“We want exactly what you’ve been trying to take from us, Patrick… peace,” I state, my jaw tightening with a grim finality. “And since you and Jerome have made that impossible, we’re going to use you to ensure the Dragons never draw another breath in this town.” I straighten my spine, looking down at the weak, pathetic man who once thought he was untouchable. “Consider yourself the bait, Patrick. And Jerome is exactly the kind of bottom-feeder who won’t be able to resist the hook.”
“He’ll kill you all!” he shouts. His voice cracks, the volume a desperate attempt to drown out the terror vibrating in his own bones. He yanks at the shackles, the metallic clatter echoing frantically off the stone walls. “Nobody you care about is safe! Jerome will take you all out for this.” The threat is a last-ditch effort of a cornered animal trying to find a way back into the light, but in this lightless vault, his words carry no weight.
“You’re a sad, pathetic man,” Rip muses. He leans back against the damp stone wall of the crypt, his shadow stretching long and distorted in the flickering light. “You think he’ll come for you with the hopes you’ll be alive once you cross our gates? You’re delusional.” The finality in Rip’s voice hangs heavy in the stagnant air of the vault, punctuating the cold reality that Patrick’s previous world of political shields and high-end mansions has been permanently incinerated.
Patrick begins to thrash around, the chains he’s bound with clinking against the wall as he tries to free himself. “Jerome will come get me, you’ll see, and once I’m free, I’ll help him burn your compound to the ground!”
“He still doesn’t get it,” I sigh, shaking my head. “It hasn’t sunk in how screwed he is now that we have him as a hostage.”
“Then let’s explain it to him,” Riptide mumbles.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Slayer
I step forwardinto Patrick’s line of sight, the metallic tang of mildew and his rising terror filling my lungs.
“Rip’s right, Patrick.” Repeating the words from earlier, I state, “You aren’t a lieutenant or a partner to Jerome anymore. You’re a liability he needs to scrub from his books before the feds link the network and their criminal activities back to his and your mother’s doorstep,” I growl.
Watching him tremble, I realize he still hasn't grasped the depth of the betrayal he’s about to face. He’s just the decoy we’ve meticulously set to snare the head of the gang once and for all.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists.
“We don’t?” I counter, leaning into his personal space until I can see the angst-filled dilation of his pupils. Looks like reality is finally beginning to set in. “Are you saying you don’t know things about him and the inner workings of the Dragons that’ll take him down and keep him locked behind bars for the remainder of hislife?” I let the question hang in the stagnant air, watching as the weight of his own knowledge begins to crush him.
He knows where the bodies are buried, both figuratively and literally, and Jerome isn’t the type of man to leave those kinds of loose ends dangling when the federal government is knocking on the door. Patrick is a walking roadmap to the Dragons’ demise, and in this lightless vault, he’s finally starting to realize that his only value now is the blood we’re prepared to let him spill.
Patrick turns his head trying to escape us but everywhere it turns, his eyes land on one of my brothers. There is no mercy in their expressions, only the cold, calculated intent of men who have waited months for this moment. “You’re a dead man, you already know that. The question is, do you want an easy painless death we can offer you, or one full of torture that we know is awaiting you if Jerome gets his hands on you?” Riptide asks, his voice like the closing of a tomb.
We know we have him, we just need his head to catch up. There’s no way out of this crypt, no political favor that can reach through these stone walls, no mother left to scrub away his sins. He needs to realize, and quickly, that his life is no longer his to make decisions on, every breath he draws is now at the mercy of the Kings. He won’t live past his expiration date, one that’s approaching with the relentless speed of a locomotive. It might not be this very hour, and it might not even be tomorrow, but the end is coming, and there’s no doubt about that finality. Patrick won’t be able to charm his way out with silver-tongued lies or pay enough money to make this particular problem vanish. In this situation, the currency of his old world is worthless, and his only future is the one we’re about to dictate.
“Talking isn’t working, maybe we need to get more creative,” Icer suggests. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does youlisten, because if you don’t, the outcome is usually deadly. He reaches into the leather kit he brought along, the metallic clink of various tools sounding like a death omen in the oppressive silence of the vault. Icer doesn’t need to shout to be terrifying, his detached approach to pain is enough to break even the most hardened men, and Patrick is anything but hardened. He’s a soft creature of privilege who has never known true suffering, but that is about to change. “What do you think, Patrick? Should we remove a finger or two, rip some toenails out, or pierce your tongue since you’ve decided not to use it to tell us what we want to know?”
Icer’s movements are slow and deliberate, a master craftsman preparing his workspace. He pulls out a pair of heavy-duty pliers, the light glinting off the cold steel, and sets them on a small stone ledge with a sharp, resonant thud. Patrick’s eyes follow the tool, his breathing turning into a series of panicked, shallow wheezes. The arrogance he wore like a suit of armor just hours ago has completely disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but a quivering, broken man who is finally realizing that his mother’s political influence can’t reach into the depths of a Kings’ crypt.
“Jerome won't even recognize what’s left of you when we’re through,” Icer continues, his voice a low, emotionless drone that is far scarier than any scream. He reaches back into the kit and produces a long, slender needle, testing the point against the pad of his thumb until a single drop of blood appears. “The Dragons think they know violence, but they’ve only ever played at it. We live in it. It's our language, Patrick, and right now, you’re failing the class.”
Riptide steps forward, his shadow engulfing Patrick’s huddled form. He doesn’t say a word, just watches with a grim, satisfiedfocus. The air in the tomb is thick with the scent of copper and old earth, a stifling weight that seems to press the very air out of Patrick’s lungs. We need the location of the Dallas syndicate’s primary hub, since we suspect they’re the ones hiding Jerome, and if we have to dismantle Patrick piece by piece to get the information, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The time for negotiations ended the moment the first Dragon touched one of our own, and the reckoning has only just begun.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Patrick chants as Icer depletes the space between them. The sound of his own terror is a broken melody that echoes off the cold stone walls of the vault, a pathetic attempt to ward off the inevitable. He presses himself back against the damp masonry until the rough surface bites into his skin, but there is nowhere left to hide. Icer moves with the slow, predatory grace of a man who has done this a thousand times, his shadow stretching long and distorted over the quivering man in the shackles. Every step our enforcer takes is a deliberate countdown. Patrick’s eyes are wide, fixed on the heavy-duty pliers clutched in Icer’s meaty hand, the metal glinting with a lethal promise. The air in the crypt is thick with the scent of copper and desperation, a suffocating weight that seems to steal the very oxygen from Patrick’s lungs.
“Please! I’ll tell you everything!” he screeches, the chant breaking into a high-pitched plea. His bravado has completely evaporated, replaced by a raw, primal need for survival. He looks at Riptide, then at me, searching for a shred of mercy in our expressions, but he finds only the cold, unyielding resolve of two men who have reached the end of their patience. The time for silver-tongued lies and political shields is over.
In the silence of the catacombs, the reckoning has finally arrived, and Icer is just the man to deliver it.
Riptide stands his ground, knowing as well as I do that if we give in now that Icer has shown his hand, Patrick will eventually clamp up again. The spoiled brat needs an incentive to keep those lips moving and provide the location of the primary hub where Jerome’s likely hiding. We need the truth, not a filtered version designed to save his own skin. Riptide offers a nod to Icer, a silent directive to proceed. In response, our enforcer doesn’t just grunt, he flashes a blinding smile that never reaches his icy blue eyes, a terrifying signal that the real work is about to begin.
With the heavy-duty pliers in hand, Icer leans down and rips Patrick’s expensive house shoes off and tosses them over his back before he starts singing in a low, haunting rasp, “This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy went home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. This little piggy went wee-wee-wee, all the way home.” When he reaches the last toe in the song, he grips the toenail with the steel tool, and with a violent twist of his wrist, yanks it from the bed. Icer goes down the line in quick succession, removing every toenail on Patrick’s left foot.
Patrick’s mouth falls open in a silent scream before he finally finds his voice and squeals like a little bitch, his body thrashing against the shackles as blood begins to bloom on the surface of the floor.
“I’ll tell you anything!” he shouts, the words breaking through the frantic, hiccup hitches of his breathing as slobber and snot coat his face in a mask of total, wretched defeat. He looks at us with wide, dilated eyes, the facade of a predator completely erased by the reality of the prey. “Please, just stop! I’ll give you the location, the codes, the names... everything! Just don’t let him touch me again!” The stench of his terror is thick in thestagnant air of the vault, mixing with the sharp, metallic tang of blood. He’s a broken man, a hollow shell of the arrogant sidekick who once thought he was untouchable behind his mother’s political skirt, and as he blubbers his desperate confessions, I realize that Jerome is finally within our reach. All it took was a kidnapping and five toenails ripped from their beds.
Riptide moves with deliberation, grabbing the old kitchen chair from the corner that he reserves specifically for interrogations. He turns it around with a resonant scrape against the floor and straddles it, leaning his massive arms across the backrest. He looms over Patrick, his presence a suffocating weight that seems to drain the last shred of air from the cell. “We have questions and you need to answer them,” Riptide rumbles, his tone one that leaves no room for hesitation or deceit. The interrogation is no longer a game of cat and mouse, it’s the final harvest of a war that’s been brewing for far too long, and Patrick is about to become the architect of his own partner’s demise.
The desperation in his voice echoes off the boulder walls, a pathetic soundtrack to his unraveling. He’s leaking information like the spineless weasel he is, desperate to trade any secret for a moment’s reprieve from Icer’s sadistic brutality. I watch him tremble in his shackles, the realization sinking in that we have him exactly where we want him—broken, terrified, and ready to hand us the keys to Jerome’s kingdom on a silver platter.
