He hated even more that it wasn't just an interest.
Attraction.
Denying it didn't make it any less true. The little ladybug was twelve years younger than him, pretty much still a child, and despite whatever had led her to a place where she could not only tolerate torture but refuse to bow down before them and beg for her freedom, she had dug herself out from under it.
Built a life for herself.
A life they’d torn her away from with no care or consideration for her feelings. They’d viewed her as nothing more than a tool for them to use, and that left him with this unpleasant knot of guilt sitting heavily in his gut.
“We letting her go?” Blade asked.
“We can't,” Dragon immediately protested.
“Why?” Voodoo asked.
“Girl has no value to us if her brother doesn’t care about her,” Lion reminded Dragon. “What else are we going to do with her?”
“Can't keep her locked in the basement forever,” Blade said.
“Steel’s little ladybug will find a way to gut us eventually,” Thunder said with a smirk, amusement dancing in his gray eyes.
“If we let her go, she’s going to go running straight to the cops,” Dragon protested.
“So what if she does?” Lion asked. “Not like she saw our faces, or knows where we brought her. I don’t think the cops are going to have any chance of tracking down Mr. Bedroom Man.”
Huffing a small chuckle at Rose’s ridiculous name for him, Steel nodded in agreement. “She no longer holds any value to us. We’re going to have to look for another way to get to Ridge Gardner.”
“Or we do what we told him we’d do,” Dragon persisted.
“What? Up our torture game?” Voodoo asked as he shifted in his seat. The man had always been a healer, and now with his almost otherworldly ability to heal others, Voodoo had taken on a heavy burden. He took other people’s pain and deaths personally. The first time he’d been unable to save an innocent who got caught up in a black ops raid they’d performed, Steel had worried for his friend’s sanity.
Voodoo could handle inflicting pain on someone who deserved it, but they all knew Rose didn't. If Voodoo had struggled with whipping Rose, there was no way he would handle anything more.
Besides, nothing they did to Rose was going to bring out her crazed scientist brother.
“And what exactly do you propose we do to her?” Steel asked, trying to remind himself that Dragon was taking out his frustrations at losing Cassandra Charleston over their plans for Rose, on Rose herself. But it wasn't the little ladybug’s fault that she was related to Dr. Gardner, that they’d targeted her because of it, or that she was strong enough to withstand what they’d done to her so far.
“Whatever it takes to get our revenge,” Dragon answered simply.
“You want to cut off body parts? Skin her alive? Electrocute her?” Voodoo demanded, and Steel was glad he wasn't the only one who looked a little queasy at the idea. The last thing he needed was to take out his own anger on Dragon and rip the man’s head clean off his body.
“None of that is going to break her,” Steel said confidently. While he had no idea just what Rose’s life had been like before she started over, it was obvious enough that it had included firsthand experience with torture.
Another reason her brother had to die.
Ridge had raised Rose after their parents’ deaths, so if Rose knew all about someone inflicting pain on her for fun, it had to have been her brother who did it.
“I want to do whatever it takes to get us what we want,” Dragon growled.
“Torturing Rose isn’t going to get us her brother,” Lion said.
“And it’s not going to break her,” Thunder added.
“Besides, I don’t think our fearless leader likes the idea of playing with his little ladybug,” Blade said, shooting him a smirk that dared him to disagree.
Refusing to play into that and admit he felt anything at all for the fiery woman downstairs, Steel kept his expressionimpassive. “Just because this didn't work doesn’t mean that we won't find something that will. None of us is going to stop until Ridge Gardner rues the day he ever decided to play with other people’s DNA.”
With an irritated growl, Dragon slammed the lid of the laptop closed and stalked out of the room.
