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XANDER
It's a fucking upheaval. Ryder has his hand fisted so hard I'm certain the nails are biting grooves into his palm.
His guilt is clear, as is the fact that it’s unnecessary. He’s blaming himself for something that really isn't his fault.
It's no one's but mine. The walls around us are the grotesque gray of an underground building, which we currently are. A man hangs upside down from a chain hitched to a pole, his face about as colorful as a bleached bone in a desert.
Well. I guess it would be, considering how much blood has been taken from him. The floor is coated with it, a vicious dark pool that seems far too long.
"How much longer does he have?" I snap at Ryder.
"About an hour. Should be dead in less than that if his weak lungs don't hold up." Ryder walks over to the man and sinks a solid punch into his stomach, his shoulders snapping back under his leather jacket.
The crunch of bones and the loud wail that opens the man's lips do nothing for the anger boiling through me.
I pull a gun from the hostler that swings across my torso and walk over to him. There's no need to waste my time on scum like him.
Ryder hears my footsteps and turns his head to me. He stops and then lopes towards me fast, his footsteps biting the ground between us. He places a hand on my arm and hisses at me. "What are you doing?"
"Killing him off. He's useless to me."
"We don't have the information we need from him,” Ryder turns to glare at the man who is crying, the tears dripping out of fat black eyelids. He’s been tortured for hours, and yet, still no information from him.
He won't say a word if we beat him all day. He is, after all, a man of the Mafia. It is after all one of the reasons he had been ours.
He understands this is the end of every traitor. And he deserves every second of the pain we have given him as punishment.
Because he sold us out. To the fucking Russians, no less. And now the news of my father's Illness is in the streets, in everyone's mouth. There will be hell to pay, and I will start with him
“You,” I spit. “Talk.”
The man’s eyes flutters open. He wheezes slightly. “No.”
“Then you’ll die.”
“I’m dead anyway,” he whispers.
“There’s time. Ryder can call a doctor. Talk, and I’ll save you,” I grunt at him.
The man shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. If you don’t kill me, they will.”
“Who are they?”
He lapses into silence. I can see it, then, in the shape of his jaw.
He’s resigned himself to die.
There’s no reason for me to keep going. I turn and look back at Ryder.
"We won't have the information we need from him. So better we use him to inform the rest." I growl, the words tumbling like dry weed past my lips.
He deserves to die. Things are going to be so much worse now. I need to get to my father. I need to protect my men. I need to nip the uprising of my very own men in the bud. I need to get my family to safety. And I need to make sure I have a tight grasp on things.
"Let me do it." He takes a gun from his thighs, and the click as he pulls the hammer echoes through the dim room. "You go to your family."
I turn away from him, walk a few steps, then turn fast and click at the hammer of my gun. A few seconds later, the man slumps forward on his chains, his shoulders relaxing in death.
I still feel nothing. Nothing but anger. Rage. Wrath. Fury. I want to rip something apart. I want to kick and rage, but all that is tucked away inside. Beneath the layers of control I've been taught since my tender years to express.
