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He smiled at me, a bright grin that seemed entirely disbelieving. “Why’s that, Tesoro?”
My lips pressed into a thin line. The next words that left my mouth sounded so foreign, I knew that the day before had changed me. I understood the rage he felt, the pulsing need to hurt. “So that when the time comes, I’ll know they deserve everything you do to them.”
Fifty-Six
Ryker
My waterproof boots carried me inside the warehouse, and it felt like I walked toward my destiny as the blood-stained hatchet swung at my side. We rarely went into an interrogation without all the information we could find, and what our investigator, Campbell, had dug up in Jason's finances was disturbing on so many levels.
Matteo didn't know what I knew. Not yet. He wouldn't interfere, I knew, even if the death of a cop would be inconvenient for him to cover up. Matteo pushed off the wall next to the freezer door, greeting me without the guard he never left the house without. "Simon's tying up our new friend," he explained, and I knew he didn't mean Jason.
Jason had been sitting in the warehouse since Enzo dropped him off the day before. "The driver?" I asked.
"Yes. We didn't get the women," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm sure you can imagine that Tiernan put them both under lock and key."
"I never should have stopped tailing her," I grunted, shaking my head in disgust. I'd let Calla sway me, her jealousy over me appealing to me on such a deep level that I'd not done my job properly.
"You were made," Matteo grunted. "It wouldn't have made a difference. They would have just found another way." He reached forward, touching my shoulder in a rare display of just how much he valued his family. "Calla's safe. The kids are safe. Now go in there and send Murphy a message not to fuck with our women."
I nodded, tucking my concern and regret back behind the mask of psychotic energy I wore so often. I always enjoyed torture. His eyes went over my shoulder briefly.
“You sure about this?” he asked, and I knew he was as skeptical as I’d have been if the roles were reversed.
But I'd enjoy this more than usual. I just hoped Calla could look beyond it. “Stay out of sight,” I tossed over my shoulder.
We went into the freezer, one after another. Jason sat quietly, glaring at us like he might have some kind of power. I was sure he was familiar with wielding the power over others, not because he was a cop.
But because he was a dirty one.
I ignored him, stepping up to the driver where he trembled in his chair. His body was already slick with sweat, from the exertion of fighting Simon and Matteo when they snatched him out of whatever hell hole he'd desperately tried to hide in. "You are going to tell me what the fuck Tiernan wanted with my woman and my kids." I pointed the hatchet at him, watching him try to flinch back. If the chair hadn't been bolted to the floor, he might have knocked his own ass out.
Wouldn't that be anticlimactic?
"They aren't your kids!" Jason yelled from his chair, but I continued to ignore him. Matteo and Simon stayed silent in the back. Even under normal circumstances, this would have been my show. It was my wheelhouse, my warehouse, my skill set.
But given that it had been my woman in danger? It was just mine.
"We didn't want the kids," the driver wheezed when the blade of the hatchet touched his neck. "Just the woman."
"And why was that?" I asked, letting the blade drag across the side of his neck so that blood welled under the shallow cut.
"Murphy just wanted to talk to you," he said, glancing at Matteo in the corner. "Wanted you more agreeable to shifting your allegiance to him. He figured if he had her, then you'd consider it. She was just the leverage."
"The only thing I'd consider is how quickly I could cut him into a thousand pieces before he bled to death," I snarled, swinging my arm back as far as I could.
The guy clenched his eyes shut as he pissed himself. "Wait! He was in on it." He nodded to Jason, who shot him a horrified look. "He works for Murphy. He has for years."
"I know," I whispered with a cruel smile. I swung my hatchet through the air, colliding with the side of his neck with all the strength I had. Blood sprayed all over me, splashing onto Jason where he screamed like the girl he was. It disappointed me when the axe didn't go all the way through, so with the driver's blank eyes staring back at me, I swung again.
It was only when his head rolled to the floor that I turned my attention to Jason. He looked at me like I was something out of his worst nightmares, and with the amount of blood I could feel on my skin, that probably wasn't far off.
"You're a fucking psychopath!" he yelled.
"Funny. Calla likes to question my sanity too," I mocked, stepping closer to him. When my blade touched his throat, I turned back to Matteo and Simon. I nodded to Matteo, and he went to the freezer door.
Calla stepped in hesitantly, her eyes instantly going to the severed head on the floor. She swallowed visibly, but made her way to me as she looked away from the head and the matching corpse.
I hadn’t wanted her there, hadn’t wanted her to see that part of me. But she’d already seen a glimpse the day before, and at her insistence, I couldn’t say no.
