Page 62 of King of War

He shakes his head, eyes wild as they dart between me and the door. “No idea. Haven’t seen you for years.”

I kick the door closed behind me. “Six years to be exact. Not since I killed your brother.”

He shrugs, licking his lips, edging backward toward what looks like a bedroom. “Water under the bridge, man,” he says, limbs twitching with every half step he takes.

“What? I beat him to death with my bare hands and you think that’s water under the bridge?”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, beady eyes still everywhere but on me. I close the gap between us. “I knocked most of his teeth out, busted his eye so bad one of them almost came out of its socket. Definitely broke his jaw and more than a few ribs. Shattered his kneecaps. Then I killed him.”

Ethan is blinking at me, like a startled rabbit caught in headlights.

“All because I thought he had consensual sex with my fiancée.” I take another step closer and he has a full body shiver. “Can you even begin to imagine what I’m going to do to you now that I know what you actually did to her?”

His skin pales so fast, like all his blood is rushing straight to his feet, and I’m sure he’s going to pass out. He staggers back into the bedroom, which is fine by me because he has no place left to go. “Enzo, I—I—” he babbles.

I sweep his feet from under him until he falls backward onto the bed. Then I drop my bag onto the yellowed dresser. His eyes snap toward it. “Oh, yeah, that’s all for you. I have plenty of toys for us to enjoy, you sick piece of shit.”

His lip wobbles, but the terror gives him a burst of adrenaline. He launches off the bed like a wounded animal making its last-ditch attempt at survival. My fist connects with his jaw—a satisfying crack of bone followed by his howls of pain before he falls backward once more. Not nearly satisfying enough though. Not yet.

His headboard has sturdy wooden spindles that will come in handy. I take the zip ties from my pocket, work quickly to secure his wrists. He bucks and fights me, but even if he weren’t basically a weak pathetic piece of shit, he’d be no match for the rage-fueled strength that’s coursing through my veins right now.

He begs and cries once he realizes he can’t move. I ignore his pleas just like he must have ignored hers. Every single time I picture his filthy hands on her, imagine how scared and helpless she must have felt, my fury is renewed. I tune out his pathetic sniveling and unzip my black bag.

That shuts him up. He shakes from head to toe.

I pull out the syringes first and lay them on the dresser.

“W-what are they?”

“Adrenaline and morphine,” I tell him. “A trick I learned from an old friend.” Alejandro Montoya is a man I greatly admire, ruthless when he needs to be but not needlessly cruel for no reason. However, his torture methods are legendary, and I spent some time in L.A. a few years back, learning his craft from him. “You see, at some point, Ethan, you’re going to pass out from the pain. Maybe, if you’re lucky, your heart might give out. These stop that from happening.”

“Puh-please, Enzo. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

I flash him a smirk. On that we can agree. “Oh, I know you will. And then I’m going to torture you just for fun anyway.”

Tears and snot run down his face.

“But tell me everything and I might not use this.” I pull the two-by-four from the bag, the one wrapped with razor wire. “I’m sure given what you did to my girl, you can imagine what I plan on doing to you with this.”

His eyes blow so wide I’m surprised they don’t fall straight out of his skull. He shakes his head from side to side, his long hair flailing wildly. I kick him in the shin and drag his attention back to me. “Tell me everything I want to know. Start from the beginning, Ethan.”

He spills his guts, just as I knew he would. He starts with how my father and Carmine contacted him with a job, offered him money to rape my girl and frame his brother for it. Every single thing was set up and timed to perfection. The text from Rafael’s phone—the same phone my father got his hands on and kept a hold of long enough that Raf would simply think he’d left it at home, as usual. The photos Ethan took at the right angle so I’d know it was her and suspect it was his younger brother. They have the same ring, and it never fucking occurred to me it could be him because Ethan wasn’t even on my radar.

I swallow down the bile as I force him to tell me about that day, how he was given instructions by my own father from a burner phone. What to say. What to do. Where and when to send those disgusting photographs he took of her. Tommy was sent messages too, so he’d walk straight into the aftermath and react exactly as he was supposed to. Both of us were played like puppets, so that we’d be exactly where we were supposed to be at the right times. It was like a huge fucking production, with Carmine and my father pulling everyone’s strings, mine included.

I let him spew it all out of him, like a cleansing—if anything in the world could ever cleanse him—along with more tears of self-pity and snot and filth. And when he’s done talking there’s still more I need to know. “You let your own brother take the fall for what you did? He was killed and you did nothing to stop it.”

“I didn’t know you’d kill him. They told me they just wanted to drive a wedge between you and they’d protect him. I swear I didn’t know…” He sobs. Pathetic sack of shit. “And then afterward, your father showed me that video he had from some kind of hidden camera in the room. He told me if I ever talked then he’d release that video, and then I’d be dead too. Don’t you see, he used me too?”

Jesus fuck, does he actually expect me to feel sorry for him? “They used you? You were paid to rape someone. Not just someone, my fucking Rayne. My whole fucking world. A woman whose air you’re not fit to even breathe.”

He’s still crying. Still sniveling. “I’m sorry, I just… It was just supposed to be…”

I grab the two-by-four and smash it into his shin. Blood and bone go everywhere, caught up in the wire. He howls so fucking loud it almost bursts my eardrums. “How much did they pay you?”

He’s still crying.

“I swear to fuck, I’ll smash your other leg open if you don’t answer me.”