Page 146 of Captivated

It had been six straight hours of getting the shit beat out of him in between various methods of torture. And shit, Joe had to give it to Trevor Mason—he was tough. He hadn’t wanted to break, but Joe was what he was.

And he was fucking resilient.

Relentless, too.

He was going to keep going.

He could keep going.

It had been a matter of a couple of hours from the time Joe gave Lucian a name to the point when Trevor was dropped off—bound, gagged, and with a hood over his head—to a lower Brooklyn warehouse for Joe to extract information.

And now it was morning.

He was still working on getting that info.

His control was being tested.

Joe heard the kneecap pop, and Trevor let out a gagging sob. He knew it then that he was going to finally get something useful from the prick.

“Ryan,” the man gasped-sobbed, “Ryan Thompson. That’s the alias he’s been using for a while to do s-shit on the l-low.”

Joe left the knife where it was stuck in Trevor’s knee, and turned to his father. “Call Cory, and mention the name. See what it brings up.”

His father cocked a brow, and didn’t soften in his tense stance with his arms crossed over his chest. “Take a break, Joe.”

Nope.

He shook his head. “I’m good here.”

“Joe—”

“Leave him be, D,” Theo murmured. “Let’s make that call.”

Joe stood straight, and stared out the grimy window a few feet away. Beside him, Lucian paced. At the other side of the warehouse, the other two Marcello brothers stood beside one another in silence.

So had been the way they worked all night.

“P-please, please just … please.”

Trevor’s mumbled, slurred cries fell on deaf ears.

Joe just didn’t care.

“What are you thinking?” Joe asked Lucian.

The man’s pacing didn’t stop. “Nothing you want to hear.”

“I would want to hear it, actually.”

Lucian sighed. “We’re coming down to four days, now. Four days he’s had her. So, what has he done to her in that time, Joe? We get her back alive, but then what? What can I expect to get back? Certainly not the same woman he—”

“Lucian,” Dante murmured quietly from the other side of the warehouse, “don’t do that, brother.”

Lucian’s jaw tightened. “Let me stew, Dante. It’s all I fucking have.”

Joe felt about the same.

“Like I said,” Lucian told Joe, “you don’t want to know what’s in my head.”