mess of things, haven't I? For Jaymie, for Marina – and for Staci.
After all, I unknowingly nearly wrecked Staci's life – killing her, even – by playing that awful role. I hadn't meant to do it. It wasn't malicious, at first. I'd promised my godmother Gloria Tannenbaum that I would do whatever she asked, whatever she needed, for the good of the Tannenbaum family. I'd given her my word. I just hadn't known that “whatever she needed” meant trying to get rid of an innocent girl with Tannenbaum blood Gloria Tannenbaum hadn't approved of – nor that “trying to get rid of” would mean risking her life.
If I hadn't done that, I wonder mournfully, would Staci have chosen me over Terrence? Would she have trusted me fully, in a way that she never would be able to do after knowing of my betrayal, knowing that I was watching her all the time she thought she was watching me? I don't know. All I know is that even now, Gloria Tannenbaum has a sickly hold over me I can't deny. She may be dead and gone, but she is here – with me. She's in the Blue Room. She is the mystery and the key to all the other mysteries in this place. But why? What did she want out of the Blue Room? What secrets were here for her?
I try to sort out all I know, sifting it from what I do not. I know that Gloria had enlisted the services of Roni Taylor to work the Blue Room girls for a scheme more valuable than prostitution: getting the Blue Room girls to use the dirty details and secrets gleaned from the most intimate sessions with their various powerful and influential patrons to get information that Gloria Tannenbaum could use as collateral for blackmail and financial and political leverage – but what else?
To find out the truth of the mystery, I have to go to the source. To the Blue Vault itself.
It's the most secret, the most exclusive chamber in the Blue Room. The only people with access to it are me, Terrence, and Danny. Not even Roni ever had access to this chamber – the one place in the entire hotel where the full deta
ils of clients, including their full names and code names, are stored. Mr. A to Mr. Z – all there. With their addresses, their phone numbers, their credit cards on file. Everything you need to bring down a man, make him fall to his knees.
I drive back to the Blue Room. It's three or four in the morning but I'm too wired to sleep. I head straight to the Vaults – using my fingerprints to open the door: one of the strongest things about our security is how it's biologically-determined. I go into the confidential files. And finally I look at the true identities of the Blue Room patrons.
I run down the list, my eyes scanning the names. Mr. A – Rudolf Pullmann, owner of Landcorp. Mr. B – Carlos de Rosita, a minor noble now living in Monaco. Mr. C, Mr. D, Mr. E, Mr. F – all politicans, senators, presidential hopefuls in so many different countries, royalty, sheikhs, corporation holders, even religious officials of more than one tradition.
All with one thing in common.
I recognize their names. I know them.
Every single one of the Blue Room's patrons is someone who had done or was currently doing business with the Tannenbaum family. Land deals, special permits, real estate offerings, mergers and acquisitions. Not a single stranger among them.
This is getting crazy, I think.
But it's not Mr. A, B, C, or D that interest me. They - I know already. They - I've seen on the cover of Forbes and the Fortune 500.
It's Mr. P to Mr. Z. Men nobody is supposed to know about. Secret oligarchs, arms dealers, mob bosses – the ones with billions of dollars whose names nobody has ever heard of, because they make their money in ways that aren't normally considered legal, or even sane. Dealers in exotic animal parts, smuggled diamonds, peddling Soviet-era weapons to terrorist groups in the Middle East. The worst of what humanity has to offer – and the richest. All here. All in the Blue Room. The biggest collection of criminals outside Interpol's most wanted list.