I miss you.
Carlos didn’t bend Just leered down, sunlight filtering through jagged holes in the barn walls and bouncing off his shiny head. “I should’ve killed you when you were a greasy teenager.”
Greasy. Nice. As if my mother had ever let me leave the house without taking a shower and emptying a can of Lynx Africa onto my skin. “You could have. No one would’ve cared.”
“No one cares now. Look around you, boy. There’s no one here except men who’ll drink a toast to your death.”
Obeying him made my skin crawl, but curiosity got the better of me. I glanced around. The Thing Twins didn’t count as men, but there were others—one flanking Carlos who I vaguely recognised. Maybe. And two with Sambini. The stubborn idiot that had kept me alive my whole life wanted to believe I was frosty as hell, tuned in and sharp, but my head was pounding. Which was weird, cos I didn’t remember being hit there.
Just every-fucking-where else.
“Iamgoing to kill you,” Carlos suddenly spat.
At least, it seemed sudden to me. I raised my chin and dead-eyed this fucker. “Go on then.”
His eyeballs bulged out of his head. Because he couldn’t kill me, I belatedly realised. Not until he’d tortured Liliana’s location out of me.
Good luck with that, cunt.
Alexei had once given me a lesson on how to survive a hostage situation. At the time, holed up in the mud somewhere, I’d figured he was bored, but he was an odd dude. Nothing he ever did felt random, and it was the strangest fucking thing that I couldn’t remember club life without him.
“Most psychopaths are narcissists. And most hitmen are lonely. It is the easiest thing to keep them talking while you think of a better plan than dying at their hand.”
Nutter. Grade A. And Carlos was no hitman or interesting enough to be a psychopath. But he was definitely a narcissist, and if keeping him talking gave my brothers long enough to save my kid, I’d chat shit with him all day long.
“Where’d you get your shoes, man?”
I expected the backhand, but it sent me reeling all the same, head jerking back, lip splitting with the impact of Carlos’s heavy gold ring.
Blood filled my mouth. Fresh blood, which was nice. The stagnant dregs were starting to taste like arse.
Ears ringing, I spat crimson and righted my body enough to face Carlos again. I smirked, couldn’t help it, and this time he laid into me with his fists, and it took every ounce of self-preservation I possessed not to rear back and headbutt him. Every fucking shred. I had bruises on bruises and the pain tapped into the darkest parts of me. It was all too easy to picture what I’d do to him if the chains binding my hands broke down. If the men at his back wouldn’t shoot me the instant I surged out of this chair. I’d fantasised about killing this prick for ten fucking years.
The onslaught eased off.
A tooth bounced around my mouth, a molar from the back, and spitting wasn’t an option.
I swallowed it and found a shuddering breath from somewhere, trying not to think about my battered ribs. They weren’t broken, yet, but I wasn’t made of titanium. It was only a matter of time.
Keep him talking.
Words eluded me. Instead, I watched Esteban back up and murmur something to Sambini. I didn’t speak Italian, but it wasn’t a world away from Spanish and I got the gist.“Want a go? This shit is fun.”
I searched my mind for anything I’d personally done to offend Lorenzo Sambini. Sure, I’d fucked up plenty of his men. But that was business. He was the one who’d been on the ground the day my brothers had been gassed. Cam shot. Embry shanked and left for dead. Maybe that was why he shook his head and backed up.
Cos he knew I had more reason to hurt him than the other way round.
You’re in chains, idiot. Motivation doesn’t matter.
Whatever. Lorenzo’s reluctance seemed to irritate Carlos, which was bad news for me.
He spun around and came back, a knife in his hand—a knife I recognised from the ornate handle to the skull shaped butt. From the diamond-studded rivet to the curved blade.
It was the same knife he’d sliced me with a decade ago. The blade glinted in the hazy light still misting through the holes in the barn walls. It was kind of beautiful, but my iron constitution finally cracked.
My gut wrenched and bile filled my mouth, heart lurching to a painful stop. The barn disappeared and I found myself in the lavish hallway of the Esteban’s Surrey mansion, shiny tiles beneath my knees, a legit chandelier above my head.
Metal slicing skin.