Since I’m standing, I stop in front of him and twist back two of his fingers until they break. Snatching up Layne’s blade, I slam the point through the wrist joint and leave it there before sitting down.
“Who in the Bratva did your father sell my wife to?”
He can’t answer, because he’s in a world of pain. Well, I’m sure he thinks he is, but he hasn’t even learned how far pain can push a man until they break. Junior’s breathing is ragged as he keeps whimpering in pain, instinctively fighting to free himself while searching for the right answer.
He takes too long.
Dante responds. He pulls her blade free before slamming it into the other wrist. Both of us are careful not to hit any major arteries, and we most certainly have years of experience in techniques that we can employ to ensure maximum pain and minimum likelihood of death.
“Please! Please! Don’t do this. I don’t know.”
I drop my head, swiping a hand over my face, so I don’t kill the fucking stupid cunt.
Matteo helps me out and slices one of Junior’s ears off, dropping it in front of him so he can see the cost of not answering properly. And feel it. He screams in agony again.
“Junior, we can do this until you have no body parts left. Tell Valentine what he wants to know.” Dante talks into Junior's good ear. “Who did your father sell my wife to?”
We all take a step away and give Junior a small reprieve. It’s no good for anyone if he passes out. And, honestly, I expected him to have already, because any man who rapes his own sister is clearly fucking weak.
“Muzzle him.”
Matteo and Dante burst into action, shoving wads of wet newspaper down the back of his throat, cramming it down so hard, Junior keeps gagging and fighting not to asphyxiate. But I don’t want him to be able to make a fucking sound without my permission. His face is puce by the time Dante has tied a thick gag around his head.
I stand up, needing to test how good he is muzzled, and I slice off one of his broken fingers. The noise is pretty well contained, so I lift Layne’s earphones off her ears.
“Perhaps it’s time for you to go home, Mrs. De Luca,” I say quietly. Every cell in my body is focused on how she’s coping. But I’m also managing a rising bloodlust, and no matter how many goddamn times my wife says she loves every inch of me, I don’t enjoy sharing the darker side of me with her. Layne is light and hope, and I cling to that like a life raft. I would be ruined if anything I did dimmed her ability to shine as brightly as she does. “Please, let Matteo take you away from here.”
There are lots of shadows in her eyes, and while they’ve always been there, and the reality is, they always will be a part of her, I don’t like how they hide her strength.
She’s up on her feet and in my arms in the next breath, and I feel her fighting a storm of bad memories. “You are so brave,Layne. I admire your courage as much as I love your heart and soul.”
“Always so smooth,” she whispers. Her lips flutter against her bite on my throat. She uses her hands around my face to pull me down, so we’re nose to nose. “Thank you.”
Of course, my wife leaves her eyes wide open while she licks her way into my mouth and steals more pieces of my heart in the process. I honestly don’t think love is a large enough word to properly articulate what I feel for this woman.
I growl against her lips and drop a hand to rub over my cunt, not at all concerned where we are. She’s safe, she’s with us, and Layne is ours and there’s not enough time left in this lifetime, or the next hundred, for me to be with her, so I’ll use every moment as if it was our last.
Her eyes blaze like molten lava, her scent sweetens, and Dante makes a groan, more full of pain than any of the noises our prisoner has made.
“Go home, spend time with Matty, then I’m tying you to bed for a week.” I bite her lip and push her away at the same time.
“Only a week? Wow, honestly, Valentine…”
I silence her with a slap on her ass, and before she can twist around, Matteo sweeps her off her feet and carries her out of the cell.
The second the door closes, I pull off the gag and use my fingers more aggressively than necessary to pull out the balls of newspaper. He sucks in air, and I pull his hair back, so he can see how fucking serious I am.
“Make as much noise as you need, because I’m about to ruin your fucking life,” I spit. My anger is unleashed now, with my wife safely gone. With my other hand, I accept the modified baseball bat we made just for Junior.
Dante, after he had Layne’s permission, shared what she wanted to happen, and I have no issue being the person todeliver the suffering she wanted her brother to experience. I twist the bat to show it and all its brutal embellishments—embedded glass, rusted nails, and small metal spikes.
Junior’s fear explodes as he realizes what’s about to happen, but our torment is just getting started. My brother kicks the chair out from under Junior before the both of us topple the table, so Junior is ass up. I use the blowtorch to melt his pants open.
“This whole fucking bat is going inside your asshole. Tell me who you sold my wife to,” Dante barks while I unbutton my shirt in preparation.
Junior takes half an inch up his ass before he confesses what we’ve already figured out after reading through the files Dante took from the hangar. The man who my wife was sold to was Petrov, the Pakhan of the Russian Bratva.
Dialing one handed, while I wash off Junior’s blood from the other, the call connects quickly.
