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1
The chilled air in the refrigerated warehouse crept across the back of my neck, but it did nothing to cool my internal rage.
“P-please, Boss. I did nothing. I never met that guy until tonight. It was a set-up.” Blood and saliva dribbled from Eddie’s ruined face, dripping onto the plastic beneath his suspended body.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” I asked Eddie, picking up an iron crowbar.
My usual conversational mask hid the fury that burned underneath my skin as I twisted the metal object around in my hands.
Eddie widened his eyes. “N-no! Never!”
Of course, he thought I was daft. It was by design, but my men should have known better. Once they became traitors to rival gangs, who knew what went through their heads?
For the best part of a year, I’d been chasing information leaks and whispers of double-crossing. Many men had died painfully, and I still seemed no closer to piecing it together. There was a rat in my organisation, possibly more than one, but I needed to prove it. This man was a pawn, but that didn’t mean he would get away with leaking information to the Stefanov gang.
With gang leader Boyan Stefanov set to be released from prison any day on a technicality, I needed this bullshit cleared up. I liked a break in the chain of evidence as much as the next criminal, but that piece of shite returning to the streets would pose me a headache. The Stefanovs ran a human trafficking ring, amongst other things. We clashed in the past, and they were responsible for the death of my uncle.
“Please,” Eddie wept, tears joining the fluids running from his face.
“Pathetic.” Loch, my adoptive brother and right-hand man, rolled his eyes.
“Tell me what you told them,” I said to Eddie.
“H-he wanted to know about the clubs.”
I rolled the cool metal around in my hand, testing its weight. This piece of shite betrayed and insulted me, and the need to carve him up beat at my temples.
“And you thought it was a good idea to reveal sensitive information about my organisation to some eejit you met in a bar?”
“No! No! I’d seen him before. I swear. I didn’t know he was working for Stefanov’s crew. I swear!”
I smashed the iron bar down in a wide arc, crushing it into his ribs. Eddie screamed. The snapping sound and reverberation through my arms told me I’d cracked a good number of ribs and possibly even punctured a lung. I watched him swing, panting and crying.
“Here’s the craic. I don’t believe you.” I heaved another swing and hit him in his gut.
He screamed again, and then the little shite passed out.
“Fecking hell.” I tossed the iron bar onto the table, making the tools jump and clatter.
Loch scowled, no doubt unhappy about me messing up his neatly lined-up torture devices.
“Want me to wake him up?” Loch said, prepping a syringe of adrenaline.
“Fecking wasting our time with this piece of shite.”
“The contact might be more helpful. He’s up next.”
I groaned internally. I liked torture as much as the next man, but clearing up this mess was time-consuming. My organisation usually ran smoothly. The reputation I built over the years as a roguish psychopath kept the wheels turning. People couldn’t make me out, but they feared me, which worked.
“Wake him up. Time to give him some incentive.”
The lights in the warehouse glinted off Loch’s bald head as he stalked over to Eddie’s limp form. He jabbed the syringe into his neck, and Eddie roused, moaning.
I grabbed the crowbar again, stepped back up to him, and tipped his chin back with a curved end.
“You know how this will go for you. But you can decide how it goes for Jackie and the kids.”
His eyes widened. “You wouldn’t. You-you don’t hurt women.”
