She’d told me how he’d beaten her after she helped Aiden escape.
He was going to get what he’d given her and so much more.
I held the second, smaller knife I brought with me and bent low to cut through the ties holding his arms behind his back.
Reyes shrieked when I stuck the second knife directly through his palm into the wooden floor beneath it, trapping him in place.
“You blackmailed my wife for months.” I held up his hand. “You were sent by a fucking U.S. senator to kill a child, and instead of going to the police or hiding Savannah, you opted to blackmail her.”
I pulled his pinky finger out, away from the rest of his fingers. “You had a choice. To save a child, or to do what you did.”
Reyes’ bellowing bounced off the surrounding walls when I sliced clean through his pinky, separating it from the rest of his hand.
The blood that splattered across my face, hands, and shirt didn’t stop me.
“For what?” I demanded. “For fucking money?”
Micah hadn’t been able to find anything on Vincent Reyes aside from the fact that he was a former police officer. There were no gambling debts or anything of note that would make him hungry enough for money to hunt down a child.
“Th—” he slurred. “They killed…” He trailed off, unable to speak through his broken and swollen jaw.
“Answer me,” I yelled in his face, grabbing him by his shirt.
He glared at me. “Just,” he heaved, “just kill me.”
“As you wish.”
The son of a bitch. I sliced through another one of his digits before stuffing it into his mouth. I blacked out in a rage as I thought about the harm he’d done, and intended to do, to Savannah and Aiden. Even if she had given him all of her money, he probably still would’ve killed them.
That was a thought worse than my own death. And I made damn sure Reyes knew it as I ripped the rest of his fingers from his body and forced them down his throat. My feet moved on their own while I kicked the hell out of him.
At some point, he passed out or died. I didn’t know which.
Not until Joel and the other guy came in and pulled me away from Reyes’ body did I come out of the dark stupor into which I’d fallen.
My breathing was out of control and I was covered in all types of bodily fluids, not my own.
“That’s enough, son,” Joel murmured in my ear from behind me, holding me back. “He’s dead as a doorknob. Go with Anatoli to get cleaned up.”
I followed my father’s instructions and started to follow the other man.
“Knife.” Joel held out his hand.
I placed the knife, sticky with drying blood and flesh, in his hand.
There happened to be an outhouse not far from the ranch with a shower that I used to clean off. Joel had a fresh set of clothes waiting for me back at the barn.
“I need to get back to my wife,” I told him.
He handed me the keys to a new car that I hadn’t seen when I pulled into the driveway.
“Go be with your family,” he said. “There’s a pig farm with this bastard’s name written all over it.”
I nodded, knowing all about the pig farm that Joel kept for occasions like this. My father had lived much of his life on the opposite side of the law. For once, I was thankful that he never completely severed ties with that part of his life. I knew he would dispose of Reyes’ body and all the other evidence that went along with it.
It took me an hour to get back to LS Investigations. When I arrived, I expected to see my wife and son, but they weren’t there.
“Chael?” I asked when I walked in and spotted my cousin, along with one of his brothers. “Chance? What are you doing here? Where are Savannah and Aiden?” I looked over at Micah, who stood beside them.
