Page 104 of LA King

I walk past them to Blake’s cousin. “What is this cabrón’s name?”

“Calvin,” Jimmy answers, already on his feet again and dusting off his pants.

I take a moment to appraise Calvin. He’s covered in welts and bruises, and his left leg is obviously broken. I grab a handful of his hair and tilt his head back. His eyes are glassy, pain making him lose focus and slip in and out of consciousness. I take the rag from his mouth and toss it on the ground.

“Pass me the epinephrine,” I bark, and someone hands me a hypodermic needle from the table. I inject it into a vein in Calvin’s arm, and his eyes focus on me, his breathing getting heavy. I slap his face. “Hey. Focus. Where the fuck is Blake?”

He violently shakes his head from side to side. “I don’t know, I swear. I don’t know.”

I hold out my hand, and Jax places a small scalpel into it. I press the sharp blade against Calvin’s chest. “Where is he?” I repeat.

“I don’t know!”

Slicing through his chest, I rip open his pectoral muscle and cut his nipple in half. He screams and blubbers as I take hold of his hair again and lean down to him. “Next time it will be your balls. Now tell me where the fuck I can find your cousin.”

He tries to shake his head, tears and snot streaming down his face, but I hold him still. “I don’t know,” he howls. “You need to speak to his girlfriend. She’s not who she says she is.”

I lift my foot and stomp down on his groin, and he vomits all over himself. “You think I don’t already know that, mal nacido! You think I haven’t worked out who Lucy Callaghan really is? You think I’m fucking stupid?”

His body convulses with sobs, and I hold the scalpel right in front of his face. “You’re going to die, Calvin. I can make it quick and end your suffering right now, or I can drag it out for days. It’s up to you. Tell me what I need to know.”

He blinks at me, his eyes full of defeat. He doesn’t have the information I need. I could go on torturing him, but it won’t get me any closer to finding Blake. The old me would have tortured him for the hell of it, to feed the rage clamoring for payment. The new me—all he wants to do is get home to Alana. Besides, someone’s helping Blake. Someone with the resources to evade me. And given who Lucy Callaghan actually is, I shouldn’t be surprised.

I walk away from Calvin and tell Anton to finish him off. He happily obliges while I speak to Jax and Jimmy. “Blake’s either dead or someone’s helping him. Either way, he’s got bigger friends than we realized.” Wiping my hands on a wet rag, I tell Jax to fill Jimmy in on Lucy.

Before Jax and I leave, I give my other four men a final pointed glare. “Find me Blake Fielding or the next time you see me, you will be strapped to a fucking chair, and I will personally castrate the fucking lot of you.”

“Yes, Boss,” they reply in unison.

Heading for the door, I shrug on my shirt and call back, “And clean up this fucking mess.”

If only the mess with Carmichael could be dealt with so easily. No matter how I handle that one, I’m worried it might bring about my greatest fear.

Losing Alana.

Chapter

Fifty-Five

Alejandro

It’s been two days since my meeting with Carmichael, and I’ve been snapping at everyone around me ever since.

As I sit behind my desk, looking out at the LA skyline, my mind wanders to Alana and what she might doing. She’s at the shelter, and Lucy is nowhere near the place. I check my watch and feel a wave of frustration. I have another two meetings to get through before I can get home to my wife—the only person capable of easing some of this tension in me.

I hear my office door open behind me and know it’s Jax.

“You okay, amigo?” he asks in his southern drawl as he walks into the room. I spin in my chair to face him. “You seem a bit on edge lately. More than usual, anyway.”

“That meeting with Alana’s father has me rattled, amigo. He’s such a fucking slimy cabrón. He makes my skin crawl.”

Jax shrugs. “So do something about him.”

“He’s my wife’s father. You’re suggesting I make him disappear and lie to her face every single day?”

“You’ve lied to every other woman you’ve dated.”

“But I’m not fucking dating her, am I? She’s my wife.”