I nod. I wasn’t expecting anything different. “What do you need me to do?”
“Whatever I tell you to.”
Cosimo glances at his watch. “I’ll leave you two to it. I’ve got to go meet Mom for breakfast. You coming tonight, Les? You know she doesn’t like it when you skip out on holidays.”
Alessio appears to think for a second, and then he nods. “Okay. I’ll be there. With Nero’s help, I should be done in time.”
“Great.” Cosimo turns and leaves without another word. Good riddance.
“So what’s going on here?” I gesture at his prisoner.
“I told him I’d decrease the process by one minute for every tooth he pulls out.”
“The process?”
“I remove some body parts and keep them alive while I do it.”
Christ. What happened to a good old-fashioned beating? “Sounds like a lot of work.”
“This one killed one of our guys by shooting him in the back. Nothing I hate more than cowards,” Alessio explains.
“Sure. Makes sense.” It doesn’t make any sense.
“Well, have a seat. This might take a while.”
It does take a while.Six hours precisely. Six hours during which I get a front row seat to this psycho’s interrogation methods, excluding the half hour I take to go pick him up some lunch.
I have to give it to him. He knows what he’s doing. The prisoner sings all of his secrets like a little bird.
When Alessio finally puts his tools down, I give him a weary look. “What now?”
He takes off his apron and drops it to the ground. “You’re on cleanup duty. I’ll be in my office. Come by when you’re finished.”
I glance around. Blood, guts, and teeth. I haven’t had to do this kind of shit since the very early days when I was at the very bottom of the ladder.
It takes me another four hours to clean everything. I have to saw the dude into parts and put them into vats of acid. It’s the hardest work I’ve done in ages.
By the end of it, my body’s sweating and sore. Blood’s caked under my nails. I seriously regret wearing nice clothes this morning. They’re ruined. Everything’s going straight into the fucking furnace.
I enter the adjacent office to tell Alessio I’m finished. He’s on his laptop, playing Sims from the look of it. I walk closer and study the screen. It’s a farm at the foot of a mountain, with sheep andcows and horses milling around. There’s a barn and a guy on a red tractor.
Okay then.
“I’m done.”
He turns on his gaming chair and steeples his hands in front of him. He’s changed into a threadbare black T-shirt that’s peppered with holes. “Good. You’re ready for your next task then.”
I wipe the sweat off my forehead. “What is it?”
“I heard you box.”
“I did before I left.”
“You any good?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He stands up, and his desk chair swivels behind him. “Follow me.”
