I follow his gaze. “What’s in there?” I inquire. I dart forward, but when I try the handle, it’s locked.
“More weapons.”
I frown. “No, it’s not.” Sudden panic flushes through me. I don’t know how I know that, but I’m suddenly one thousand percent sure that he’s lying to me. “What the hell is in there, Kian?”
He gives me an abrasive look laced with impatience. “You really want to know?”
“Am I going to walk in there and see my brother’s body?” I ask bluntly.
He raises his eyebrows and regards me calmly. “I wouldn’t lie about killing your brother,” he says.
“Open the door, Kian.”
I expect him to fight me, but he pulls out a small silver key and opens the door.
The first thing that hits me is the smell. An overpowering mix of chemicals that I can’t quite distinguish from one another. As I step deeper into the room, my eyes adjust to the darkness and I realize that the walls are portioned out into compartments that look like beds. Except that they’re spaced too close together. Stacked one on top of the other, actually.
They’re not beds. They’re containers.
And I have no doubt about what’s inside of them.
“Oh my God…”
“Renata.”
I whip around, my eyes wide horror. “These are bodies.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What the fuck is this, Kian?”
“It’s a… morgue,” he admits. “Sort of. The bodies are embalmed.”
I shake my head, feeling suddenly dizzy and nauseous. “I don’t understand. Why would you keep your enemies’ bodies like this?”
“Because they’re not my enemies,” he explains coldly. “These are my men.”
I look around with a confused frown. “What…?”
“These are all my men that have given their lives in the ongoing conflict between the Clan and your family’s supporters,” he tells me. “I’ve prepared their bodies to be transported back to Ireland so that their loved ones can bury them.”
I freeze in place. Body after body after body… It’s morbid. It’s maybe the most nauseating thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
But at the same time, I feel… relieved, maybe? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it’s close.
“Okay,” I say, doing my best to breathe and stay calm. “But why are they here? Shouldn’t they be, like, on their way to Ireland?”
His eyes cloud over, and I realize I’ve unwittingly stumbled across the secret he’s been trying to keep from me.
“Kian?”
“I was going to bring you in here,” he tells me tonelessly. “I was going to show you the cost of your brother’s pointless war. To rub your nose in the blood and teach you how things work in the real world.”
My mouth pops open. It’s unspeakably cruel. Foul. Heinous. What kind of man could even dream up such a thing?
“It was at the beginning, Renata,” he tells me as he reads the horror on my face. “Before we… Before things changed between us.”
I turn around, feeling bile rise up in my stomach. I stumble out of the room and towards the staircase. But even when I clumsily step onto the top deck, the fresh air I suck into my lungs does little to calm me down. The salt only reminds me of the chemicals in the room full of dead men just a few feet below.