Sloan moved closer, stopping just in front of him. “Let me explain how this is going to go. You’re going to tell me who paid you. You’re going to tell me who helped you in that surgical room, who falsified her chart, and you’re going to tell me every name attached to this. You are also going to tell me exactly what you did to my mate in that operating room.”
Phillips gave a nervous laugh that died almost instantly. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Sloan leaned down, his hands gripping the arms of the chair on each side of the doctor. Metal groaned beneath his fingers. “I deal with monsters every day.”
Phillips’s eyes dropped to the bending metal.
“And right now,” Sloan continued, his voice lowering, “I’m the monster in this roomyouare dealing with.”
The doctor’s throat worked as he swallowed again. “I was only doing what I was told.”
"For a fucking paycheck!" Sloan’s roar echoed in the room just as he bitch slapped the bastard. "Do not play me."
For a split second, all he saw were flashes of Becky. Pale and sick. Trying to be strong while her whole world changed in the blink of an eye. Sitting in Slade’s office, saying she thought they had done something to her. Asking how he was taking the news that he was the father. Still worrying about him, about how his Warriors would look at him, when she was the one who had been violated.
Sloan’s hand shot out and wrapped around Phillips’s throat.
The doctor jerked, his eyes widening as Sloan leaned in close.
“You don’t get to make yourself small in this,” Sloan said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You don’t get to hide behind orders. And you definitely don’t get to sit there and pretend you were just some man following instructions. You are the man who betrayed my mate.” His grip tightened enough to make Phillips gasp. “And that earns every bit of rage I have in me.”
Phillips tried to speak, but Sloan tightened his grip just enough to stop him.
“You put your hands on my wife while she trusted you.” Sloan’s eyes were blacker than they had ever been. “You lied to her. You drugged her. You violated my wife, my mate. I have killed others for less.”
Phillips’s face started to turn a ghostly shade of bluish gray.
Sloan let go suddenly, and the doctor sagged forward, choking and gasping, tears springing to his eyes as he fought for air.
“I didn’t know she was yours,” Phillips rasped the lie after a few minutes of trying to talk.
Everything in Sloan went silent.
He crouched in front of him. “Third mistake.” He sneered knowing his eyes were blacker than they’ve ever been.
“No.” Phillips shook his head vigorously. “I swear it.”
“She was targeted because she was mated to me,” Sloan continued, ignoring his pitiful denials. “Did she bring you a bigger payday, you piece of shit?”
Phillips started crying like a little bitch, squeezing his eyes closed as he shook his head. “Please.”
Sloan grabbed the back of the chair and yanked it hard enough that the legs screamed against the floor bolts. Phillips cried out, his whole body jerking.
“Don’t you fucking close your eyes against the nightmare that faces you.” Sloan’s voice was low and deadly. “Who paid you?”
Phillips’s eyes flew open, wild and wet. “I don’t know his real name.”
Sloan leaned closer. “Then give me the name he used.”
Phillips’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Sloan growled in warning. “Answer me!”
Phillips began to shake harder. “Mercer.” Phillips cried out, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.
Sloan didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t give Phillips one damn thing to read. Inside, every instinct he had locked onto that name.
Mercer.
