My sister appeared, poking her mass of brown ringlets around her bedroom door.
“Girls night. You two stay here and watch a rom-com or some shit, yeah?” I said, giving my sister a look that conveyed more than words.Distract my wife and keep her calm while I brutally torture and murder someone.Raya nodded, understanding what was happening without me even voicing it.
Aria grabbed my arm, stopping me from going to the door. “I want to come. I want to hear what he has to say. He knows who I am, Sani.”
I stepped closer, holding her face in my hands. I knew she thought she could handle seeing my darkness, but I didn’t want her to have to yet. She’d already been through so much in such a short period. She wasn’t Soraya or Elenora. She wasn’t raised in our merciless world of brutality and violence. I had a feeling her mother had made damn sure she was protected from it for good reason, and I wanted to honour that as much as I could. Quinn Brown, or whoever she really was, risked her life to give her daughter a better one.
I may have dragged her back into something she never realised she belonged to, but that couldn’t be helped. She was my person. The one meant for me. But she needed to be eased in gradually. And I didn’t want to have to go easy on Callum for her sake.
“Stay here with Raya.” I kissed her pouty lips and smirked at her feisty glare. “I’ll find out everything he knows.”
“And then what?” she whispered, her eyes darting between mine.
“And then I’ll kill him for touching my wife.”
“Master plan,” Raya said sarcastically, folding her arms across her chest. “He won’t talk because he knows he’s already dead.”
Mamma Mia, I hated how my sister always had to intervene with logic when all I wanted to do was live out my murderous fantasies.
“Then I’ll find something he cares about more than his life.”
Raya smirked. She’d seen me in action more times than most, so she knew I was no rookie, but she also knew I was driven by my emotions. And I’d never been good at hiding them, unlike her.
“You already have all the information you could find on him. There’s nothing you can use to make him talk. It’s pointless to try.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “Go on then, Sorellina.I know you’re dying to tell me how I should do it.”
“Easy.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Play the long game. You blast Cher on repeat to keep yourself calm enough that you can torture him horrifically forhowever long it takes until the only thing he really wants is death. Then… he’ll talk just so it will end.”
Aria’s face had paled, and that was my sign I was making the right decision. One day she’d be ready, but today was not that day.
“And there’s the real Soraya Buccini, ladies and gentlemen,” I chuckled as Raya rolled her eyes. “They think I’m the psycho, but really, it’s always the quiet baby of the family.”
“Says the man who’s about to prance around to Cher while plucking someone’s eyeballs out.” Raya opened her door wider for Aria to enter. “Horror, thriller or rom-com?”
“Er…” Aria hesitated. “Wine, first?”
Raya chuckled. “Sure.”
I swiftly grabbed Aria and stole another kiss before heading down to the garage for my bike. It was a quick ride to my sanctuary, but the fun had obviously already begun without me.
Two of Callum’s men from the port were strapped into chairs, barely hanging onto their lives. Gio and a few of my men had been beating them for information for hours, but apparently, they hadn’t said a bloody word.
“You’re wasting your time,” a voice grumbled from one of the back cells, and I exchanged a look with my blood-covered brother.
“Left him alone for you to deal with as promised,” Gio said as I covered the distance between the battered men and the cell door with my long strides.
Looking through the small, barred window, I saw Callum sitting against the far wall, his head tilted back as if only the stone could hold it up. The stab wound I’d made to his shoulder had been bandaged to prevent him from bleeding out, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.
“Have something you want to say instead?” I asked, leaning one arm against the steel door.
He looked at me with no expression. “You might as well kill them. They won’t talk. None of them will.”
I peered over my shoulder at Gio, who delivered another punch to a soldier’s ribs just for good measure. The man spat blood onto the floor, groaning but still refusing to utter a word.
“We can spare them. You can come out here and take their place. Be a hero among your men.”
He scoffed. “You think I care about them? They aren’t my men. Kill them. You’re going to anyway and I couldn’t give a shit.”
