Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
ANDIE
I drag the tip of my knife. Slowly. Precisely. Meticulously. Like a scalpel in a surgeon’s steady hands.
“Wakey, wakey, asshole,” I say, carving the beginnings of a letter X into Alejandro’s chest.
He’s been barely conscious the entire time I’ve been sitting on his bent knees, slicing my name into his flesh. It wasn’t until I was finishing the E that he started to struggle. Keane must have damaged some vital brain cells when he punched him.
Focusing on the task at hand, I tell Liam, “I never did thank you.”
He comes up behind me and brushes the hair off my neck, kissing my shoulder. “For what?”
I tip my head back to look at him. The swelling around his eye has gone down thanks to a poultice Hollis made. Whatever herbs and other shit he used to make it with smelled rancid, but it worked.
I stab my blade deeper into the pectoral muscle. Alejandro thrashes about but isn’t able to move one inch. Jax did a very good job with the restraints. Alejandro’s shouts are muffled by the cloth I shoved in his mouth because he was hemorrhaging bloody drool all over me after I ripped out that stupidly ugly tooth with the diamond in it with a pair of pliers.
“My name in Max’s chest,” I reply.
Liam looks to his right. “That was Rafael, not me.”
It’s messed up how much I like hearing Rafe did that for me.
I search for the man in question. “I love you,” I tell him.
Rafe has been quietly watching me carve up his brother. His dimples pop with his smile, before disappearing. The intensity in Rafe’s blue eyes when he looks at Alejandro makes them glow with an anger I haven’t seen since the night Rafe was forced to watch as Max beat me.
Rafe says something in Spanish, which causes a fierce reaction in his brother. Alejandro grunts with effort, trying to break out of his restraints.
I slide my knife up his neck to his ear and nick the lobe. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to shove this in your ear canal.”
The fucker growls and tries to headbutt me, so I throat punch him. He convulses as he chokes, forgetting he has to breathe through his nose since he can’t breathe through the gag in his mouth.
Alejandro glares at me, but I can see the fear lurking beneath the surface. His eyes dart sideways toward Jax. My Grim Reaper with the manic smile.
I tap Alejandro’s cheek. “He’ll get to you soon, but I have a few questions for you before I let Jax have his fun.”
Keane hasn’t tried to stop me from what I’m doing, and I’m appreciative that he has let me take my pound of flesh. I wish I hadn’t destroyed the cage down here with the crowbar. It would have been a fitting place to put Alejandro.
I seek Keane out, and he gives me a barely perceptible nod. I know how hard it is for him to watch me do this, and only because he never wanted this part of the business to touch me. And as upset as I was that he kept Kellan’s journal from me, I get it. I may not like how Keane tries to protect me sometimes, but I can’t stay mad at a man who will do anything for me because he loves me.
I bring the knife back to the letter X on Alejandro’s chest, which looks more like a crooked Y since I hadn’t finished.
“You’re going to answer every question I ask. Those answers will determine whether your death is drawn out over weeks, or over quickly. Trust me,” I say, leaning in close to whisper in his ear. “You don’t want to be Jax’s plaything for long.”
Alejandro’s eyes bulge when the knife pierces his skin again, and I drag it down to finish the X I’d begun. Grunting in pain, capillaries burst in the whites of his eyes, giving them a pinkish hue. Unlike before, he’s fully awake now to feel every single thing I’m doing.
“I’m going to remove your gag. If you spit on me or do anything else other than answer my question, I’ll cut your tongue out,” I warn him.
Alejandro goes very still.
Taking that as my answer that he’ll cooperate, I snag the cloth jammed into his mouth with the tip of my blade and pull it out.
“Is Kellan alive?”
Alejandro chuckles huskily. “What do you think, mascota ?”
“I think you’re a lying asshole.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter that your father paid me to kill him. Did you enjoy hearing his pitiful pleas?”
I keep my face unemotive when he drops that bomb. He was there that night in the alley when Kellan called me? Holy shit, he’s telling the truth. He couldn’t have known that otherwise.
Alejandro’s voice pulls me back, and I hate the crooked smirk on his face. “That’s nothing compared to how your precious Kellan screamed your name while I gutted him open right here in this room while your father watched.”
Nausea spikes heavily in my stomach. Kellan made a lot of mistakes in his life where I was concerned, but I loved him as only a little sister could love the man who she thought was her brother.
Needing to have the last word, I slowly slide off his bent knees and impale the knife into his thigh. I smile at Alejandro’s shrill, pain-filled scream.
“Kellan wasn’t my brother, you stupid prick. Maximillian Rossi wasn’t my father. Declan Levine is. And I’m done listening to you.”
Leaving my men to their fun, I head up the stairs into the main part of the house and find Tessa anxiously waiting in the living room.
“Fancy a trip to Mexico?” I ask her.