Creed: Retribution, Part Three (Confessions of Creed #3)

Chapter 1

? ONE YEAR AFTER THE EXPLOSION AT THE NYPD - FBI PROFILER, SAM EAGLE ?

The holding room was spare and functional with concrete walls, steady fluorescent light, and the air kept cold.

A metal table sat bolted to the floor between us, and Kane Creed occupied his side of it with a terrifying calm.

It made the restraints at his wrists and ankles look like pathetic attempts at keeping him caged.

His blond hair had been buzzed down to the scalp, exposing the brutal solidity of his features and the thick muscle filling his orange jumpsuit.

Tattoos marked him everywhere, black ink climbing his neck and arms, and my attention caught briefly on the word CREED stamped into his bicep in heavy block letters.

His gaze tracked me as I crossed the room, sharp and assessing and openly hostile.

He was easier to read than I thought he would be, aggressive somehow without moving an inch.

When our eyes finally held, his green and unmistakably lethal, I felt the familiar tension shift into something colder.

I had interviewed hundreds of violent men who enjoyed the power they held over others, but beneath Kane's hardened, cocky exterior, there was suffering there, dense and unresolved.

I took the chair opposite him. The metal legs scraped against the floor.

“Hello, Mr. Creed. I’m Agent Sam Eagle. FBI,” I said, keeping my voice even as I set a thick file folder on the table between us.

It was packed with reports and photographs and transcripts from interviews that had gone nowhere.

The Creed case had become the bane of my existence between the on-going public outrage and the lack of an evidence trail.

Whatever corruption the three criminals were bred from had proven exceptionally difficult to trace.

Kane’s attention dipped to the folder, then lifted back to me.

His lips twitched subtly before he raised his hand and scratched at his temple with his middle finger.

I felt my brows lift before I could stop them.

It was a small thing, juvenile of him really, but it was the most personality I’d seen from any of Creed, and it caught me off guard.

Rafe Creed had been an impenetrable wall beyond feeding me what I knew were lies, his interpreter explaining that he was at fault for it all.

A guilty conscience, I was sure. Arden had done the same.

It seemed both cared very little about freeing themselves—at least not through the proper pathway and with the help of authorities. Kane so far was different.

I set the recorder on the table and switched it on, the red light blinking to life. Kane watched it with interest. “State your name for the record,” I said.

His gaze pinned me. I understood why the public was enamored with Creed. It was more than the leaked footage of their apparent torture. All four of them, including the diseased Thorne Creed, had an allure that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “Kane,” he said gruffly.

“Last name?”

He sucked on the inside of his cheek before answering. “Don’t have one.”

“This document here says otherwise. You told the NYPD you were Mr. Creed.”

“Mr. Creed’s dead.”

“Metaphorically?”

“No. Cancer fucked him.”

“I assume you’re referencing…“ I flipped through my notes. “Alexander Creed. Your accomplice gave us that lead when he was questioned at the NYPD. We looked into Ms. Creed’s late husband and found a suspiciously scrubbed clean trail.”

“Yeah? It’s almost like money can really buy you anything or something.”

“I sense a note of passive aggression there.”

“You sure you went to school to get that fancy FBI uniform, agent? Seem kinda uneducated.”

I jotted down: Instigator. Aggressive.

He grinned a little. “Cute. Will you draw hearts around my name later?”

I sighed. “Kane, you do realize what we record here today will be reviewed in front of a jury, correct?”

“Fucking better be.”

I eyed him curiously. “You have a lot to say then?”

“Maybe.” His eyes zeroed in on my tie. “You wear that around, Arden?”

“Why?”

He cleared his throat. “No reason.” He forced a cruel smile.

I adjusted my collar. “Let’s refocus. Rafe Creed. He told the NYPD quite the story about his childhood.”

“Yeah. Guy’s got a bit of a bleeding heart. Big, ole murdering teddy bear. I miss that fucker…Shit, can you take that out?”

“No.” I adjusted my notepad.

“It was…a joke. The murdering thing.”

“Uh-huh.” I tapped my pen. “Now I’ve reviewed your case thoroughly, Kane, and I’m going to be blunt with you: there’s no way out. You likely will have two options as your verdict: life in prison or death row. You murdered sixty-seven people at Hotel Viktoria—”

“It said Viktor,” he interrupted. “The hotel sign.”

I studied him. “And that’s important?”

He backtracked a little. “You’re not my lawyer; you’re just some snob in a suit. Why the fuck should I explain any of it to you?”

“Because my job is to provide your psychological profile to the jury. That profile will likely determine whether or not they show you any mercy.”

He looked down at his chained hands. “I don’t deserve mercy.”

“Interesting.” I added a third word to his list: Empathetic. “And why not?”

Kane shrugged. “Well, I killed them. Doesn’t really matter why, right? They’re still dead.”

“So you’ll plead guilty?”

“Yes.”

Emotionally intelligent. “Do you believe you deserve mercy?”

“Mercy doesn’t exist for Creed.”

“I thought you didn’t claim that name anymore?”

“I never really have, agent. It was forced on me much like everything else.”

“As in you believe that you’re guilty but you were pushed to that edge?”

“This is dull. Do you at least have a smoke?”

“No. Answer the question, Mr. Creed.” Evasive. “What pushed you to kill those people?”

“The Thorne in my side.” His nose scrunched, his lips dragging in an upward quirk at his own pun.

Egotistical, I wrote, keeping my eyes on him. My pen faltered at the humor in his eyes. It was the most human I’d seen any of Creed. “Your brother, you mean? Your accomplice mentioned he died in the explosion set by Arden Creed.”

“Jesus, that was a whole lot of wrong. Arden didn’t kill Thorne. He was shot. And Rafe wasn’t my goddamn accomplice.”

“Rafe’s confession says differently. He said explicitly that he shot Thorne and aided you in the attack at Hotel Viktoria.”

He straightened. “I thought you just said Arden killed my brother. Playing mind games, agent?”

Far more intelligent and detail-oriented than he lets on. I shrugged. “Just seeing if your stories line-up.”

“If Rafe said he killed Thorne or touched anyone at that hotel, then that was the bleeding heart talking again. He didn’t. Thorne was shot by one of Halden’s guards.”

“Halden Taylorson, the man Arden Creed beat to death and lit on fire? Her DNA was found on his remains when we searched the compound. At least what remained of his…corpse.” I swallowed and pushed a photo of Halden Taylorson’s body toward Kane, but he barely blinked at the sight of it.

If anything, he looked happy, and my stomach clenched.

I recognized that look. It seemed Kane Creed did share something with every other murderer I’d interviewed.

“Only ever knew him as Halden or Mr. Halden,” he spat, his expression slicing toward pure pride. “And he deserved that death, so fuck yeah, motherfucker. Our girl did that, and she did it fucking perfectly.”

“You may want to refrain from profanity,” I said. “Juries don’t take well to it.”

Kane Creed leaned back in his chair, knees spreading wide, chains pulling taut as he popped his lips once in nonchalance.

“Fuck you,” he proclaimed, pointing his middle finger at me, “fuck them,” he continued, pointing at the recorder, “and fuck this,” he finished with a flourish, gesturing to the entire facility.

I cleared my throat. I found myself missing the silence of Rafe and Arden Creed. “So your brother is dead.”

Kane went still, his casual sarcasm and humor draining out of his body as if something vital had been broken beneath his skin.

His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath it, and his eyes dropped to the table, unfocused.

For a moment, I thought he might say nothing at all.

Then his breath hitched, shallow, like he was trying and failing to put himself back together.

When he looked up at me, the hostility was still there, but it was edged with something uncontained and feral.

“You must have a death wish,” he said hoarsely.

A chill ran down my spine. “Are you threatening my life?”

“You just seem like a bit of an idiot.”

“I could say the same about you, Mr. Creed. Nothing you’ve given me so far will have a jury in your favor.”

“You think I give two shits about a jury liking me? I don’t.” He leaned into the table, his chains rattling. “Let me let you in on a little secret, agent.”

“Go on.”

“This?” He lifted his hands, flashing his cuffs. “Those?” He jutted his chin to the bolted door and the jail cells visible through the bullet-proof window. “They’re nothing. This has been a goddamn vacation for me.”

“I have here that you were in critical care not long ago. Inmates beating up on you is a vacation?”

“They tried at first, and they failed.” He grinned, recollecting himself into the Kane that flipped me off.

“Yes, I saw the complaints waged by the twelve inmates you sent to the infirmary.” I scanned the file and frowned.

“But this says that only a couple months ago after a stint of good behavior that you were admitted with two fractured ribs, a torn shoulder, broken fingers, and were found knocked out cold. Those are fighting injuries.”

“No.”

“No?”

Kane looked away, openly breaking again.

Ashamed, I wrote down. “Are you saying you did that to yourself, Mr. Creed?”

He said nothing, tight-lipped.

Internalizes emotions. “How exactly did you even manage those injuries on your own?”

His nostrils flared. “Fuck off.”

I sat down my pen. “A wall?”

Nothing.