31. Chapter 31
Chapter 31
R oman
My eyes drilled into her. “Do you think it’s a good idea to provoke me right now, Sweetness?”
“Why would now be any different?” she returned.
The room looked like something out of a horror movie, except Luna wore cheery, blood-splattered, yellow polka-dot rubber boots. “What in the actual fuck happened here?”
“You’re going to be disappointed if you came to help. It ended kind of abruptly.”
Her retorts made me want to fuck that little mouth of hers with my hand on her neck so I could feel my cock lodged deep in her throat. It had been a frustrating day. “Your ass is going to have a long talk with my palm when we get home if you keep throwing lip at me.”
Fenn chuckled. “It usually makes me want to give her a wet willy.” He turned to Luna. “You into kinky shit, Lou?”
Kilian winced. “Fowler, don’t put images like that in my head. She’s like our little sister.” Their obvious familial banter eased something in my chest.
Luna picked up a scalpel in one hand and a long, wicked-looking tube with a sharp end in the other. “You can always try, husband.” Some of my anger dissipated because I fucking loved her calling me “husband.”
Sylvie glanced at Drakos and grimaced. “You had to bring Beelzebub with you.”
Drakos didn’t get in her face for once–he was too busy staring at the tortured, naked, dead body of Lionel Strack handcuffed and zip-tied to the gurney. It looked like they’d been straightening up the prep room when we walked in, but no one had bothered to clean him up.
“Fuuck me, Lollipop,” Drakos grinned. “I think your cousins are a bad influence on you.”
I glanced at Drakos. Why the fuck was he calling Sylvie Spade L ollipop ? Luna was right, there was something going on between those two.
Kilian frowned. “This wasn’t our idea. I just wanted a nice, clean BTK.”
BTK–bind, torture, and kill. He said it so casually, like this was a typical conversation for them. I studied Lionel’s bloody, mutilated face with the black stitches across his lips and one capped eye. He also had a few stab wounds on his legs, and blood and bodily fluid around his groin area.
“Who’s idea was it to torture him?” I asked.
Luna stepped forward. “Mine.”
Drakos snorted. “There are three Spades standing next to you. There’s no fucking way this was your idea.”
But I studied her, and she held my gaze without flinching. “He bragged about stabbing Misty, and kicking her in the face while she lay bleeding on the ground. Then he told us about some of the other… things they like to do to women. I would’ve done worse if he hadn’t died on us.” Her voice shook a little, and I realized Luna was agitated and likely coming down from an adrenaline high.
Fenn shook his head. “It’s always the ones you suspect the most. He was an evil bastard who deserved a bad end.”
“Is that true?” Drakos asked Sylvie.
She shrugged. “We were all willing to make the psychotic weasel suffer before we killed him. Fenn’s right, some people should be allowed to die with dignity. He wasn’t one of them.”
Kilian winced. “They sucked his testicles out. Luna sliced his scrotum and Sylvie used her trocar.”
Drakos whistled and turned to Sylvie. “That’s just evil .”
Luna absently played with her tracker as she watched me. If she thought it was coming off now that Lionel was dead, we were heading for a fight.
“I think people forget I’m a Spade in all but name,” she murmured.
Seeing Lionel’s brutalized, fleshy body on the gurney gave me grim pleasure, but I was still angry she’d put herself in danger by helping to take him out. I hoped to God Silas and Jerome Strack never found out.
My eyes traveled back down to her boots. “Come here.” She hesitated for a moment, but finally walked over to me.
I kept my arms folded and looked down at her. “Good choice.”
“What happened at your meeting?” she asked.
“We aborted it and blamed police presence in the area. I was five minutes away from selling my soul.”
“I should have told you we had Lionel sooner, but we were a little preoccupied.”
Reaching out, I tucked a few strands of dark hair behind her ear and traced my fingers along her cheek. “At least you don’t smell like formaldehyde today.”
Fenn rolled his eyes. “The selfish asshole died before they could use embalming fluid on him, but he suffocated in his own puke first. Luna, why is it every time you’re involved in a kill, it turns into a clusterfuck?”
The asshole was trying to provoke me again. I tipped my head down. “How many kills have you been involved in?”
“I’d rather not say,” she muttered.
“Not that many,” Kilian answered for her. “Three, including this one. Her father took a hit out on her when she was fourteen. The second man was after Sylvie, and this is the third.”
Drakos whistled. “You two have been busy.”
But I was stuck back on the comment about her father. How had we not heard about this? I planned to give Ivan shit for missing it. “Your fucking father sent someone after you? What happened?”
“I took care of it.”
“What happened?” I repeated.
She glanced at Fenn, who raised an eyebrow but kept his mouth shut. Fenn likely wanted me to know about the danger she’d been in, even before getting on Strack’s’ radar.
Luna sighed. “I was able to… get him first.” She looked so lost and sad that I wanted to rip her father’s spine out.
“Tell me.”
“I shot him.” She shifted, and I knew there was more. “It was a little messy.”
Fenn shook his head. “A little?” He turned to me. “He had a torture kit on him.”
Hate and loathing churned in my gut. If her father was capable of sending a hitman after his own child, he needed to be put down like a rabid dog.
Drakos eyed Sylvie. “What’s your story?”
“You wouldn’t understand. My story isn’t a picture book.” Sylvie turned and continued cleaning up her workspace. “Stop annoying me. You and your barrister friends need to butt out.”
“You know what barrister means, I'm impressed. Do I annoy you, or is it something else?” Drakos drawled.
I cut them off before they could start in on each other. “We have a dead body and a crime scene. Is there a plan, or should I call in my clean-up crew?”
Fenn scoffed. “Don’t insult us. We have a better clean-up crew, and our own crematory. This isn’t our first rodeo.”
Kilian started making calls, and I turned to Luna. “You need to leave the killing to me from now on. I don’t want you implicated.”
“Well, I don’t want you implicated either. How did Ivan figure out Fenn had him?”
“Cameras. Why didn’t you call us?”
“Because I wanted to be involved and knew you wouldn’t let me.”
It was hard to argue with that. I turned to the Spades. “I’m leaving and taking Luna with me.”
Kilian nodded. “Good. We’ve got this.”
Luna removed her wellies, and while she changed and cleaned up, I sprayed off her ridiculous yellow boots in the big industrial steel sink, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. Glancing around, I realized we were all a little fucking nuts.