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I used the hammer to press into his throat, tilting him back so that I could see the pain in his eyes. “You put your hands on my wife,” I growled. “Why?”
“I didn’t know who she was, I swear,” he whimpered. Matteo chuckled, stripping off his suit jacket and rolling up his shirt sleeves.
“Liar,” he grinned darkly, turning his attention to the man. The small knife in his hand was perfect for one thing and one thing only. As small as it was, the blade was hefty, and Ryker kept it as sharp as could be. “Should I take a finger for each lie you tell?” he asked.
The man swallowed and his eyes went to the hands tied to the arms of the chair. So easy for us to access. “Please no.”
“Then why did you touch what’s mine?” I asked again, pressing into his throat harder until he choked. When he didn’t answer, Matteo pressed the blade to his pinky finger. Blood welled from the cut, but he didn’t exert enough pressure to take it. Not yet.
“Last chance,” he said with a raised brow. “We both know you aren’t walking out of here alive. There’s no reason it can’t be a quick death if you give me what I want.” When there was still no answer, I didn’t need to look to see that Matteo had chopped straight through the bone. The man’s resounding howl nearly covered up the sound of the bone snapping in two and it nearly covered the thud of the finger falling to the warehouse floor, but it didn’t cover the wet sound his blood made as it poured out of him. “Shall we do another?” Matteo asked, and the man whimpered pathetically. “Would you like to do one, Lino?”
“Absolutely,” I smiled at him.
“You’re fucked in the head. What is fucking wrong with you?!” the man shouted as I took the knife from Matteo. I went to the thumb on his other hand, feeling less merciful than Matteo had evidently.
“What did you want with my wife?” I asked again, touching the blade to the thumb as he tried to bend it in—tried to protect it from me. “Even monkeys have opposable thumbs.”
“Her husband paid me!” he shrieked.
“Wrong. I’m her husband,” I snarled, pressing down until the bone gave way and his thumb fell to the floor. I didn’t care that it bled like a motherfucker or that my suit sleeve didn’t avoid the resulting mess. I’d gladly wear the blood of the men who tried to take my Little Dove away from me.
“A blond guy! He said he was her husband,” he sobbed. “He paid me $1000 to bring her to the old grain mill! That’s all I know. I swear.”
“Get Enzo on it.” I nodded to Emilio, and he darted out to make the call.
Matteo and I exchanged a look between us, and I knew he agreed with the assessment that the man didn’t know anything else, but that didn’t mean we could stop.
With Samara’s life at risk, we had to do everything in our power to be absolutely sure.
And we did.
Hours passed before we loaded his body into the incinerator, but we did it with the assurance that Connor was a threat to Samara.
If only he’d still been at the grain mill when Enzo got there.
Thirty
Samara
There was blood on his shirt.
So much fucking blood.
I didn’t dare ask, didn’t dare bring it up. His jacket was conspicuously missing and judging by the amount of red that stained his white shirt, I had to guess it was because it had been saturated completely. By the time he and Matteo pulled up to the Estate, I’d been a nervous wreck. Only Ivory and Scar’s reassurance that everything would be fine had even made a dent in my growing horror with every hour that passed.
He hadn’t touched me, hadn’t pulled me to him like he couldn’t be away from me even though I wanted to be held more than anything. Instead, we’d just gone to the car waiting in the driveway and gone home.
Like it was any other night where I’d just hung out with my friends in peace and not a night where he came home to me covered in blood.
He’d left me standing in the bedroom, going to shower without a word. I gave him a few minutes, staying where he’d left me and feeling stripped bare despite the clothes covering me. When I finally moved, my feet didn’t carry me to the closet like I’d intended.
I went into the bathroom, dropping my clothes on the floor quickly and stepping into the massive shower behind him.
My torso pressed to his back, wrapping my hands around him to hug him tight. I tried to ignore how cold he felt, even as the water scalded us as it beat down in a steady waterfall. “Not now, Samara,” he grunted.
“I need to know that you’re okay,” I whispered back, and he dropped his head forward. Water dripped off the side of his face, falling to the shower floor as he seemed to cave in on himself.
“I’m not. Not even remotely okay. Connor paid him to take you, and somehow we still don’t have him.”
