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Once they were in place, I nodded at Jesse, who pulled a blindfolded Tupot out of a second car driven by Brick.
“Where the hell am I? What’s going on?” he yelled and tried to figure things out.
“Let’s call it an unofficial welcome gift.” Rail chuckled behind me.
I flicked my hand, and Jesse tore off his blindfold and he squinted to clear his vision.
“Holy shit. Grim?” He looked up at me in confusion then lost his balance and fell backward on his ass. Jesse pulled him back up onto his knees. “Where the hell are we?” He looked around and paled when he saw the men. The very ones he’d outed to Jesse. They were bound and gagged in the center of some sort of contraption in what looked like the middle of Ass-fuck, Nowhere. We were actually an hour northwest of Vegas, just below my beloved Mines.
If the bottoms of those mines could speak…the stories could put a man away for eons.
“This is how we’ll start.” I ignored his question and pulled out my phone to let him know we still had his daughter. The photo of his twelve-year-old had been taken at the movies. Of course, a photo is subject to context, so this one had been taken next to Rail, who smiled widely for the camera.
“It was the Barbie movie,” Rail chimed in. “Have you seen it yet?” Of all the movies he could have taken her to, he’d chosen that one. “Wear pink.” He puffed smoke out his nose. “Big mistake not wearing pink,” he muttered to Morgan, who just made a face at him to shut up.
“Right now, she’s okay, but you’ll determine what her fate will be.” I swiped to the next photo. “Then there’s your wife.” I watched his face twist again. “Now, she’s a pretty little thing.”
“Dibs on her.” Morgan smirked at him. That was comical because Morgan wouldn’t hurt a woman for anything. He had hard lines drawn, and we all respected him for it.
“Please,” he started to beg like the piece of shit he was, “please don’t hurt them.”
“Let me get this straight. You can fuck with my life, but I can’t fuck with yours?” My rage built quickly.
“Mr. Gates, please, I didn’t have a choice. You don’t say no when the Cartel gives you orders.” What. What was that? I glanced at Trigger and saw he’d picked up on it. “They came to me, told me what they wanted, and I did what they said.”
“Explain fast, or your daughter loses her tongue.”
“No, no, no.” He held up his bound hands as he panicked. “Okay, okay, ahh,” his eyes went round, and the sweat on his forehead ran into his skin creases. “About a week before you came back to the city, I got a call.” He stopped to think, and I grew impatient. “Yes, then this Hispanic guy came and said that?—”
“What guy?”
“The one in the center with the long mustache.” He pointed at one of the men, and I ripped my gaze from him to the man who sat between the two others. “I remember him because he had on one of those cowboy hats, and a fancy belt, and, and…”
“Move it along.”
“He showed up at my office and handed me a photo of you, said you’d killed someone important and that you weren’t going to get away with it. He wanted me to mess up the work so’s to make sure you’d miss the deadline for the grand opening.”
“I see.” I ignored the fact that it was his own company that would look bad if the hotel missed its deadline. I allowed the anger to burn inside me as I stared at him. “And who did I supposedly kill?”
“Oh, God, I can’t remember. He didn’t say!” His eyes closed as he began to beg.
“Three,” I started a countdown, “two, your daughter really does have pretty eyes. It would be a shame to see the light in them go out.”
“Martin Castillo!” he cried, and I went still. “Martin Castillo!” He repeated through a sob. “That’s who they said you killed.” His mouth shaped into a sad clown face as he sobbed uncontrollably. “Please don’t hurt my baby.”
I tried not to look shocked. I’d known there might be some kind of blowback to Martin’s death, but I certainly hadn’t connected it to what was going on. My mind spun. Everyone had made their kill that day, and there shouldn’t have been any witnesses except those who were directly involved. Something nagged at the back of my mind, but it would have to wait. Right now, I had to find out exactly what this man knew, no matter what it took.
“Did this guy,” I pointed with my chin, “order the fire at my hotel?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. He used burner phones and business cards to hire people to screw with you.” His mouth foamed in the corners, and I grew tired of his whining.
“Tupot, I need you to pull yourself together and listen to me.”
He stopped his insufferable wailing while I bent down to his eye level.
“I want you to watch what I’m capable of, so that the next time someone comes to you and pulls this kind of bullshit, you need to ask yourself who is worse. Me or them?”
I pushed to my feet, snapped my knuckles, and walked toward the men in the contraption. Some music would be perfect right now, but I wanted to drill my point home. I wanted Tupot to hear every single snap of human bone, every cry this grown man would make while being disfigured. I wanted him to experience the silence as shock took over then the screams as I pulled him back to my hell. He needed to know what would happen if he ever crossed me again.
