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“Until we do,” Leo said in a dark voice, “Layla is in danger.”
“Motherfucker!” I gripped my hands into fists, reigning in my temper. “When I find out who did it, I’ll rip their skin off an inch at a time then throw them into a vat of bleach to drown. I’m gonna cut off their limbs one by one. I’m gonna feed them to the pigs. I’m going to destroy them!”
Leo gripped my shoulders, but my anger burned so fierce, I shook with the need to do violence. “Control, Mark. You can’t lose it, not with Layla upstairs. Control.”
Control.
I needed to maintain control.
For Layla.
If I lost control, bad things happened.
When Leo found me, after I’d managed to kill two members of the Toscano mafia who murdered my wife, I’d been a complete mess. Psychotic, on a break with reality that allowed me to become a remorseless killer. For a year, I lived my life with complete reckless abandon. Revenge and hatred offered toxic fuel, and I’d gorged on the bitter poison until I became mad with it. I’d slaughtered those first two men by sheer luck more than skill, and I probably would be dead if it wasn’t for Leo. Lucky for me, the Toscano mafia was enemies with the Cordova cartel, so the Cordovas had a vested interest in seeing me exact my bloody revenge.
At first, I was just a tool for Leo, but we soon became friends. The old me would never have anything in common with a cartel’s torture master, but the new me found Leo’s brand of brutal justice to be something that spoke to my twisted soul. I could appreciate his role in the world, his drive to make those that wronged him suffer. Some people deserved to hurt before they died, and Leo made sure they received their punishment in spades. He taught me how to draw a man’s death out until it stretched for days, and I’d used the unique skillset he’d given me to get my pound of flesh from the Toscano mafia. In my grief, my thirst for vengeance had been legendary. During that bloody year, I gained a reputation in the criminal world as a man you did not want to fuck with. After my retribution was complete, and I sat upon a proverbial mountain of the bodies of the dead, Leo made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.
The world of the crime lords is an odd one. While the Cordova cartel couldn’t go directly after the Toscano mafia, and vice versa, they could chip away at each other in other, underhanded ways—such as supporting my personal vendetta to take the Toscano mafia down. In public, the Cordova family pretended they had no knowledge of what I was doing. In private, Leo tutored me on the finer points of being a responsible monster.
Lesson number one, the most important of them all, was control.
Control of my mind. Control of my body. Control of my emotions.
Like Leo, I’d become a man capable of terrible things. A savage who’d destroy everything in his path. If I lost my control at the wrong time, I could hurt innocent people, something I avoided at all costs. Even monsters can have a conscience.
While I never attained the level of control that Leo had over his emotions, I was strong enough to beat my anger back and slow my breathing.
Leo studied my face, then gave my shoulders a hard squeeze.
He murmured, “Well done.”
His praise, rarely given, strengthened and focused me. “Do we know anything?”
“It has to be somehow related to the ball.” Diego leaned forward, his long black braid falling over his shoulder.
“Right now, we don’t know that for sure. We’ve got a team on it, but you know this shit takes time.” Leo took a sip from his mug with a grimace. “Fucking hate cold coffee.”
Clenching my hands into fists so hard my nails dug into my palms, I growled, “Do we have any idea who it could have been?”
“No.” Leo grimaced after another drink from his mug. “I want to say it’s a result of her association with us, but I never discount anything. She plays in those online tournaments, right? Didn’t you guys win a decent amount together last year doing that North American Gaming Championship? What was it, ten thousand each?”
Layla and I had indeed won ten thousand dollars, along with the rest of our team of five, at a gaming conference. We’d all played from home, with livestreams set up so the viewers could see our reactions as we gamed. What if someone had a grudge against our team for winning? What if it was one of the little psychopathic shits who hated female gamers? The ones who blamed all their troubles on the fact that women didn’t want to fuck them? There were some scary, entitled kids out there who were one heartbeat away from a total breakdown. What if one of those little fuckers targeted Layla?
