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I call back to Luca. I watch him drag a bound man into the garage. He’s got a hood on, but I know he’s gagged because that’s how we always do it. Lorenzo follows them and kicks the guy in the kneecap. I hear the muffled scream and watch as he tries to stand up. But Luca yanks on him, keeping him from getting his feet under him. Lorenzo kicks the opposite ankle, barking at him to stand up. They keeping doing their routine until he’s sprawled on the floor beside Duffy. I step out as I finish drying my hands and drop the paper towels in the burn barrel.
“Morris.”
His head turns in my direction, but he’s not sure where I am. I take ten silent steps to the left.
“Morris.”
He tries to tell where I am again as he lumbers to his feet. I move silently again until I’m behind him. I grab a pipe as I pass the table.
“Morris.”
He spins around, right into the bat, as it lands across his ribs. I actually hear them crack. He retches. I nod to Luca, who yanks the hood off. Philip gasps and gags as he looks up at me from his bent over position. I see no surprise, so he knew he’d be seeing me. I walk over and grab a handful of hair, wrenching his head back, forcing him to stand as I also pull up. I shove him toward Duffy. His scream is garbled, but we all laugh.
“Now look what you did.”
I point to Duffy with the pipe.
“You got him to bug my girlfriend’s apartment and her hotel room. That means you hacked into more than one system to find out where and when she was going and to control which room she got. I think someone had to help you with that.”
Neither Duffy nor Philip has those level hacking skills. It’s what convinces me another syndicate was involved. It’s like the puzzle Sinead told me she looks to put together as a criminal defense attorney. I’ve had the various pieces, and I’ve been turning them around for a while. I wasn’t sure where they fit when I looked at each one alone. But now that I’m putting them together, they’re finding their exact spot.
“You have a choice, Morris. Take his gag out, Enzo.”
“What choice?”
He practically spits at me as he speaks. His voice is already hoarse, and it makes me wonder how much of a fight he put up if he’s already been screaming in pain.
“Tell me who put you up to this, and it’s a clean kill. Make me work for the answer, and you’ll be worse off than O’Toole. Which is it?”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
“Do they have your family?”
That’s usually the one thing that people believe they can hold out for. They can’t. If they know, they eventually break. If they don’t know, I can tell. I don’t bother with them. That’s why I haven’t tried to get anything else out of Duffy. He reached the end of his usefulness last night. I’ve kept him alive to punish him.
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. I know you wanted Sinead to fuck you. And you knew she’d never do it willingly, so you thought to blackmail her. But you had to know she still wouldn’t have consented. That means you planned to force her.”
Nothing about him makes me think he’ll deny the allegation. He just looks straight at me. Motherfucking cock sucking piece of fucking shit. He wants a reaction out of me just as much as I want one from him. I won’t give it to him. I’m in control, and I won’t give that up to him. While Lorenzo and Luca strip him and string him up, I take a bucket of water and toss it at Duffy. It revives him enough for him to lift his head. His face is entirely unrecognizable.
I watch Philip as he sees what happened to his coconspirator. Nothing. No reaction. Either the man deserves an Oscar, or he’s a sociopath. I doubt the academy trained him the way we’ve been taught to hide all our emotions. He’s Kutsenko level good at hiding his thoughts. They are sociopaths. All fucking eight of them— well, six Kutsenkos and two Andreyevs —same difference.
“Anything you want to say to Morris before I kill you, O’Toole?”
He opens his mouth, and I finally see Philip react. I cut out Duffy’s tongue, licked his asshole with it after he shat himself, then shoved it back in his mouth until he puked it out. Now Philip can see he doesn’t have one. All Duffy can do is make unintelligible sounds.
“Missed your opportunity, I guess.”
I gesture to Luigi and Afonso, who came in with Luca and Lorenzo. They walk over and take Duffy down.
“Hook him up.”
They know what I mean. It’s all perfectly choreographed. Lorenzo’s yanking Philip’s arms above his head, then he’s lifted onto his toes by the garage door. Luigi hits the button, and the lid to the acid vat slides back while Afonso connects Duffy’s wrist restraints to a new pulley system. It hoists Duffy over the vat.
While Luigi controls the lever that dips Duffy into the acid, then pulls him out, Luca’s manning the garage door. He opens it the same time as Duffy’s feet, then legs, then ass goes into the acid. The garage door is practically ripping Philip’s arms off. But the noise from the metal door clattering drowns their screams.
“Drop him.”
