Page 28 of Claimed By the Ruthless King

I grab my laptop, flipping the lid, typing the number into the search bar. The number on the label is a zip code in Queens, the map pointing me toward a block of self-storage facilities...

I double click on the images, flicking through each one. Walking through this place during the day looks like it would be a death sentence, since there are no emergency exits, nowhere to run. Endless garage doors run off into the distance, each one painted orange. Looking too long sends shivers down my spine.

There’s something uncanny about this place. Over two hundred self-storage containers are in this corridor, almost all of them privately owned.

I click off the images, typing ‘Tuscan’ into the search bar along with the five-digit number, eager to see what the search results give me. Properties appear on the web page in the Tuscan region.

I scroll through the listings, wondering if this is just one big coincidence…

But I suppose there is only one way to find out.

9

SALVATORE

No wonder these patients are in hysteria when they’re trying to sleep next to beeping machines.

I wander through hospital corridors, searching for my informant’s room.

The receptionist told me to take a short-cut through the emergency department, following signs for the inpatient ward.

Turning the corner, I see a woman rise in her seat behind the desk, tuning out of the conversation with her coworkers to glare at me. Women usually melt to the floor when they see me unexpectedly, asking for photos, for autographs, but this particular woman looks like she holds a grudge against me.

I glance at the badge on her scrubs: Sapphire, Emergency Department.

“Are you here to see a patient, sir?” she says, cutting me off.

“Yes,” I reply, registering the young woman. “Lenny Foster. I believe he’s currently in one of the inpatient wards.”

“Follow signs into the main hospital and take the stairs up to level two.”

Which I was already in the process of doing…

“Thank you,” I say, continuing down the corridor, pushing open the double doors.

Hospitals are more depressing than graveyards. Being dead is better than dying. I can vouch for that after killing many men, seeing the terror disappear on their face as their spirit leaves their body. Death is cathartic. Living can be a nightmare if you’re doing it wrong, and ninety percent of people in this city are doing it wrong by reproducing, teaching their offspring how to live safe, mediocre lives. Mediocre values create mediocre people. It was easy for me to build an empire in a sleeping city.

My parents being deported back to Italy was a blessing in disguise. The Crows saved me, teaching me useful life skills. Why bother learning algebra, slaving away for years at school when there are easier, faster ways to make something of yourself?

I hated the world as a boy, desperate for the government to pay. They sent my family away, orphaning me. Without that pain, I would be no one.

I thrive in a world of mediocrity. Pain is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to feel it. Stick a tube in someone’s vein and you can wash everything away, the hurt, the deep yearning for change; morphine removes everything that can make a person great.

But by default, the human brain is wired to seek comfort, to avoid hardship. Too many people take their doctor’s words as gospel. The medications, the need for comfort; it all destroys what little drive people have to become something great.

But as I enter the ward, seeing patients struggling against tubes, refusing to listen to what their doctors are telling them, I realize Robert is right. People are starting to get tired of the comfort, hating billionaires like me who have the power to make a difference, because nothing we do will ever be enough for them.

For a while, seeing celebrities on the cover of Vogue can feel like a novelty. But novelties fade, motives change. I lock eyes with a patient across the hall and feel dread seep into my bones.

“What is this rich bastard doing here?”

“Calm down,” soothes the nurse, turning away from the computer to check on her patient. “The doctor will be here soon to⁠—”

“Fuck the doctor.”

I grind my jaw, heading to reception, moving swiftly on from the sick patients. The lady points me in the right direction of Lenny, and before I know it, I’m walking into the correct room, locking eyes with my very pissed off informant.

“Trust you to pay me a visit when I’m in the process of being discharged.”