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All the same kind of photos, all the subjects in the pictures clothed, at least to some degree. More photos of stone walls, a few columns with shackles nailed to them, a rusty butcher’s knife on a bloodstained floor.
Photo after photo, handful after handful, none of the subjects looked familiar. Not one.
Not until I’d taken out every one of the photos and found the piece of white paper at the bottom of the box. A piece of paper with nothing but five strange symbols written on it.
Five symbols I recognized.
I sucked in a deep breath.
“Valeria.”
Chapter Three
Brute
Liam Jones looked like a fish dangling on a hook. Or maybe the mental imagery was just thanks to my foray into fishing yesterday. He hung from the open ceiling joists of one of the Old Dogs’ warehouses, his wrists shackled, his toes hovering an inch above the floor.
“You thought you wouldn’t have to pay for what you did?” I asked, cocking back and letting my fist fly. The first blow of the evening. It wouldn’t be the last.
Liam grunted and groaned while his body tried to curl up into itself.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know,” he panted.
“Bullshit,” Tate hissed, laying into him with three solid jabs to his ribs. Tate’s name might mean “cheerful”, but at the moment he looked anything but. Actually, he looked ready to rip Liam’s balls off.
When he cocked back to deliver a fourth blow, I grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back.
“Easy, my friend. No need to rush through this. We’ve got plenty of time.”
He inhaled deep and let it out through his nose, then nodded. “You’re right.” He looked up at Liam. “We’ve got all night.”
Dynamite—a man with copper hair and a flair for explosives, God bless him—got in on the action with a sharp jab to our dangling fish’s back, catching him right in the kidney.
Liam screamed, and his body jerked.
The asshole was going to be pissing blood for a week—assuming we let him live that long.
Tate came back in, punching high with a shot to Liam’s armpit.
Fuck, I bet that one hurt. The roar he let out certainly suggested it did.
“Someone wanna gag him?” I said. “All that screaming’s giving me a headache.”
“Hey, Brute?” a woman’s voice called from outside the warehouse, just beyond the closed door. “Do you want to tell your friend here to let me in?”
Every head in the room turned toward the door, staring at it quizzically.
But I knew that voice.
It didn’t belong to any sweetheart from the clubhouse or to any of the guys’ old ladies.
“We’re a little busy here, darling,” I called back, but I had a sinking feeling I knew why she was here. Fucking Gabe Costa.
The warehouse was so quiet, I could hear her huff. “I know exactly what you’re doing in there, Brute. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
I chuckled. The girl was like a snappy chihuahua, but I had no doubt when that sweet little bitch set her teeth, she dug in and didn’t let go.
“Let her in,” I called to Old Mike.
