Chapter 21 #2
Dr. Phillips sat in the middle of the room, cuffed to a chair that had been bolted to the floor.
His expensive shirt was wrinkled, his tie gone, and sweat had already darkened the collar.
The bastard looked up fast, and for one second Sloan saw fear before the man tried to hide it behind the same arrogance that probably worked in exam rooms and hospitals.
It didn’t work here. Not with him.
Sloan shut the door behind him, the sound echoing through the room. He didn’t say anything at first. He just stood there, looking at the man who had betrayed his mate. The man who had smiled at her, lied to her, put her under, and done something to her body she had never agreed to.
The man who had made Sloan’s mate think she was losing her mind.
Sloan looked at the cuffs then to the two-way mirror. “Remove the cuffs.” Sloan ordered, then looked back at Phillips. “I want him to come at me.”
The door opened immediately as Casey walked in and did exactly that, then exited the room.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” Phillips said, his voice not nearly as steady as Sloan was sure he wanted it to be, “but you can’t hold me here.”
Sloan slowly took off his sunglasses and set them on the small metal table against the wall. There was one chair in the room that sat empty, but Sloan wasn’t sitting.
“I’m a doctor,” Phillips snapped when Sloan didn’t answer. “I have rights.”
Sloan turned his head, his eyes locking on Phillips. “You lost any rights you think you had when you betrayed my mate.”
Phillips visibly swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sloan smiled, but there wasn’t a damn thing friendly about it. “That’s your first mistake.”
Phillips’s eyes flicked toward the mirrored glass.
“No one is coming in here to save you.” Sloan stepped closer, his voice calm. Too calm. “Not a lawyer, not a judge and definitely not whatever thing you made a deal with.”
Phillips went still.
There it was.
Sloan saw it, and the rage inside him sharpened into something deadly.
“I didn’t make a deal with anyone,” Phillips said, his hand clutching at his chest as if breathing had suddenly become hard.
Sloan tilted his head. “Second mistake.”
The doctor pressed his lips together, his tan skin turning pale with fear.
Sloan moved closer, stopping just in front of him.
“Let me explain how this is going to go. You’re going to tell me who paid you.
You’re going to tell me who helped you in that surgical room, who falsified her chart, and you’re going to tell me every name attached to this.
You are also going to tell me exactly what you did to my mate in that operating room. ”
Phillips gave a nervous laugh that died almost instantly. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Sloan leaned down, his hands gripping the arms of the chair on each side of the doctor. Metal groaned beneath his fingers. “I deal with monsters every day.”
Phillips’s eyes dropped to the bending metal.
“And right now,” Sloan continued, his voice lowering, “I’m the monster in this room you are dealing with.”
The doctor’s throat worked as he swallowed again. “I was only doing what I was told.”
"For a fucking paycheck!" Sloan’s roar echoed in the room just as he bitch slapped the bastard. "Do not play me."
For a split second, all he saw were flashes of Becky.
Pale and sick. Trying to be strong while her whole world changed in the blink of an eye.
Sitting in Slade’s office, saying she thought they had done something to her.
Asking how he was taking the news that he was the father.
Still worrying about him, about how his Warriors would look at him, when she was the one who had been violated.
Sloan’s hand shot out and wrapped around Phillips’s throat.
The doctor jerked, his eyes widening as Sloan leaned in close.
“You don’t get to make yourself small in this,” Sloan said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“You don’t get to hide behind orders. And you definitely don’t get to sit there and pretend you were just some man following instructions.
You are the man who betrayed my mate.” His grip tightened enough to make Phillips gasp.
“And that earns every bit of rage I have in me.”
Phillips tried to speak, but Sloan tightened his grip just enough to stop him.
“You put your hands on my wife while she trusted you.” Sloan’s eyes were blacker than they had ever been. “You lied to her. You drugged her. You violated my wife, my mate. I have killed others for less.”
Phillips’s face started to turn a ghostly shade of bluish gray.
Sloan let go suddenly, and the doctor sagged forward, choking and gasping, tears springing to his eyes as he fought for air.
“I didn’t know she was yours,” Phillips rasped the lie after a few minutes of trying to talk.
Everything in Sloan went silent.
He crouched in front of him. “Third mistake.” He sneered knowing his eyes were blacker than they’ve ever been.
“No.” Phillips shook his head vigorously. “I swear it.”
“She was targeted because she was mated to me,” Sloan continued, ignoring his pitiful denials. “Did she bring you a bigger payday, you piece of shit?”
Phillips started crying like a little bitch, squeezing his eyes closed as he shook his head. “Please.”
Sloan grabbed the back of the chair and yanked it hard enough that the legs screamed against the floor bolts. Phillips cried out, his whole body jerking.
“Don’t you fucking close your eyes against the nightmare that faces you.” Sloan’s voice was low and deadly. “Who paid you?”
Phillips’s eyes flew open, wild and wet. “I don’t know his real name.”
Sloan leaned closer. “Then give me the name he used.”
Phillips’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Sloan growled in warning. “Answer me!”
Phillips began to shake harder. “Mercer.” Phillips cried out, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.
Sloan didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t give Phillips one damn thing to read. Inside, every instinct he had locked onto that name.
Mercer.
“First or last?” Sloan asked.
“I don’t know.” Phillips’s voice cracked. “That’s all he gave me. Just Mercer.”
“What is he?” Sloan asked wanting to know exactly what they were dealing with.
Phillips swallowed, his eyes darting toward the mirrored glass again.
Sloan’s hand clamped onto the arm of the chair, and metal bent beneath his palm. “Look at me.”
Phillips did.
“What is he?” Sloan repeated.
“I don’t know,” Phillips whispered. “Not human.”
Sloan’s jaw tightened as he glared at the piece of shit.
“He came through a private fertility research grant,” Phillips rushed on, as if words alone could keep Sloan from touching him again. “Everything looked legitimate at first. The money. The paperwork. The clinic access. The patient files.”
“My wife,” Sloan growled.
Phillips flinched. “Your wife’s file was already flagged when it came to me.”
“Flagged for what?” Sloan demanded feeling his rage boiling past the point of not return.
“Prior pregnancy. Frozen eggs. Her connection to the VC.” Phillips’s breathing hitched. “And exposure.”
“Exposure?” Sloan went still. “Exposure to what?”
Phillips stared at him, and Sloan saw the panic behind the man’s eyes.
Sloan leaned in until Phillips stopped breathing again. “If you don’t answer me, I will kill you without thought and without answers. We have people who can talk to the dead, and I will be more than happy to bring them here to stand over your fucking corpse.”
Phillips’s lips trembled. “Blood. Your blood.” The words came fast after Sloan’s threat.
The word slid through Sloan like a blade.