His smile stilled. He didn’t realize I knew who he was. His title was one that had carried him for decades, hiding his true self and making strong allies with political leaders.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You won’t have to explain yourself to anyone. In fact, you won’t be able to speak after I’m done with you.” I pulled a knife from the table and cut open his shirt, revealing the heavily tattooed skin I remembered.
“You don’t have it in you, cherub,” he said again, this time in broken English.
“I have always hated that little nickname you gave me,” I said, as I traced the knife down his body and slid the point of it into his side. “You destroyed me, even when I was a child. Now, I’m going to destroy you.”
“I didn’t destroy you,” he replied, hissing in pain as I pushed the blade in further. “Your mother gave you to me for whatever I wanted. You were always mine.”
The memory of my mother always pushing me toward him flooded through my mind and I felt sick. I couldn’t imagine doing that to Camille, to have someone touch her, knowing what he was capable of.
It made me sad that even my own flesh and blood, my own mother, would use me to keep him away from her.
“I was never yours,” I told him, the knife moving up to his throat. How easy it would be to take him out right now, slice across his throat and watch him struggle to breathe as the blood poured out of him, but that was too easy. He’d tortured women, girls, children, for decades and sold them as if they were cattle. Most of them didn’t live past the age of thirty, or became so addicted to drugs, they couldn’t be useful.
Drugs were tempting, to block out the pain, to live in a sense of euphoria so you didn’t know what was happening to you.
I understood it.
I’d never gone down that path, but I knew the temptation to be in another world while the atrocities were happening to you, that was…almost blissful to think about.
“You always will be,” he said, pulling me back to the present. “Nothing will stop you from being my cherub.”
I wanted to cut out his tongue, to stop his taunts, but I didn’t want to lose my cool.
“In time,” I said to him, as I stuck the blade in again and again just under his ribs. “You’ll be dead, but I’m going to take my time…just like you did with me. By the end, you’ll be begging for me to end it.”
Kane
“Petra,” I called out to the tech as she jumped in her seat. Her eyes widened as she saw me. The room was empty, and I wondered why. “Why’s it so empty in here?”
“There’s a press conference happening,” she said. “Why are you here? You’re on leave.”
“I got a distress call from Tommy. I need you to tell me where he is.”
“Wait…what?”
“Petra, come on, he’s in danger, I gotta help him.”
“I need to call the captain.”
“Petra, there’s no fucking time. Let them penalize me later, I gotta help him.”
She nodded. “Only because I trust you.”
She tapped on her keyboard, and a wash of guilt ran through me for pulling her into this but I had no option. This was the only way to track her. I took note of the location and keyed it into my phone to pull up the maps.
“Alaska?” I said. “What the hell?”
“Garrick, I know this goes without saying but I know this is about more than helping Tommy. You’re a good man…don’t forget that.”
I nodded, knowing she wouldn’t say zip about where I was going. She was good like that. As I turned the corner and headed down to the garage again, I almost bowled Sal over.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped. “If O’Leary sees you…”
“Let me pass so I can get out of here without him seeing me then, Sal.”
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked me. “You’re so defensive all of the time. Is it possibly because you know you’re skating on the line?”
