CHAPTER TEN #2
He wants to help me negotiate for delivering his daughter? That I didn’t expect.
“You’ll eventually hand her over willingly?” I keep all shock out of my voice, not letting on how off-kilter he has me.
He steeples his hands, scrutinizing me for a moment. “Yes. I believe Ivanna is exactly who Mr. O’Reilly hopes she’ll be.”
Jesus Christ. This guy is connected. Mr. O’Reilly is my client, but I’m not going to confirm that.
“And waiting benefits me how exactly?” I ask firmly.
“What’s the current price on her?” He quirks an eyebrow sardonically, plainly convinced money will solve everything. It could.
“Fourteen million.”
He smiles knowingly. It seems that information is old news to the doctor. “You’ll be able to request at least twenty when we’re through. And I’ll pay you ten to keep her safe and hidden for her college years.”
Seriously? She’s only midway through her senior year in high school.
My pulse thumps in my ears and wrists and temples, like a time bomb about to detonate. “College? She won’t be finished until four and a half years from now.”
“Yes. And at that time, I will personally help transition her. She’ll walk into your custody of her own accord, ready to assume her role. Your client will be in awe of your prowess.”
Thirty fucking million.
“There’s more, Mr. Wells. I know who you are, and while you might not know what you’re capable of inheriting, I can show you a gold mine. The thirty million will be chump change, but you’ll need to prove you can put my daughter first.”
What the hell? He must be referring to my grandfather’s organization. My grandfather doesn’t know who I am, but I’m aware of who he is, and while I’m not certain of the family’s inner workings or how far his influence stretches, I know he’s powerful. But I won’t be anyone’s yes man.
I think Dr. Kingston knows that though. And my extended family has nothing to do with Ivanna. No, there’s a bigger prize here—something that makes thirty million chump change.
Ten million to keep her safe and the promise of far more.
Plus, the bonus of a guilt-free conscience.
It’s a no-brainer. I’m certain the seven and a half million apiece will be enough to entice my guys, not to mention all the other jobs we can complete in that time.
We’ve been doing well for ourselves, but this is next level.
I study the picture of Ivanna on his desk.
She’s gorgeous—freckled cheeks, button nose, big blue eyes, and ginger hair.
Even in a photograph, there’s something so dynamic about her.
So captivating. Like she has something spectacular brewing beneath the surface, a quality she tries to hide.
I sigh, knowing I was lost to this deal before I ever walked through his door.
How could I not sign on to watch her when taking my eyes off her is painful?
“You have a deal, Dr. Kingston.”
He stands, buttons his suit jacket, and saunters toward me to shake my hand again as I rise and fasten my own jacket.
“Glad to hear it, Mr. Wells. Ivanna will be hosting her eighteenth birthday party this weekend. Security will need to be tight. My secretary will send over the details and the contract for our agreement.”
“Very well. I’ll be in touch.” I make my way toward the door, Dr. Kingston matching my steps. He stops, his hand on the doorknob.
“What led you to her?” he asks, and for the first time, I see fear mar his features.
“A ruby necklace—serial number,” I offer, watching to see if it means anything to him.
His brow line wrinkles. “It was lost. How?”
“Gemma Frost had it from Camp Hideaway. She recently decided to have it appraised.”
“Goddammit,” he hisses. “And Gemma is—”
“Dead,” I say, confirming what he already suspected.
His eyes close briefly on a sharp inhale, but with that small breath, he screams pain and regret. Dr. Kingston is a man who will garner my respect—brilliant, cunning, and clearly has a heart. My mother would’ve liked him.
And his daughter—I guess she’ll double as my most important job and my new obsession. Not that he needs to know the latter.
That memory plagues me all the way to counting room two.
Hypnotically. The rush to get here is a blur.
I pause to lean against the wall, my lungs burning.
This is fear. I don’t do fear. I lead. I control.
I fix. I conquer. Whatever she’s fucking doing to me needs to morph into rage so I can eradicate this mess and close the goddamn deal.
The fucking bastard tried to take her from me.
He drugged her and put his hands on her.
He robbed me of fucking my bride.
He needs to suffer.
I punch in the code and swing open the door to find Axel, Ryker, Liam, and Gage playing cards at a round table while our guest slumps in a chair—bound, bloody, and gagged—in the middle of the room. They’ve already had some fun with him beyond the broken arm and nose he received upstairs .
The door slams and latches behind me with an echo. Since that disturbance announces my arrival, I don’t bother with greetings. I snick open my Benchmade Infidel switchblade, stalk toward the fucker who dared to touch Ivy, and slice off his ear.
Blood gushes and spurts, but his screams are muffled by the duct tape gagging him.
I flip the severed lobe in my hand and toss it to Gage. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
He chuckles, catching it and throwing it into the money pot with a quippy, “I’ll raise you an ear,” before turning back to me. “Thanks, boss. Fuck, I love it when you play.”
“It’s like a scene out of Reservoir Dogs . Dance for us, Chief,” Liam taunts, pulling an appreciative grin from me with the reference.
The guy is still screaming when Axel catches my annoyed eye roll and commiserates. “Larry here is a bitch, Wells. Might as well pull up a chair.”
“Never gonna happen,” Gage informs. “Wells has little patience for this shit.”
With a clenched jaw, I grunt. “What Gage said is true, Larry. I’m impatient, so now that I have your attention, you need to give me answers.”
I rip off the tape and endure the sixty agonizing seconds of whining until he quiets to mere sputtering groans. “There we go. Now, Larry, let’s start with a simple one. You were interested in my bride . Why?”
“Look, man. I already fucking told them.” He spits blood and gathers his breath, one eye so bruised and swollen that it’s a mere slit, entreating me. “She didn’t look like a bride in that black-and-white gown. I thought she was hot. That’s it.”
“Fucking up that simple question takes a certain level of stupidity, Larry.” I stab my knife into his shoulder joint and twist while he wails.
Removing it, I wipe the blade on my suit pants.
They’re already soiled with the guy’s blood.
“Now, shall we try that again? Why were you interested in my bride? ”
Larry coughs and cries. Jesus, I fucking hate sniveling sissies. They sign up to be part of the big leagues but can’t handle pain.
He composes himself— finally . “I saw something a week ago—no, closer to two, maybe—on the dark web. Only up for a minute. Some match to one of those ancestry tests. Said she was the daughter of Eleanor Healy and some guy named O’Reilly.
I went to school with Eleanor, so when I saw your girl, I thought she might be her daughter. Looks a lot like her.”
I shoot a look at Liam, who jerks his chin and growls, “Thirty-seven seconds.” He’s confirming how long the results of the ancestry test were posted.
The O’Reilly bloodline was flagged in an effort to find my girl. While we took her results down immediately, we knew there was a good chance others had made the connection—that’s why we extracted her.
“I erased it,” Liam continues, “but that doesn’t account for every person who saw it.”
Thankfully, my Little Storm is smart and has been trained well.
She never offers her personal information, so she used an alias and listed Celeste’s home address and an email that had zero connection to her.
That was still enough to wreak havoc, but it bought us time to get her out in a way that was less alarming.
Gage intercepted two men near Celeste’s, but in order to keep the family safe, he had to take them out before retrieving information.
I turn back to Larry. “So, you wanted to, what, say hello to your high school chum’s daughter?”
He swallows. “Yeah.”
Circling him, I pace myself. While I don’t enjoy torture like Gage does because I have better ways of spending my time, I do find the art of being a step ahead invigorating. “You been in touch with Eleanor lately, Larry?”
“I asked around—Facebook and old friends.” His breathing evens out, confidence returning. “No one’s heard from her in over twenty years. ”
Stopping in front of him, I smile. “Exactly. Which is precisely why Eleanor wasn’t mentioned on that ancestry test. There’s no DNA on her.
Half-truths piss me the fuck off, Larry.
” Strolling over to the supply cabinet, I pocket a couple of zip ties, return to the liar, and tighten one above the elbow I didn’t break upstairs. Equal opportunity torture for the win.
He stammers, drool dripping down his chin, “What … what the fuck are you doing?”
“Don’t want you bleeding out … yet ,” I tell him as I step back to the cabinet to retrieve the cordless reciprocating saw.
He yowls as I turn it on, but the roaring whir of the Sawzall dampens it, so I don’t bother replacing his gag.
Lowering it to his left wrist, which is bound to the arm of the chair, I chop it clean off like a tree branch.
Blood spouts and sloshes, dousing my shirt and pants and spilling to the floor.
Chunks of his flesh and muscle are stuck in the blade. That’ll be a bitch to clean.
The shrieking is nearly more than I can tolerate, so once I’m finished, Liam hands me a scotch while Ryker chuckles beside him.
“It’s a nice change of pace to be the spectator,” he says, obviously enjoying the show. None of that ease trickles over to me. We may be getting somewhere, but I need more.
When the bawling lessens, I set down my scotch and join Larry, who is now covered in his own piss and vomit. “So, now that we’ve established you didn’t roofie my girl because she resembled your long-lost high school friend, who you’d happened to read about on the dark web, who do you work for?”
“Myself. I work alone, man.”
Douchebag.
“Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to kill you, Larry.
You touched what’s mine, so the sentence for that is death.
Plain and simple. But I can be persuaded to make it less painful if you cooperate.
Or I can gouge out your eyes, slice off your dick, and force you to choke on them. The choice is yours.”
Realization hits him. He chose the wrong path in life, and it ends here. That flicker of understanding generally leads to cooperation. Larry spits more blood and takes a breath. Sweat drips down his chalky face, and his body convulses, but he’s still with me.
To be sure, I reinforce his need to be forthright. “Whoever you are protecting, I can assure you, will not mourn your death, so it isn’t worth your loyalty. Let’s make this quick and therefore less torturous, Larry. Who do you work for?”
“I’m independent, like I said. It was a hit. You complete it. You get paid. That’s it.”
Fuck. “Fine. And your reference to Eleanor?”
“I really did attend high school with her,” he insists, but at my narrowed gaze, he continues, “She was mentioned in the hit, and your girl looks a lot like her.”
There is a strong resemblance.
“How did you know she was here?” I prod, flicking my knife open and shut while Larry’s eyes follow the movement.
“Coincidence. I swear. I was here with a buddy. When I saw her, I asked where she was from. She wouldn’t tell me anything, but when her friend blurted out Ohio, I took a chance.”
“That checks out,” Axel adds, face in a scowl, probably due to his sister’s slipup.
“Amount for the hit?” I bark.
“Fifteen million,” he says, his color draining.
That’s more than I last heard. They’re growing more desperate, realizing how close she is to taking what’s hers. Motherfuckers.
“And who is offering the money for the hit?” I ask, hope coursing through me that we can get to the root of this once and for all. But I know deep down, my Little Storm will always be battling fatal squalls.
“Someone named Mordred,” he divulges, nearly passing out. “That’s all I know.”
Believing his final statement, I keep good on my promise, and instead of cutting the zip tie so he bleeds out, I pull out my Nighthawk Custom 1911 pistol and shoot him between the eyes .
Gage doesn’t wait for an order, knowing full well I’ll have my work cut out for me, digging into this. He slides his chair back with a screech and stands. “I’ll take care of disposal.”
Ryker slaps him on the back. “I’ll go with.”
“Good,” I say, striding to the table and downing the finger’s worth of scotch left in my glass. “Liam, you’re with me until you relieve Ty in the morning.”
“Mordred?” Axel asks, to which Liam and Gage arch their brows, wondering how much I’ll volunteer. Not much. But I need his ears open to certain organizations. One thing the Noire brothers have access to are secrets. Things shared in the shadows.
I nod. “He’s connected to KORT.”