Detergent and blood.
The scream was distant, but mine.
I couldn’t stop my primal reaction. And because Carlos was a motherfucking shark, he saw it and his good humour returned.
“Ah, so you do remember.” He brought the dagger to his own cheek and mimed the brutal cut he’d inflicted on me so long ago. “I did it so my men would know your face even after the boy became a man, but I can’t deny simply watching you bleed was reward enough for the mess. I am looking forward to spilling your blood again. And then my daughter’s, when we find her. And we will. Make no mistake about that.”
I snorted. “Cut my fucking dick off if you want. You’ll never find them.”
A bold claim, but I had to believe Alexei had planned for this. That Rubi would keep my family safe. That Cam would protect them long after I was gone.
That Embry would love them. He’d never said the words, but I’d seen it in his face when he’d talked about Liliana. He was as much under her spell as I was.
“I’ll never find them...” Carlos twirled the knife in his hand. “There is a confidence there I did not expect. Perhaps I have been looking at this wrong. My men are very fond of my only granddaughter. Perhaps I should tell them that you took her from me for your own... personal desires. That your entire organisation has an interest in little girls. What do you think about that?”
I thought he needed to die in a vat of acid. A reaction he expected of me, but if I sprang from my seat and beat him to death with my elbows, every fucker in the room would know that bar the chains on my wrists, I was unrestrained.
Too soon. Also, my brain was too busy dissecting his bullshit to do the obvious thing.“My men are very fond of my only granddaughter.”
Lies. Most of them didn’t know she existed. Not even his brother, Liliana’s uncle. It was why he’d rocked up with Sambini and a solitary bodyguard, and it also told me something else: Carlos Esteban had no clue just how close I’d been to his mansion prison all these fucking years.
A small victory, but damn, I needed it.
My silence pissed Carlos off. The tips of his ears turned red and he brought his pet blade to the unsullied side of my face, stroking it from my eye to my jaw. “Where are they?”
“Fuck you.”
“Where are they?” Carlos seized my hair, yanking my head to an awkward angle, spit-yelling in my eyes. “You have one chance to answer before I make your face symmetrical.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it. That was his threat? Symmetry? Besides, if he really wanted an answer, I’d give him one. An honest one that I could speak without batting a fucking eye. “I don’t know.”
You see, I’d never been to Alexei’s place. Before this, no one had except Cam and Saint, and the most I knew about it was that it was in Bristol. A city of half a million souls. Even if I told him that—over my rotted corpse—it’d still take him forever to find them, if he ever did.Trust your brothers. They’ll get them out.
I believed that like I believed the sky was blue.
Carlos didn’t believe a word that fell from my smug mouth.
He decked me with the butt of the knife, the ivory skull connecting with the side of mine.
It was a dizzying hit and I fought to stay on the chair.
Succeeded.
Just.
But the blow shook me enough that I lost my composure, a rage-filled shout breaching my lips. I wanted this bastard dead so bad I could smell the earth I was gonna bury him in. I wanted him tohurtthe way I had all these years. To feel Juana’s pain.
Lili’s.
The reality that I’d never see her again was suddenly more believable than ever. Grief twisted me up inside.Fuck it. Kill him. They’ll put a bullet in your brain, but what the fuck does that matter if she’s safe?
I didn’t know how that would happen. Just that it would. Or I’d be haunting my brothers for an eternity.
Carlos straightened from the hit he’d just inflicted on me. He was young-looking for his age, fit and trim like one of those old cunts from SAGA cruise ads. But smashing me up was starting to wind him. I took note and clenched my bound hands into fists, blocking out the crunching agony in my injured wrist. My muscles bunched, ready to fly, but before I could barrel up from my chair, the distinctpopof a suppressed gunshot shattered the air.
I braced for impact, for the sensation of a bullet blasting through my flesh and bone.
But it never came. Carlos jumped a fucking mile, then spun around, stumbling from my reach, leaving wide-open space between him and a 4K view of Lorenzo Sambini sprawled on the ground, a bullet smack bang between his eyes.
