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Then I start screaming, too. I mock him in a cruel high pitch, wailing at the top of my lungs.
When I’m bored with it, I fall silent again and wait until the echoes of our combined voices have faded away. “You can scream all you want,” I explain to him. “No one can hear you. No one’s coming.”
A desperate sob bursts out of his bleeding lips. “P-please don’t kill me,” he begs. “I have a family.”
I sigh. It’s fucking Prisoner Bingo in here. He’s screamed for help and begged for his life. I’d bet a pinky toe that he’s going to piss himself next.
It’s what comes after that that matters most, though. Because after that is information. Real, useful, bona fide information.
That’s what I’m after.
That’s why we’re doing this whole fucking charade.
“It was my family you helped to target,” I inform him coolly. “If I hadn’t been in there with her, that attacker would have succeeded in killing my unborn child. Does that seem fair to you? Does it seem just? Kind? Merciful?”
Spit flies out of the corner of his mouth as he struggles to breathe through his rising panic. “I-I didn’t know what was going to happen! I-I was just paid to let him in.”
I nod to encourage him. “That’s good. Tell me more. Paid by whom?”
He whimpers miserably. “I don’t know.”
I lift the gun without warning and shoot him in the leg. The scream that rips out of him is inhuman.
Stooping down, I squeeze his cheeks in my free hand and force him to look at me. “Unfortunately, that’s not an acceptable answer,” I hiss in his face. I’m not sure he even hears me over his own screams, but he should’ve known from the start that it would always end like this. “Now, let me ask you again. Who paid you to let the attacker in?”
“H-h-he didn’t give me a n-name! B-but I can describe him to you.”
“Fine.” I grind my teeth together. “Paint me a picture, Vincent. Don’t leave out a single detail.”
“He was tall! Really tall.” More saliva slicks his chin. “And he had a-a-a crew cut. Blonde, I think. He was wearing a wifebeater and he had a whole b-bunch of chains.”
“What about tattoos? Scars? Birthmarks?”
“Tattoos, y-yes! He had one on his bicep. A naked w-woman, or mermaid or something. And another tattoo on his forearm. It was a dog or a wolf, I think. I-I’m not sure anymore.”
I exchange a glance with Aleks who immediately pulls out his phone. He taps the screen a couple of times and then twists the phone around to show Vincent and me. “Did it look like this?”
The picture on Aleks’s screen shows a dead body with the tattoo of a fierce-looking Irish wolfhound on the forearm. It’s smeared with the man’s blood, but there’s no denying the outline. Hell, it almost looks artistic like that. Intentional, as if the hound itself took a bite out of the man wearing the ink. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Vincent nods frantically. “Yes, that’s it! That’s the one.”
“Fuck.” Aleks scowls, putting his phone away and cracking his knuckles.
I straighten up, trying to contain the buzz of anger that’s flowing just under my skin. “How much did you get paid for your troubles?”
Vincent tenses as the tone of the conversation shifts. He can feel us retreating from him, I’m sure. Sensing his time in this room has come to an end. He’s right about that. But the end he’s hoping for is not the one he’ll receive. “My wife is pregnant. T-t-twins. I needed the?—”
“How much?”
He’s sweating from the head now. “Five thousand dollars.”
I shake my head. “You should have asked for more.” I raise my gun fast and shoot before he has a chance to realize that he’s a dead man. The bullet strikes him in the forehead and he topples backward on the chair, landing on the cement floor with a dull thud.
As I walk out of the cell, I nod to the boys by the door. “Take care of the mess. Leave no trace.”
Aleks meets me in the dim hallway and circles around to lean against the bare stone wall with his arms folded over his chest.
“He’s been keeping an eye on us this entire time,” I growl as the door clangs behind us, muffling the sounds of my men butchering the unfortunate Mr. Byrne into easily-disposed-of pieces. “It wasn’t enough that he killed Elena. He wants my future, too.”
