CHAPTER 13
Chaz stumbled as Lord shoved him down the carpeted hall of Lazarus’s fortress.
His mind still reeled from Helio’s sudden death, with blood and brain matter from Helio’s exploding head clinging to his face and riddling his hair.
He felt sick; Helio had been his best friend since Chaz joined Lazarus’s family over four months ago.
Drinking, drugs, fucking women, then fucking each other—Helio was the perfect partner and best fucking friend.
And Lazarus had taken him out as if he were nothing more than an annoying gnat.
Forget Helio—worry about yourself.
Chaz stumbled again, then deliberately tripped, crashing into the wall and falling to the floor. His face pressed against the carpet, his hands bound behind his back. He didn’t try to get up.
Lord grabbed his cuffed wrists and hauled him roughly to his feet, wrenching Chaz’s arms in their sockets. Chaz grunted in pain. The underboss didn’t speak, but Chaz could feel the man’s rage as he shoved him forward again.
“Hey,” Chaz rasped. “Can’t we make a deal?
” He was desperate, and words tumbled out before he even knew what he was saying.
“I know you like cock.” A chill of death radiated from Lord.
“Hey… Hey, no judgment,” Chaz added hurriedly, tripping over his own feet.
“I like cock, too. Me and Helio, we fucked all the time. You saw us. Cock is awesome.” Chaz grunted as Lord smacked him hard in the back, almost sending him sprawling face-first into the carpet.
He grabbed his footing before he went down and staggered forward.
“I’m just saying, I’ll… I’ll suck your cock if you let me go.
I mean, swallow the whole thing. I don’t have a gag reflex. ”
Lord’s breath surged through his nostrils like a furious beast.
Chaz had nothing to lose, so he kept trying.
“Some of the men think you’re servicing the boss.
I-I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is…
” He snorted. “That can’t be too satisfying, am I right?
I mean, the boss is fucking rigid. Kinda soulless.
You need someone who focuses on your needs and takes their time getting you off.
You can’t tell me the boss gives a shit about pleasuring you, right—”
Chaz face-planted the wall, his nose crushed by the force.
Blood gushed into his mouth as his eyes instantly watered, and pain exploded through his face.
Lord gripped the back of his neck, strong fingers digging into the tendons, holding his broken face against the wall.
He leaned in, lips peeled back from his teeth as he snarled in Chaz’s ear, “Be thankful the boss didn’t hand you over to me.
I would have taken you apart, piece by fucking piece, for involving him in your little stunt.
” He ground Chaz’s face into the wall. “You have no idea what your little fuck-up has caused. No one hurts the boss and lives to tell about it.”
Hurts the boss? The ferocity of Lord’s words seemed to go beyond merely getting Lazarus involved in the drive-by hit. But Chaz had no fucking clue what he was talking about.
When Lord yanked him off the wall, blood smeared the expensive paneling, streaking down.
Chaz felt the crushed cartilage in his nose, and if he had any chance of living past the next couple of days, it would’ve healed at an awkward angle, marring his “perfect features”—Helio’s words.
But his nose wouldn’t have the chance to heal. His hours were numbered.
Lord herded him outside, where two men Chaz recognized but didn’t know waited by a car with the trunk open.
Lord stuffed him in the trunk and slammed the lid.
Muffled voices pressed through the cramped, dark compartment, but Chaz didn’t strain to hear their words.
His fate was sealed, and eavesdropping on their conversation wouldn’t save him.
The car doors opened, and the vehicle rocked slightly as the two men climbed in, closing the doors behind them. The engine rumbled, and then they were moving. Chaz shifted as something cold, hard, and steel dug into his side. Something he could use as a weapon? A tire iron, maybe?
The thought went in and out of his head like a puff of breath.
The steel cuffs bit into his wrists; there was no wriggling free, even if he dislocated his thumbs.
And if by some miracle he could free himself, there was still no escape.
If he came out of the trunk with a weapon, they would shoot him—non-fatally—beat him down, and still deliver him to the devil.
Any way he looked at it—he was fucked.
Clint and Cochise waited in an empty parking lot beside a deserted gas station located in the city’s ghetto. A lone streetlamp flickered as dusk fell, creating shifting shadows of weeds sprouting through the cracks in the old pavement.
The two gangsters were there for only about five minutes before another vehicle entered the lot, and two men stepped out, both dressed in perfectly tailored Italian suits and immaculate hair.
Clint shared a glance with the Egyptian, feeling more than ever like a roughneck gangster beside these polished “mafia” men.
Clint and Cochise walked over to the car. Inside the trunk was a cuffed man with longish dark hair and tattooed arms. He eyed the men hovering above him, wary and alert.
“This is the shooter?” Clint asked.
One of the “couriers” nodded.
“How do I know?” Clint muttered, skeptical. “Lazarus could have sent me one of his random men.”
“If Lazarus says he’s the shooter,” the courier said, “then he’s the shooter. You want him or not?”
Clint’s attention fixed on the captive. He watched the man’s eyes dart between him and the courier, cataloging their words. Clint also watched the lie forming behind his intense gaze.
Clint nodded once and flicked his hand. The two couriers grabbed the shooter and hauled him from the trunk, dumping him heavily onto the cracked pavement. The man grunted as his head thudded against the hard ground.
The two men returned to their car and left the parking lot.
Clint waited, his jade eyes steely as they locked onto the cuffed man. He counted down—three, two… one.
“They’re lying,” the captive spat out the lie right on cue.
“I didn’t shoot anyone! I’m just a fucking scapegoat to appease you.
I swear, I’m not the shooter!” His throat worked as he stared up at the two men, then shifted until he managed to get onto his knees.
“Lazarus’s henchman grabbed my buddy and me.
He told Lazarus I was the shooter and my friend was the driver.
Lazarus believes anything he says. He shot my buddy in the head!
” He lost his balance and toppled onto his side, catching himself with his elbow, which cracked against the concrete.
Clint exchanged a dry look with Cochise—then kicked the shooter in the face, the heel of his cowboy boot catching him in the chin, clacking his teeth and sending a canine flying from his mouth as the sudden force laid him out on his back.
His head smacked the pavement again, harder this time, but he remained conscious.
Clint squatted next to him and jerked him forward by the front of his shirt.
“Lie again, and my friend here…” he jerked his head at Cochise, “… he’s going to cut out a piece of your tongue.
And he will keep taking pieces until you stop lying…
or you run out of tongue?” His fist clenched, squeezing the man’s shirt tighter around his throat. “Capisce?”
The shooter gagged and stared at the cowboy through watery, bloodshot eyes, his tongue flicking out over his bloody lips. He nodded.
“Good,” Clint drawled, releasing him with a shove that cracked his head against the ground a third time. “We have an understanding.”
Blood drained down Chaz’s throat as he lay on his back, his skull throbbing, his cuffed wrists digging into the small of his back.
His entire fucking face was racked with pain from the hard kick to the chin.
The fucker had about broken his goddamn jaw.
Only one tooth had come out, but he’d rattled the others loose.
His watery eyes darted to the Egyptian, who stared back at him with dead eyes. Chaz had heard stories about him and the cowboy—scary tales that made his blood run cold now that he was at their “mercy.”
The two gangsters hauled Chaz to his feet.
The sudden upright momentum sent his head spinning with a violent rush of dizziness.
His legs turned to rubber, his ankles rolled, and he staggered into the men, immediately catching a fist to the gut that doubled him over.
His legs went completely slack beneath him, and the two men dragged him the rest of the way to their car, where he was again crammed into the trunk.
His feeble attempt to play on the cowboy’s distrust of Lazarus had failed miserably.
Chaz only now recalled the cowboy’s reputation as a human lie detector.
Very little got past the fucker, and his threats weren’t to be taken lightly.
Chaz didn’t doubt for a fucking second that the Egyptian would start taking pieces from him at the first provocation.
The bastard looked like a fucking wraith from hell.
The drive to the next unknown destination was brief. Chaz knew this was the last car ride of his life—they were taking him to hell.
Clint drove through the front gates of the Sanitini mansion and around to a side entrance that led to a lower level of the massive home.