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“No.” Tia crosses her arms over her chest.
“I cleared it with Owen.” Cole shrugs.
“Sure you did.” Finn rolls his eyes. “Take over here.” He kicks the dude on the floor, and Cole springs into action and flips the guy onto his stomach and kneels on his back, pulling both hands behind him and holding him in place.
Then Finn steps forward, he tucks his gun behind his back, and flicks open his penknife, and it gleams under the light, adding to the increasing tension in the room. “Put your hands flat on your desk.” His voice is dark, deadly.
Panic hits the manager, and his chest rises at a frantic speed, then his eyes flick around all of us, as if pleading for help, and sweat rolls down his cheeks. “Wh-what are you going to do?”
Finn stares at his blade, moving it in one direction, then the other, his gaze unwavering before he pulls his attention back to the squirming piece of shit. “I’m going to slice your fingers off one by fucking one.”
“Do we really have time for this shit?” I spit out, desperate for answers rather than torturing someone for kicks.
“We do.” Finn smiles toward me, and I swear I shudder at his crazed expression.
“Okay, okay listen. I swear he didn’t tell me anything useful.”
“What did he say?” Finn tilts his head. “Word for word.”
“He... he said. He said something about he was taking a trip down memory lane.”
“That it?” Finn asks as he takes a hold of the guy’s wrist, the blade within an inch of his fingers. “Yes. That’s it. I swear that’s it.”
My mind works over his words, unable to grasp the meaning behind them.
“I know where he is.” Tia’s voice is faint, and as I turn to face her, I’m struck by her ashen expression. “I know where he is,” she says louder this time, but the sound of her crippled voice has fear lancing through my chest, searing it so deep I’m worried there’s no coming back from it.
Cole stares back at her with hope in his eyes. “Where?”
“He’s in hell, Cole.” Her tone is laced in certainty. “He’s in literal hell.” The way she whispers the latter has my body curling tight. Anger, fear, and darkness consumes me, and without realizing it, the life in my hands diminishes, and it isn’t until he sags that I realize I killed him. Releasing his body, he slumps to the floor in a heap.
The manager moves to stand, but Finn moves quicker and slices his throat without hesitation, letting him fall to his desk in a stream of blood. Then, without warning, he whips out his gun from behind his back, aims, and pulls the trigger, and brain matter splatters onto the floor where the lifeless body beneath Cole slumps.
He turns toward us. “Let’s go get your guy.”
I only hope whatever trauma Lucas is enduring, he’s able to come back from, because we need him.
He’s ours.
Always has been, always will be.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
LUCAS
My head spins with dizziness, nausea, and unwelcome nostalgia as I scan over the familiar room. Dust now coats every surface, the same green carpet seems darker than it once did, and cobwebs hang from the ceiling. There’s no television or DVD player playing out the porn that was on repeat, but the same furniture is still here. The table and couch. I grimace at the reminder.
The scent of the room invades my nostrils, and I swallow back the bile building, creeping up from my stomach, through my chest and clogging in my throat, making me wince at the intensity to keep it at bay.
“Took me a minute to recognize you.” His thick accent fills the room. I’ve tried and failed for years to eradicate it from my memory. He blows out a cloud of smoke from where he sits on the couch, his thick legs open, waiting. He hasn’t changed a damn bit. Only, his skin is more weathered and his eyes crueler, if that’s possible.
I grind my teeth to rein in my growing temper as my hands wrestle with the cable ties behind my back.
The sick fuck chuckles. “You’re going nowhere. Where the fuck you gonna go?” He swings his arm out toward the staircase, knowing I’m incapacitated, or so he thinks.
My hands are restrained behind my back but I’m able to reach down to my tied ankles and pull my knife from my sock, then as I glare back at Viggo, I slice through the cable tie with a well-practiced ease that I’m grateful to Jace for teaching me. I wonder if he realized that one day I’d find myself in a position to need the skill. Shaking my head of the thought, I listen on in disgust when Viggo licks his thick lips as though I’m his next meal.
