Maybe they did.
But what he failed to understand was the one thing I was beginning to see that he couldn’t: King wasn’t evil enough. It would take a very special kind of bastard to control a group who held no regard for human life, and he simply didn’t fit the profile. That was his fatal mistake.
Nevertheless, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that they existed. Slavery, torture, and murder as forms of entertainment? King even told me about a man who used to collect women’s skins and put them over his dead lover’s corpse like paper dolls.
Nasty.
And when members got bored of level one—as I called it—they went to level two and started dabbling in the occult. Also shocking was that they each paid a billion-dollar annual membership fee, and together, this money went into a sort of insurance pool, used to buy people off, shut them up, or make them disappear if they tried to interfere in a member’s business. According to King, they had politicians, judges, and CEOs from major companies from all around the world in their pockets. He called it a “membership perk,” complete immunity from the law. All it took was a net worth of ten billion dollars, an annual due of a billion, and a proclivity for brutality.
“So if there were no rules,” I asked, “what did you punish members for?”
“There are rules. Members are not allowed to steal from one another. They must trade and keep their agreements—verbal or written. They must obey the leader and not disclose the club to anyone outside.”
“And if they break the rules?”
“I had a team of powerful Seers to assist me in detaining the member, and then punished them if they were found to be guilty. Unfortunately, fate had its own punishment for me in store.”
King went on to explain that his wife found out he was still running things after he’d sworn to dismantle Ten Club. She left him and moved in with her parents back in San Francisco, where she was from. To get her back, he decided to step down and put another person in place to keep them in check.
He continued, “I chose Serina. She was the only member who had similar tools to mine.” He tapped the side of his head. I assumed he was referring to crawling inside people’s heads. “We worked out a deal for her to take my place. She would get my arsenal of objects and agreed to eliminate a few of the more dangerous members with axes to grind.”
“So you tried to leave.”
“Yes. And no. If I wanted to make things right with Mia, I needed to end them. Putting Serina in place was merely a Band-Aid. I knew eventually the members would start jockeying for leadership and eliminating competition. They are just as backstabbing as they are depraved. I thought to let it all play out—let the members do the work of killing each other off. I would take care of anyone left over. But my goal was to stay out of the picture once and for all, with the exception of that final piece.”
I gave it some thought. I wondered why he didn’t just invite them all to a private island and blow it up.
“When it comes to Ten Club, they have eyes and ears everywhere. To end them, one must look for the less obvious manner. I believed using their need for power against them was my best option. However, I never anticipated the Seers were busy hatching their own scheme. They thought they were more suited to lead the club and aligned with some members behind my back.”
I was on the edge of my seat. So these Seers who worked for him weren’t exactly loyal. Why did they work for him to begin with?
“It was more of a mutually beneficial relationship,” he explained. “I raised many from the dead. They owed me.”
I was about to ask how he’d done that and why he couldn’t do that for his wife and children when he added, “Ten Club ensured that door was closed forever.”
So while King was secretly planning his grand exit, where Serina would take the keys to the kingdom, the Seers were making their own plans. They wanted power. He wanted Ten Club to self-destruct.
He nodded his head of thick dark hair. “I called a mandatory meeting at my house in San Francisco to announce my departure. But as the last members were arriving, one of the Seers slipped up—I heard one thinking about how happy she would be when it was all over. I knew right away she was up to something, so I took her into another room and pressed her. Violently.”
I guessed he meant he tortured her.
“Yes,” he said, “and then the events unfolded as I told you.”