Chapter 33
AbrAM
“Fourth time,” I say quietly. “Where did Nico take her?”
I flex my fingers, testing the sting in my knuckles as crimson trickles down the drain in the floor. One deep breath. Another. Control settles over me like ice.
The room is nothing but poured concrete, a single naked bulb, a steel worktable, and the wet rasp of a man who should have kept better company.
The goon from the restaurant who I’d knocked out cold, the one Nico shot, breathes heavily, loudly.
Now he’s tied to a steel chair, wrists and ankles bound tightly with zip-ties.
His face is pulp: one eye a swollen to the size of a plum, lips split, teeth spotted red. Every time he tries to inhale through the wreck of his nose, it whistles.
I step closer. The bulb hums overhead, throwing a hard circle of light across his wrecked features.
His good eye rolls up, unfocused. A pink froth swells at the corners of his mouth. “I t–told you, don’t—” A cough shakes him. The stench of copper sits thick in the air.
Mikail stands against the far wall, phone in hand. Denis is beside him, keeping a steady, emotionless watch. His phone chimes every few minutes, another source, another dead end.
Two hours. One hour and sixty-three minutes, to be exact. That’s how long Jenna’s been gone, every tick of the second hand driving a splinter deeper beneath my ribs.
I kneel, forearms braced on my thighs so we’re eye to swollen eye. “Listen carefully,” I say, voice low enough he has to strain to hear. “This is the last time I’ll ask nicely. Where. Is. She?”
His head wobbles, blood spilling from a fresh split in his brow. “I swear… don’t know… just security… no one tells us…”
“Lie.”
I tilt my head, studying the fear twitching under his bruised and bloody face. He’ll break eventually, they always do. The only question is how messy I’m willing to get before he does.
I extend a hand without looking away. Mikail presses a bottle of water into my palm. I twist the cap off with a crack. I tip it and take a slow swallow, letting him imagine, for a heartbeat, that humanity might still live inside me.
Then I upend the bottle over his head. Water and blood sluice down his cheeks, jolting him. He blinks, sputters, blinks again. When his focus locks onto me, it’s laced with panic.
“Last chance,” I repeat calmly. “If you know anything, tell me now.”
He huffs a broken laugh that ends in a wet gurgle. “What else… can you… do to me?”
“Wrong answer.”
I stand and casually walk to the stainless worktable. On it sits a rubber mallet, a welding torch, pliers, and a sharp set of gardening shears I brought for this special occasion. I choose the shears first and turn back.
“We’ll start small,” I say. “Pinkie toes first. Then fingers. We’ll work inward until there’s nothing left to prune.”
Terror shreds what’s left of his composure. “Wait, wait! I–I—”
“Shoes,” I order.
Denis and Mikail tug them free, peeling off filthy socks.
The man tries to kick, but the chair barely rocks—the bindings are too tight.
I crouch slowly, laying the cool steel across his smallest toe.
He jerks as the sharp blade nips flesh, drawing a bright bead of blood. His scream ricochets off the concrete.
I don’t lift the shears. “Where did Nico take Jenna?”
“I–I don’t know—” His voice trembles.
I raise my eyes, meeting Mikail’s and Denis’s. “Toes always work.”
Panic crosses his features. “Please! Stop! I’ll talk!
” He sucks in a breath. I wait for him to speak before removing the shears.
“He’s got two ghost houses,” the thug gasps.
“They don’t show up on paper as belonging to the family.
One of them he lives in, the other is for parties. Girls, coke, no witnesses.”
“Address. Now.”
“I only know the party drop. North of Lake Las Vegas. Corner of Sloan and Hadley. Brown stucco, busted fence.”
Denis is already hammering away on his phone. “It’s a shell corp out of Reno, eighteen month old deed. Satellite matches the description.” He shows me the screen. It looks like a squat eyesore drowning in weeds.
I stand, shears in hand. “He’d keep her where screams could get swallowed up by loud music,” I mutter. The thug nods too fast, eyes glued to the blades.
“Shut him up,” I say, turning away.
Denis cracks him across the temple with a pistol butt. The chair lurches as dead weight slumps, then topples over. I don’t bother to watch him hit the floor.