Twice.
Again.
He gasps, spitting blood onto the cream upholstery as I growl out a low scream full of rage.
I’m panting from the beating I’m giving him, and still it’s not enough.
“You think this is a game?” I hiss, driving my elbow into his side. He doubles over, wheezing, but I don’t let him fall. I grip his collar and drag him upright like dead weight. My knuckles are red and starting to swell, but I don’t stop.
“You took him. You took Ford. Where the fuck is he?”
His lip is shredded, his other eye now swelling shut—but then, he laughs.
A low, rasping thing that bubbles up through the blood in his throat.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he croaks. “I haven’t even followed up with the lawyer.” He spits out, blood flying from his mouth.
The words stall in the air. My heart slams once, violently.
“What the fuck are you saying?” Archie shouts, running up to hold Douglass up so I can punch him once more in the face, forcing a tooth out of his mouth to fly across the room.
And then it hits me.
Not the yacht. Not another safehouse. Not Palermo or Geneva or some goddamn airstrip.
Or is he? Is he somewhere else entirely, and I’ve only just hit yet another dead end?
He’s not capable of something so elaborate. So was I wrong all along?
Douglass is still wheezing as Archie throws him on the floor, blood dripping from his nose, coughing into his sleeve. I crouch beside him, grab a fistful of his shirt, and jerk his face up to mine.
I growl. “Where is he?”
He lets out a broken laugh, more breath than sound. “I have no idea what you’re asking of me,” he croaks.
But this time, I hear the fear behind the bravado. I see it too—in the twitch of his eye, in the way his lip trembles under all that blood.
“Tell me where, you pathetic fuck.”
“I—” he coughs again, reaching for the couch. “I’ll call off the lawyers, I will.”
I go still.
The weight of it settles in. Cold and thick and goddamn infuriating. Thisisanother fucking dead end.
Douglass was a useless, broke fuck, suing for cash and nothing more. All the threats, everything I thought I figured out was wrong.
He doesn’t know anything. He wasn’t part of his brother’s plans.
All that posturing. All the cryptic games. The yacht. The silence. The blood I spilled for this.
And he has nothing. This had nothing to do with the twins. This was simply a ploy for the inheritance.
I slam him back into the floor with a grunt of disgust, rising to my feet as his body curls in pain.
“Useless,” I spit. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”
Hudson and Archie appear behind me, already reading it on my face.
