34. Christian
CHRISTIAN
P lace is a fucking shithole,” Levi grunts as we walk up the broken sidewalk of the little bungalow in Santa Ana, California.
We’ve been in California for a week, tracking down traces of whatever happened that night. The house was easy to find. There are only a handful of houses that have basements in this state, and from Mila’s recollection, it was pretty easy to narrow down the few that could be.
A happy birthday banner still hangs over the front door from whoever vacated this place a long fucking time ago. In the front drive, a broken-down car sits on cinder blocks, forgotten just like everything else on this block.
Most of the houses are empty; some burned so badly they should be torn down. The one we’re at has boarded-up windows, but it hasn’t stopped anyone from getting in through the wide-open front door.
Pushing the door open, my gun drawn, I nod to Levi, who keeps an eye out behind us. Stepping through, my boots crunch on the layers of broken glass, animal feces, and used needles covering the floors.
The walls are busted with holes and graffiti. The carpet is gone, and old sleeping bags line the floor.
“Looks like it was a drug hide-out,” Levi grumbles, stepping in behind me.
“Makes sense,” I murmur, keeping my gun aimed as I push through to the bedroom at the back of the house.
We search the house, finding nothing but a few stray cockroaches that skitter off the moment they see us. The place fucking reeks, the LA sun doing nothing but making it worse.
“Clear,” Levi calls from the other bedroom.
“Basement,” I nod towards a door off the kitchen.
He pushes the door open, and I head down, careful not to slip on the mountains of trash covering the steps.
What I find at the bottom has my dick falling to my toes.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Levi breathes, his gaze raking over the room.
“Someone’s been living here.”
“Could be homeless.”
Stepping over to the bed, I rip the tattered comforter off.
“I’d say this is our place,” Levi grits, but I’m too busy staring at the large dark brown blood stain in the center of the mattress.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
“Fuck,” Levi blows out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Now what?”
I cock a brow.
“Find what we need . . . and then burn it to the ground.”
An hour later, we’re parked up at the top of the hill that overlooks the valley below. Thick plumes of black smoke grace the evening sky as firefighters do their best but fail at putting the fire out.
I lift the cigarette to my lips, numb on the inside.
“You alright?” Levi asks, hands in his pockets where he leans back against the front of the car.
Yes. No.
“I will be.”
Once I get my hands wrapped around the neck of the man who ever dared to touch my wife and watch the life bleed from his eyes, I’ll be the happiest man in the world.
Until then, I’ll burn down everything else in my path to get there.
“Help!”
“Has anyone ever told you how fucking annoying you are?” I snap, but Screamin’ Pete doesn’t even acknowledge me over his incessant shrieking.
“Help me!”
I’m this fucking close to reaching for my gun.
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. Listening to this asshole for the last two days is giving me a migraine.
“Got a set of fucking pipes on him, doesn’t he?” Levi asks, stepping down into the bunker. “Fucker could break the sound barrier. Guess they don’t call him Screamin’ Pete for nothing.”
I shoot Levi a look and let out a breath through my teeth.
One . . . Two . . . Three . . .
“Help!”
Alright, I’ve had enough.
My fist connecting with “Screamin’ Pete’s” jaw is what finally shuts him up.
Thank fucking God.
“Jesus H Christ,” Levi admonishes, stepping forward to check Pete’s pulse. “You fucking knocked him out.”
I shrug, cracking my bruised knuckles.
“He was giving me a headache.”
Levi chuckles, scrubbing a hand over his dark hair. “And what about this one? He looks like he’s about to piss himself.” Levi stops, sniffing the air. “Nevermind. It’s shit.”
“He’s crying,” I murmur, stepping up to the table at the back of the room. There are a number of instruments lining the top, and I search for the one I want. When I grab it and turn around, Dave, Screaming Pete’s pal, breaks down in sobs. “Funny enough, you were laughing the last time you saw this.”
Dave’s eyes clench shut, as if I’m the boogeyman, and I’ll disappear if I close my eyes.
Unfortunately, I’ve met the real boogeyman.
He’s kind of a dick.
“What the fuck is that?” Levi asks when I step up to the man with the collar in my hand.
“Heretic’s fork,” I reply, casually wrapping the leather strap around my finger. There’s a set of prongs on each side, sharpened to small daggers that dig into the flesh under the chin and on the sternum if the wearer moves.
Pretty medieval to me, but hey, Dave likes to use it on teenage boys, so.
“You are one fucked up bastard, you know that Dave?” Levi asks, smacking him on the back, and I chuckle. I guess, sometimes, my brother is pretty funny, even if I want to shoot him most of the time.
“Alright, Dave,” I start, nodding to Levi to remove the gag in his mouth. “Your turn. What do you know about this?” I hold the flashdrive up in front of him, but the single fucking second Levi removes the gag, Dave screams bloody murder.
“Help!” he bellows, his face beat red and his eyes filled with tears. “Somebody, please!”
“Jesus Christ,” I let out a sigh. “Do any of you know how to speak?” I gesture back to Pete. “You want what he’s having?”
“Help me!”
My patience is wearing thin.
And that’s fucking saying something.
In a flash, my hand comes out, wrapping around Dave’s throat and squeezing until he shuts the fuck up.
Finally. Silence.
“Are you done?”
Dave trembles under my hand, his skin slick with sweat.
“Levi’s right. You do smell like shit.”
“Told you.”
“Now,” I breathe, allowing Dave just enough room to breathe that he’s not going to die before I get what I want. “When I remove my hand, you’re going to tell me everything you know about the video on this flashdrive. You aren’t going to scream. If you do, I’m going to hang you from the rafters by the balls. Understand?”
Dave has the good sense to nod. At least as much as he can.
“Good.”
I release my hand, and Dave sucks in a breath, his shoulders shaking with blubbering sobs.
“Please,” he begs. “I have a wife. Kids.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “I saw what you did to your son. Real fucked up. How do you think he’d feel about this?”
“You don’t understand,” Dave cries. “It was one time. It was a mistake.”
“How do you think the women in your videos feels about that? Do you think she feels it was a mistake?
I’m actually lying. I couldn’t watch the video all the way through. Made me fucking sick, knowing he’d done that to another person.
“You had this video in your possession. How did you get it?” I ask, my voice calm despite how irritated I’m getting. “I don’t have all night.” I shrug. “Neither do you.”
“I don’t know . . .” Dave urges when I move to slip the collar around his neck. I wait for him to elaborate because I’ve heard all this shit before.
You don’t deal with assholes like Dave for years in the FBI and not get fed the same bullshit line a few times.
“I just sell the product. I don’t know how it’s made. I can give you the names of everyone who bought one. It’s all back at my office,” he rushes like I don’t already have all that information. Unfortunately, Dave’s customer base is getting a whole lot smaller as we speak. “You seem like a reasonable guy. You wouldn’t want sick freaks like that walking the streets, would you?”
Fucking idiot.
“You know what, Dave, you’re right.” I step back, nodding to Levi like Dave here, really changed my mind about all the ways I’m going to torture him for the things I found when we searched his office on the upper side. “I am a reasonable guy.”
“Right,” Dave breathes, a ghost of a relieved smile on his lips.
“Which is why I’m going to give you one more opportunity to tell me the truth.”
Dave’s cheerful relief breaks and he’s back to sobbing. It’s getting old, honestly.
“Who the fuck gave you this video?” I ask, leaning forward until I’m right in his face and holding up the flash drive that contains Dave’s little film. “Final Jeopardy, Dave.”
But . . . he doesn’t answer. He either really doesn’t know, or he’s dumb enough to try and protect the people he was working for.
“I had hope for you, Dave,” Levi says with disappointment.
See. Sometimes, he’s funny.
“Wait!” Dave screeches when I reach for the knife instead.
“Dave, if you’re not going to talk, I have no use for you. I’m not running a bed and breakfast.”
“I’ll talk!” he squeals like a little mouse caught in a trap. “Franco March.”
“Now, who the fuck is that?” Levi asks, his eyes flashing to mine. Usually, in these types of circles, we hear the same names over and over again. Franco March is surprisingly not one of them.
“He’s the middleman. He’s who paid me.”
“And where did you meet this Franco March?”
“Down by the docks. An old, abandoned carwash off Pine Street. He said he got it from a woman, but I he wouldn’t tell me who.”
My phone buzzes on the table behind me, alerting me that time is up.
“Seems like I’ve run out of time, Dave.”
Dave shakes his head, his eyes filling with terror.
“No,” he pleads. “I gave you what you asked for.”
“Not really,” Levi says. “You gave us a name. We want to know who’s behind it at the top of the totem pole. Not really the same thing, now is it, Dave?”
“I say we leave him here for a night to think about it.”
Levi shrugs. “Could be fun. Not like I’ve got any plans.”
I nod, holding up the leather strap.
“You get to live, Dave,” I cheer, nodding to Levi to lift Dave’s chin. Dave blubbers, flinching when I wrap the leather around his throat. “For now.”
“Please—”
I silence him by pressing the forks into his chest until pinpricks of blood rise to the surface. Then Levi lets go of his chin, and then forks dig in there, too.
Now, he can’t talk.
I made it tighter than normal. If he moves his neck, the forks will only dig deeper into his skin. It won’t kill him, but it’ll hurt like a bitch. A small price to pay for all the fucked-up shit he’s done, in my opinion.
“You know, Dave,” I say quietly, right in his face, while tears leak out of the corners of his eyes. I’m sure he’ll be hurting much more when I return. “The only thing I’m sorry about right now is the fact that you and the woman you hurt will have matching scars.” My eyes flick down to the blood on his chest. “At least on the outside.”
I straighten, head to the table, and silence my phone. My eyes catch on the screen. Some stupid little picture I snapped the week before we left of Mila curled up against my side, Phantom with his head on her hip.
It was just a normal day. It was raining like fucking crazy, and both of us were tired, so we laid down for a nap. It was the most domestic normalcy we’ve been able to find in this new life, and I didn’t sleep a fucking wink because I couldn’t stop thinking about where we go from here.
Fuck, I still can’t stop thinking about it.
It’s been a week and a half and, fuck, I miss my wife.
My wife . Who the fuck would have thought a man like me would marry a girl like Mila?
Definitely not me. Then, again. She didn’t really get any choices in that.
Does it make me the bad guy if I’m not sorry? If I know I’d do it a hundred times over because it means she’s safer than she was on her own?
Drugging her. Kidnapping her. Holding her on some long-forgotten island. All of it’s led up to this point of no return and now that she knows the truth, I can’t escape the feeling that I’ll get the call that she’s up and vanished.
—Again.
“She’ll forgive you, you know?”
I grit my teeth, shutting my phone screen off. I’m not in the mood to talk about this shit with Levi. Seems he has other ideas, though, when he leans back against the table beside me.
“Not so sure with Talia fucking shit up, now.”
I must admit, the arrival of my ex couldn’t have come at a worse time. When I got her call the other night, I almost called New York off and went straight the fuck home.
I’m here for a reason, though, and that reason is my wife, even if she doesn’t understand.
“She’s a good girl,” he shrugs. “She’ll understand.”
“Thought you hated her because she shot me?” I challenge, cocking a brow at him, and he grins.
“Never said I hated her for it. Just said she did and that you still decided you wanted to marry her.”
“What can I say?” I grunt, lighting up the end of a cigarette. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”
Or a fucking masochist.
Levi just shakes his head, chuckling. He opens his mouth, but before he can say whatever idiotic thing he was thinking, his face falls, and he groans.
“Not again.” I look back to where he stalks over to Screaming Pete, who’s consequently pissed himself all over again. “Should have put diapers on you two.”
Grabbing my phone, I head up the stairs to our borrowed bunker, nestled into the woods of New York, and breathe in the crisp—clean—night air.
I let it out, watching the steam from my breath dissipate.
Fuck, I’m exhausted. Levi is, too, but we’re so fucking close to getting some answers, that we can’t afford to stop now.
I’m getting closer.
I grab a chain around my neck and tug the little band out, holding it in the night. The jagged stone in the center glistens in my palm. Running my thumb over the smooth platinum is what keeps me grounded, lately.
It also reminds me why I’m doing this in the first place.
She may not know why I married her, but I do.
Mila Rae Carpenter is mine, and I’ll write it in the blood of any man who tries to take her from me to prove my point.