Aspen snorted and shushed me, but I flipped off the door.
“We grabbed someone else for ya to work on while we were out earlier. He’s in the basement. Catch some sleep first. He ain’t going nowhere. M’I interrupting something, lads?” Jamie called cheerfully through the door.
I buried my face back in the pillows and the only answer Jamie got was Aspen’s laughter.
7
ASPEN
After eight hoursof comfortable sleep and a quiet lunch, Cillian and I found ourselves in front of a very familiar face: Christopher Cunningham, a sourpuss Texan, who’d mocked Sloan’s nephew, Fionn, and outright refused a deal with the Killough Company. He’d claimed the Reyes Cartel had offered to take a smaller cut of profits while helping him get his drugs into the country through Florida. Sloan hadn’t been surprised by Cunningham’s betrayal, while Fionn had been furious.
I smirked and glanced at Jamie as he flashed a full-fledged smile. “Did we happen upon Cunningham by accident?”
“Of course not,” Jamie said with a laugh, running his hands through his brown curls. He stepped in closer to Cunningham, who was tied from the ceiling by his wrists, head lolling forward. His wrinkly face was already battered. The big, bushy gray mustache that puffed out under his nose was covered in blood, and bruises littered his cheeks and forehead. Clearly, they hadn’t waited for us to begin the fun and games. Jamie crouched so he was face to face with Cunningham. “Sloan says hello. And Fionn? Well, I’m not gonna repeat what he said. No manners and he’s feisty. One day he’ll give Sloan a run for his money.”
Cunningham groaned and muttered something I thought was “Irish fuck.” Whatever he’d said had Jamie cackling as he shifted backward again. Jamie turned toward us and patted Cillian on the shoulder.
“Ya have fun with him, ya hear? Make this motherfucker scream for his ma.” He winked and left the basement, Corbin following with his hands stuffed in his pockets like he was out for a morning stroll in a park.
“Ye got yer knives?” Cillian asked, though he didn’t need to. He knew I’d brought them along and saw me holding the brown leather case in my right hand. He’d clearly spoken more for Cunningham, who shuddered and whimpered as soon as the words left Cillian’s mouth.
I went to the wooden table on the right side of the basement and laid my case down, then unzipped it. Cillian sent me a warm grin. Sliding my fingers over the shiny black knives, I considered my options carefully. Which one would be the best to begin with? I smiled when I grabbed the blade I used most—around six inches long. This knife was my favorite and there was a reason I liked it, because while it was one of the smallest, it also did serious damage. The razor-sharp edge could flay skin or the diamond-hard blade could puncture a heart if I slipped it between ribs just right.
I turned and waved my knife at Cillian, who smirked.
Cunningham chose that moment to raise his head and let out a loud whimper, struggling against the rope that secured him to the wooden beam overhead. He grunted, then sobbed when it became clear his efforts were useless.
Cillian stepped toward him, but he didn’t get far.
“I’ll tell you what you want!” Cunningham screamed, making Cillian freeze in surprise. We hadn’t even touched him yet and what Jamie and Corbin had done to him was barely torture. A few bruises and cuts were a little beating, nothing more.
“Already? Come on, mate, we haven’t even bloody started yet. Give us a chance.” The disappointment in Cillian’s voice made me chuckle.
“I’ll tell you what you want,” Cunningham repeated, shaking while he sobbed. “Anything. I’ll tell you anything.”
Cillian threw his hands up and glanced at me in disbelief, and all I could do was shrug. We hadn’t been given the order to kill him, only torture to find out information, and if he was going to give us what we wanted before we had our fun, then there was nothing we could do about it.
“What do ye know?” Cillian grabbed a white wooden chair from the other side of the basement and set it in front of Cunningham, seat facing away from our prisoner, before he sat on it, his chest against the back. “We want everything ye got on those Reyes arseholes.”
“I don’t know much—”
Cillian was close enough to punch Cunningham in the gut, and the bastard grunted in pain. I loved watching the ripple of Cillian’s muscles as he worked. “If ye don’t start talkin’, Aspen here will start cuttin’.”
I flashed Cunningham the knife as I took a few steps forward to stand beside Cillian, and Cunningham whimpered.
“He calls the small one Old Reliable. He enjoys every second of making cowards like ye beg for their lives.”
I flipped the knife in my hand and between my fingers, doing tricks I’d perfected over the years. The moves were all for show, but the power play usually worked to scare guys into telling us what we wanted. Usuallythey broke after hours of torture. Cunningham was an exception—a disappointing aberration.
“Listen. Listen.” He shuddered and looked up at me toying with the knife. He could barely open his bruised eyes. “I’ll tell you everything I know, all right? Y’all don’t need to do anything drastic.”
“Then fecking talk.” Cillian stood fast to slap his face, and Cunningham cried out, head jerking to the side. Before I could blink, Cillian had plopped onto his chair again.
“Reyes. I was... s’posed to meet him in a couple days, all right? At one of the new hair places they built recently. You know, the nice ones.”
“Which Reyes?” Cillian asked.
“The one with the weird name.”
