Page 103 of Sins of Arrogance

Wraith shakes his head like he’s try­ing to clear it. “Lit­tle shit told you ev­ery­thing, didn’t he?”

“Ev­ery­thing he knew.”

“You think I’m go­ing to tell you more?”

Doubt­ful. “Will you?”

He starts recit­ing Jab­ber­wocky, one slow word slurred at a time.

Yeah, he’s had black ops train­ing al­right. Even with the right drugs in his sys­tem, over­com­ing the con­di­tion­ing he just trig­gered would take too long.

I don’t have the pa­tience when there’s an­other eas­ier man to crack in the hold­ing cell wait­ing on me. “No. But the other mem­ber of your team? It’s a safe bet he will.”

I have Conor bring him in, drop­ping his un­con­scious com­rade on the floor be­fore string­ing him up from the same chains.

De­spite his time in the cell, the sec­ond man takes longer to crack than Gjon and I end up giv­ing him a dose of the spe­cialty drug to speed things along.

They de­serve what­ever I dish out be­cause they broke into our fa­cil­ity, but that doesn’t mean I have the pa­tience to dole out the pun­ish­ment now.

I learn very lit­tle more. His name is Luan. He’s a high-rank­ing sol­dier which comes as a sur­prise and con­firms that Wraith and he are ba­si­cally body­guards for Gjon so he can prove him­self on mis­sions for his un­cle.

Luan also con­firms the name of the client: Ilya Darakov.

The whole time I’m in­ter­ro­gat­ing him, Jab­ber­wocky is slowly re­peated over and over in low tones from be­hind us.

“Is Wraith a mem­ber of your gang?” I ask when I’m sure I’ve ex­hausted his cur­rent store of knowl­edge.

Brice will in­ter­ro­gate both him and Gjon again at least twice more to make sure noth­ing has been missed.

In­for­ma­tion is power and we col­lect as much as we can from ev­ery un­will­ing guest who vis­its my do­main.

“No. Besnik hires him to watch over Gjon, but he’ll never be a mem­ber of The Al­ba­nian Boys.”

“Has he re­fused to be in­ducted?” If he has, he showed smarts.

Besnik is a piece of shite.

Luan laughs with overblown amuse­ment. An­other con­se­quence of the drug. “He’s a mutt. His slut mother fucked around while her hus­band was in prison.”

The recita­tion of Jab­ber­wocky stops, jerk­ing my gaze from the now vol­u­ble Al­ba­nian sol­dier to Ranger Rick.

The look he’s giv­ing the man hang­ing from my ceil­ing says if Wraith’s hands weren’t strapped to the chair, they would be wrapped around his for­mer col­league’s throat.

Well now, the first step in turn­ing Wraith into a mob­ster may have just pre­sented it­self.

“Is part of your mis­sion to pro­tect this mag­got?” I ask him.

Ranger Rick’s ex­pres­sion shifts from stoic to dis­gust. “No.”

I nod. “Good. He’s go­ing to die. Do you want to be the one to kill him?”

“What about Gjon?” Wraith asks, no more tell­tale emo­tion re­flected in his fea­tures.

“We’re go­ing to drug him and re­wire his brain to re­mem­ber the last twenty-four hours dif­fer­ently. Then I’m go­ing to of­fer him to Besnik in trade for re­leas­ing all claim he has on you.”

“Besnik has no claim on me,” Ranger Rick snarls. “I’m free­lance.”

He’s got enough con­di­tion­ing to start recit­ing Jab­ber­wocky rather than an­swer ques­tions un­der the in­flu­ence of our spe­cialty com­pound, but it’s still pow­er­ful enough to lower his in­hi­bi­tions about dis­play­ing his emo­tions.