“You’ll tell me everything anyway.”I moved to the next finger.“This is just to make sure you understand how serious I am.”
Another crack.Another scream.He was sobbing now, snot and tears streaming down his face.
“Three more fingers on this hand,” I said.“Then we move to the left.Then the toes.Then I start on things that don’t grow back.”
I reached down and grabbed his ear, letting my claws extend just enough for him to feel the points dimpling his skin.His bladder released again, though there wasn’t much left.
“Or you can tell me what I want to know, and I’ll consider letting you keep most of the parts you came in with.”
The story spilled out of him in a rush.Markham at the Daily.Celebrity dirt.The Senator scandal making my name newsworthy.He’d noticed Lena coming and going from my estate and smelled money.
“That’s all, I swear to God, I just took pictures, I never touched anyone?—”
“You broke into her home.”
“That wasn’t me!”His voice cracked into a shriek.“I swear on my children’s lives, that wasn’t me.I watched, I took pictures from outside.I never went inside anywhere?—”
I grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth open, then leaned in close, inhaling deeply.Fear.Pain.Desperation.But underneath all of it, the rancid scent of truth.
He wasn’t lying.He believed every word.
Which meant the break-in was someone else.Someone still out there.Someone who knew the hotel’s camera system, who had access this pathetic creature never did.
I released his jaw and stood, looking down at the man who had photographed my mate through windows.Who had sold her privacy for tabloid money.Who had watched her in moments she thought were private, catalogued her movements, fed information to people who wanted to hurt her.
The wolf wanted to tear his throat out.Wanted to paint the walls with his blood and leave his body as a warning.
I crouched beside him instead and gripped his broken hand.He screamed as I squeezed the shattered fingers together.
“You’re going to call Markham.You’re going to tell him there are no more photos, and if he publishes another word about her, I’ll visit him next.”I let my eyes flare amber.“Then you’re going to leave Paradise Peaks and never come back.If I ever see you again, if I ever catch your scent within a hundred miles of her, I will take you apart piece by piece over the course of days.I will mail your fingers to your family one at a time.I will make what happened tonight feel like a massage.”
I dropped his hand and stood.
“Do you understand?”
He nodded frantically, tears and snot streaming down his face.
“Say it.”
“I understand,” he gasped.“I’ll leave, I’ll never come back, I swear to God?—”
“God can’t help you.”I turned toward the door.“Only I can.Remember that.”
I walked back to my car naked, the cold irrelevant.Behind me, I could hear him retching, the wet sounds of a man whose world had just been shattered along with his fingers.
Kovac was just a parasite.A tabloid photographer looking for a payday.He hadn’t broken into Marjorie’s apartment.Hadn’t known the hotel’s camera blind spots.Hadn’t sent the dead corgi or sabotaged the heating.
But the break-in wasn’t about debt leverage.It was too personal.Too intimate.
The dead corgi.The hang-up calls.The heating sabotage.The break-in.
Someone who knew her.Someone who loved her, maybe, in some twisted way.
I dressed in the car and drove back toward the manor, the wolf finally quiet in my chest.Not satisfied, since we hadn’t killed or torn out the throat of the man who’d threatened our mate, but calmer.We’d found one thread of the web.We’d pull on it until the whole thing unraveled.
The manor was dark when I arrived.I showered in the guest bathroom, watching pink water swirl down the drain from where his blood had dried on my knuckles.Changed into clean clothes.Checked my reflection for any evidence I might have missed.
Then I climbed the stairs to Lena’s room.
