AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This won’t do you any good, you know,” he said. “No matter what you hear from me, you’re all going down. We were just the first, because we’ve got the direct connection. A call went out, wide, with quite the bounty on your heads. Every mercenary group in the country will be eager to bring in your heads.”
A gleam had sparked in his eyes. He was relishing the idea of intimidating me.
I let him have a minor victory, wincing and hunching my shoulders a little more. “Why would they care so much about us?”
He shook his head, a hint of a grin crossing his lips, weary though it was. “Like I said, I don’t know. I just know you’re dead meat.”
Big talk for a man who didn’t currently look like much more than meat himself. I kept that observation silent and prodded in a different direction, letting a hint of panic color my words. “Fuck, I knew we were screwed. Who put out the call? Who’s got it in for us?”
“A man you’re going to regret you ever crossed,” our captive said darkly, and then sputtered several wet-sounding coughs. I suspected there was some internal bleeding going on.
I switched tactics just a tad to prompt him to spill more. “The guys I work for are the most powerful crew out there. That isn’t possible.”
The man managed a feeble-sounding snort. “They might like to think so, but they’re nothing compared to the real kings of the criminal world.”
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe the Chaos Crew wasn’t anywhere near as big as various mafia-style organizations, and we didn’t have as wide a reach as those, but we weren’t aiming to be some kind of syndicate. We could have taken down any of those trumped-up pricks any time we wanted. But I guessed they liked to think that wasn’t true.
“Some kind of mafioso, huh?” I said doubtfully. “We’ve tangled with the Russian mob and the Italians, even the Chinese. Sounds like you’re just bluffing.”
The man just sneered at me with so much confidence that I found my own was shaken. Was there someone higher up than the mafias who had it out for us? Just how well connected were the people who’d run Dess’s household?
They had managed to nearly get the better of us at the old meat factory. That didn’t bode well.
“Please,” I said, going back into meek mode. “If we can’t get out of this shit situation, at least give me something so I can protect myself. I’ll make a run for it after I cut you loose and let the others deal with this fucking problem.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t even know his name. Just that when he says jump, you’d better jump. And a whole lot of mercs are doing that right now.”
I sensed that I’d gotten everything I could out of that line of questioning, as much as it frustrated me. But now that I had him feeling superior to me, it was the perfect time to throw a spanner into the works and see what came out of him when I took him by surprise.
I sucked in a breath and frowned at him. “How does this all connect to Damien Malik?”
The guy stiffened too quickly for him to hide his reaction. He forced his body to relax a moment later, but I’d already marked his response. He knew something about Malik—something that related to this powerful criminal figure he’d been taunting me with.
Was Malik on this master criminal’s payroll too? Had the guy been lying and he happened to know that Malik was the master criminal?
I stepped toward him. “We know he’s mixed up in this somehow. You obviously do too. Do we have to watch out for him?”
The guy’s eyes narrowed. His walls were going up again. “I’d say we all have to watch out for that fucker.”
“What do you mean? What’s he been doing?”
The anxiety I showed didn’t get me anywhere this time. The man had turned even cagier. He simply shot me a tight smirk and sat in silence.
This information could be the key to everything—to the attack on us, to Dess’s kidnapping and training—all the mysteries we’d been working so hard to unravel. I released my cautious demeanor just a little, framing my eagerness as desperation. “Come on, man. Just give me this one thing, and I’ll cut you loose right now.”
The man just kept giving me a crooked but mocking smile even as his head started to droop again, and a prickle of real frustration shot through my chest. I was so close, and this asshole decided to balk now?
“Look at you,” I said, moving close enough to give his chair a little shove. “You’re halfway free already. Help yourself, you idiot!”
He chuckled, but it was a hopeless sound that knotted my stomach. If a person started feeling they had nothing left to lose, you had no more leverage.
“Your boys will kill me anyway,” he said in an even raspier voice than before. His eyelids quivered as a swell of pain must have washed over him. “And if somehow you got me out of here, he’d kill me because he’d assume I’d talked. There’s no fucking way out. Just give it up.”
No. I didn’t give in that easily, and neither should this halfwit. I shoved his chair again, distantly aware that my cringing front was falling away and not particularly caring. I had to shock something out of this asshole before he slipped from my grasp completely. Julius was counting on me—Dess was counting on me—
The chair skidded a few inches to the side, its legs grating against the concrete floor. I recognized my mistake a split-second too late.
I’d jostled the guy toward the torture table. His free arm whipped out, and his fingers closed around the handle of the knife I’d left on the edge.
