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I shove my chair back and give a satisfied smile when he cowers. Leaning forward, I gently slap his cheek and my expression turns sober. “If I find out you’re holding out on me, Mason, I’ll have to pay that pretty wife of yours a visit. I’ll make you watch what I do to her before I carve out your eyeballs.”
He balks and his eyes bug out, but he nods his understanding. I’ve reached the door, and I’m about to walk out when something else occurs to me. I tilt my head and watch him in my peripheral. “How’d you know his name?”
“W-what?”
“You said he was a ghost. Creep even wore a mask. So how the fuck do you know his full name?” I slowly turn so I’m looking straight at him.
“Oh.” The tension goes out of him and his shoulders drop. “Over the years, Oscar came to trust me. We shared a bottle of single malt one night after we closed a deal and he let it slip.”
“You and Oscar shared a bottle of single malt?”
He blinks as I take a step toward his desk. “Yeah.”
“To celebrate a deal that involved selling innocent women and kids to monsters?”
All the blood drains from his face as he realizes his mistake. “I told you I d-didn’t—”
I slam my hands on his desk, cutting off his obvious lie. “No. You said over the years he came to trust you. So you knew by then. You knew what you’d done, and you fucking celebrated with a bottle of Scotch?”
A series of images flash through my mind. A much younger Keres, scared out of her fucking mind, crowded in the back of a truck with other children. Those children, huddled together, crying. A tiny girl with tangled dark brown hair being held down by a faceless man. Keres—the beautiful, fearless woman I’ve come to know—viciously brutalized. That night she woke us up with her screams, that was her reliving the nightmares she survived. A lightning bolt of indescribable rage strikes the center of my chest, splitting my heart in two.
Michaelson shakes his head. “I have kids,” he snivels, tears and snot dripping from his chin.
I vault over the desk and glare down at him. “And I’m sure they’ll be much better off without a father like you.” He scrambles back in his chair, but he’s too late. I pin his arms to the floor with my knees, and my fists start flying. Every punch is in honor of one of the innocent souls whose lives he helped to ruin. For every parent who lost a child, every child who lost a mother. For Keres. Whatever the fuck they did to fill her with hate and vengeance and pain. I keep punching, until his face is no longer a face at all. Until bits of his skull are embedded in my knuckles and brain matter is splattered all over my upper body.
When I finally stop, I close my eyes and try to catch my breath. Pain from my throbbing knuckles finally registers, and I wince. At least we got a name.
On my way out the door, I lift the head of the guy with the bandanna. He’s still out cold, but I can’t afford any witnesses, so I make quick work of slitting his throat before cleaning myself up the best I can in the small bathroom at the back of the office.
Outside, Keres is bouncing on her toes while Romeo sits astride his bike watching her. The look in his eyes makes me uneasy, but I shake it off. He never catches feelings. She’s just a good fuck.
“Did you get anything?” she asks, eyes wide and curious.
“I got his name.”
Romeo whistles. “Nice work, buddy.”
Keres doesn’t say anything. She opens her mouth, then closes it, all the while staring at me like I’m the Second Coming. She sways on her feet, and I instinctively reach out and grab her arm. She glances down and gasps. “Your hands, Ace. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Just need to clean up when we get back to the motel.”
“You really got his name?” she whispers, almost like she’s afraid the truth I just learned will be swept away on the breeze if she says those words too loudly.
“Yeah.”
Her stoic mask lowers for a moment, giving me a glimpse at her pain and the hope that she might finally get what she’s spent so much time searching for. “Who is he?”
My grip tightens on her arm and jolts her back to our reality. We’re not friends. I’m not her fucking savior here. “Where’s Mia?”
Her brow furrows, and just before the mask slams back into place, her eyes fill with sorrow. “When I find him, Mia will be returned unharmed.”
Dammit. For a second there, I really hoped her gratitude would make her more agreeable. I should have known better. She might have been a helpless child once, but that child was replaced by a stone-cold bitch long before I met her. I toss her arm away and put my helmet on. “We better go before anyone turns up here.”
“Who is he, Ace?”
I ignore her and start my engine. She curses me, but I pull down my visor and rev the engine to tune her out. I’ll give the name to Nathan and Lorenzo and wait for them to come up with something for us to chase. Until then, Keres can go fuck herself. This is the only leverage we have left to find Mia, and I’m not letting her out of my sight until we do.
Chapter
