Chapter Eight
Zeke Coleman
I had a job to do, and sitting on my ass and waiting for information wasn’t getting me anywhere.
It was time to hunt.
Jaimie was at the house with Evelina, and after my lapse of control, she had seemed relieved to have someone other than me at her side. We spent the five days in the third safe house tenser than before, and when we switched to the fourth house, I knew something had to change.
For the sake of my sanity and willpower, I needed out.
I needed to separate myself from Evelina. Because if I had to watch her turn her questioning gaze on me and lick that damned bottom lip one more time…
My control was a small fracture away from being obliterated, and Evelina didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve inconsistency. She certainly didn’t deserve a monster like me. She deserved safety and someone who would be kind to her. Someone who wouldn’t come home covered in another man’s blood every night.
As I tried and failed to regain even a semblance of control, I set my scene. I laid out all the tools I would need for the job to come, and I tarped the floors to facilitate an easy cleanup.
Then, I turned on my phone and waited.
For someone with seemingly endless resources, Clide didn’t bother to utilize them if it took his men over two hours before sniffing out the cell signal that had become my phone. I waited outside the empty storage unit where I left my phone, and a group of three men arrived, looking around as if they expected someone to be waiting for them.
They scanned the general area for a minute, struggling to hone in on the exact location of the cell signal just like before. It didn’t take long for one of them to point to the storage shed that I had arranged.
Bingo.
They approached cautiously, all armed to the teeth and preparing to find both me and Evelina. They must have been strictly muscle. Anyone with an IQ of over one hundred would have been wary about the situation. They would have looked at the storage container and wondered why Evelina would be kept here.
But none of them had a second thought as they all rounded the container and entered through the front door.
I watched from the roof of a neighboring container, snickering under my breath at their ignorance as I adjusted the scope of my rifle, waiting for them to exit through the narrow doorway.
A few minutes later, the first man came through, glancing down at where he held my phone in his hand. A second man followed, a phone held to his ear as he likely told his owner about the unusual findings within the container.
I tucked my rifle into my shoulder as I looked through the scope and focused for just a second.
And then I fired.
* * * *
I stood before each of the men, assessing their injuries and varying degrees of resolve. I only needed one of them to talk. They seemed to all be nothing more than the muscle behind Clide’s operations, but for them to agree to take me as a target—knowing my reputation in the industry—he must have given them a damn good reason.
They had to have a reason worth losing their lives.
Based on the colorful expletives they offered, they knew exactly who I was.
I put on the mask of the maniac that I used in this situation, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow my mind to slip into that madness. I knew that was a line that my father had had no problem crossing. There were few distinctions between us, but there were a few lines that didn’t need to be crossed.
Those lines were the reason he found himself living out life in a prison cell while I remained free.
The central man—the most vocal of them—cursed at me again as I ran a knife down the center of his belly. His shirt was already torn from the start of my ministrations, but I carved my lines so shallowly and carefully that the pain was not yet an issue for him.
It wasn’t meant to be.
The shallow line split at his hips, and I dragged it across his body and up his side before inspecting my work with a forced smile.
Then, I did the same on the third man. The quietest of them.
“Do you have names?” I asked as I repeated the shallow carving for the third time.
Panic flashed in my current victim’s eyes as I spoke, but I didn’t acknowledge it.
Nobody spoke.
“Nameless people are the easiest to kill,” I taunted, tapping my knife on the man before me.
“Arjun,” the center man said.
“Elias.”
The first man who had received my carvings said nothing, and I smirked, pointing my fillet knife toward him. “You’re going to be the hardest to break, I take it. I love a challenge.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Arjun asked as he glanced between him and his colleague's markings.
“I’m marking my canvases,” I said as I examined them.
I watched as panic overtook two of them. Arjun thrashed against his bindings the hardest, and the silent man began crying tears of terror. The man in front of me, though—Elias—didn’t react. I stepped toward him and tapped my knife across his chest.
“Have you ever done any kind of stencil work?” I asked. “You mark your intended lines lightly first, and then when you get to the fun part, you can be confident in your lines. That’s what this is. When I carve each of you, I want to make sure I go around the vital organs until the last cut. The fun cut. If done correctly, you’ll be able to watch your bellies fall onto the tarp. That fear… Oh, Elias, there’s no better feeling.”
Finally, he heaved as if to vomit.
I could have shared the sentiment, but this was who I had to be. I had to play the part of my father’s son, as it was exactly who people believed I would be. Playing this part gave me a name. Playing this part had people pissing in terror in my presence.
It made me wonder why Evelina looked at me the way she did when everyone else showed nothing but terror in my presence.
“It won’t be hard to lure your cronies here. You’re just the first,” I said.
I eyed the bullet holes that took each of them down. All to the knees, and then a hand injury. The man holding the phone couldn’t be trusted for the seconds it would take to reach them. Leaving a phone in play would have been a rookie mistake.
“Answer my questions honestly, and I won’t carve a line. Lie to me, and I will. Piss me off, and I’ll slit your fucking throats. Understood?”
The pants of two of the men darkened with urine, and none of them argued with me as they sensed how serious I was about my rule. They would all die for coming here to take Evelina.
I strolled over to the first man, examining the microdroplets of blood on the blade’s tip. “Answer this, and I’ll move on to your next friend,” I reminded him. My sinister smile had my cheeks aching. “Why is he so interested in Evelina.”
As expected, he spilled his guts. Figuratively, fortunately. I would do it if they pushed me far enough. I’d cut them into little pieces and deal with the mess. But if I could avoid the cleanup… that would certainly be preferred.
“He paid for her. He—”
“I don’t give a fuck about that reason. There has to be more. He’s expending resources that he wouldn’t bother to use if there wasn’t a bigger reason.”
“She’s Alonzo Bianchi’s daughter. She’s valuable as leverage.”
I glanced at where Arjun answered and tilted my head.
“And?”
He paled noticeably with my attention. “Let me answer, and you’ll skip me for the next question?”
I tipped my head back to laugh. “You have some nerve trying to bargain with me right now.” But I clicked my tongue and nodded. “Let’s see what you can offer.”
“It started because of her bloodline and the leverage it would give him. But then he started digging into her past. He found businesses connected to her. He found her manager, and he heard on the rumor mill that she wasn’t the virgin he thought he had bought.”
“How the hell would he come to that conclusion?” I asked, my voice tight with the words.
“I don’t know, but he’s pissed that she’s not as she was advertised. Her father didn’t take responsibility for it. Bastard said he had no idea and that she deserved to be punished for falsely advertising herself or something. Clide was angry. He’s on her trail now, and it’s a game. He wants to find her and make her pay for all the money he lost on the faulty investment.”
I ground my teeth together. “It’s not an investment. She’s a fucking person.” I turned to the first man, and when I met his eyes, he began trembling. “Do you have anything to add?”
“The Bianchi mob boss is in hot water, too,” he shouted. “He’s offering to give Clide some of his men as reparation.”
I struck, dragging a deep line down the man’s side. Deep enough to hurt—certainly deep enough to go through all layers of skin—but not deep enough to gouge any vital organs.
He screamed, and I considered going to Arjun, but I didn’t. I wanted him to talk. And if answering my questions took him off the hot seat, I would let the other two men suffer for the information.
By skipping Arjun, I let them see what the reward would be for betraying one another and their master.
“How do we get him to back off?” I asked Elias.
“How the hell do you expect me to know this? I just work for him. I don’t speak for him.”
“Wrong answer.”
I did as I promised, watching the blood well on Elias much quicker than it had on the first man. I took a moment before I turned back to the nameless man, and he sobbed loudly.
“He doesn’t communicate with us directly,” Arjun spoke. “We only know what’s on the rumor mill. We know that he’s dedicated to finding the girl. He’s pissed about her lack of loyalty to a future husband. He made it clear that unless he was compensated for her, he wouldn’t back down. But that changed when he discovered that she was disloyal. That’s all we know. I swear it. We don’t know him personally, nor do we know how to get him off her trail.”
I believed him, and the other two men nodded profusely as if in agreement.
I released a long exhale.
“There’s nothing we can do to get him to back off?”
“Nothing,” Elias said.
“Well, then that makes you three entirely useless.”
None of them were able to complete a single scream before I ended them all.