7. Dax #2
Ghost pouted as he looked down at the man. “That’s not very nice after I just kept you from melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“I know who you are, you crazy bastard.” Milen gasped. “Where are the other two? I didn’t think you ever worked alone, or are they keeping an eye on that pretty piece of ass you three share?”
Yeah, that shit ain’t gonna fly. No one talks about my best friend like that.
Grabbing the knife out of his leg, I flipped it over and slammed the rounded hilt right into the spot the acid damage was.
With the force of the blow, I could feel the skin split, and blood started to ooze out as Milen howled in pain.
His whole body went tense as the pain stunned him, and his face turned red.
“I’ll say this once,” I snarled, grabbing his face so he looked me in the eye.
“You fucking talk about my best friend like that, and I’ll go medieval on your ass and gut you like a pig.
People can live quite some time with their guts hanging from their stomach cavities.
Maybe I’ll even strangle you with your own intestines. We clear?”
“I didn’t think it was possible, but you might just be the right level of crazy to put up a good fight against Marco,” Milen sneered.
I squeezed his jaw tighter, making him grunt as I shook him slightly. “Answer the goddamn question, Milly, because I already have my knife in hand. Gutting you will take me all of five seconds. Lucky for you I’ve done it a few times so I know how not to kill you.”
“No one around you is safe. Marco knows everything about them and you. Taking out Diego was a smart move, but he’s only the public face of Marco’s operations in the States.
A brilliant mind like Marco’s won’t be stumped for long, and soon he’ll have his drugs flowing back in before you can ever find his compound,” Milen said, a slight manic energy coming from him.
“You shouldn’t have killed everyone. You might have had a chance with the one loose end I was sent to clean up before you could strike. ”
Frowning, I turned to the guys wondering if they knew what he was talking about.
Cam pushed off the wall and ambled over to us, pulling out his phone.
As he reached my side, he kissed my temple as he showed Milly whatever he had pulled up on his phone.
The sight of it had Milly spewing words in another language.
It didn’t matter if you knew what it was or not, people always know when you’re getting sworn at.
“Don’t worry, we are keeping her well looked after,” Cam shared.
“I even made sure to send a psychiatrist to check in on her. The poor woman has been through so much and pumped full of drugs she never needed to be on. Once she has a clear mind, I don’t think we’ll be needing any information from you, after all. ”
“Aww, you did all that yourself?” I asked, leaning into him. “You do some of the sweetest things.”
“I told you, beautiful, I’ll always do what’s needed to protect you and keep you safe,” Cam murmured, nuzzling my ear like I wasn’t holding a bottle of acid in one hand and a knife in another torturing a dude.
“Marco doesn’t know about you,” Milly rasped.
“He’s had people watching her for a long time before he decided to make a move.
Mastiff fucked things up. He was never supposed to go after your best friend.
If he hadn’t done that, then you never would have been tipped off about being in someone’s sights. ”
I handed over the acid to Ghost, who set it on the counter. Now that the man was talking, I didn’t want to risk him clamming up again. “It’s really hard to find good help these days. I lucked out with these guys… smart, sexy, and fucking amazing in bed.”
“Your fairy tale could have easily been your nightmare. They were approached before Marco went with the Mad Dogs, but they wanted to get Trick’s attention on their own,” Milly shared, shocking the shit out of me.
“What?” Eagle snapped and charged forward. “The hell you talking about? That acid you swallowed fucking with your memory?”
“Kimber,” Milly pointed out. “Her whole purpose was to get you on board with us and hand over Tricks once you made contact.” His gaze shifted to me as he spoke this next part, “Marco miscalculated on that, though. He assumed if you saved her, you saw her as family. Clearly not, since it was the last act of kindness you planned to give her. Once you saw she was involved, everything went to shit. Then Mastiff tried to pull a fast one, making Marco speed up the plan to land us where we are today.”
Flipping my knife in the air, I looked at everything from the beginning, the first time I noticed Diego was making more aggressive moves to steal my clients, territory, and product.
They always say hindsight is twenty-twenty, and they couldn’t be more right in this case.
The way to Mexico had been locked down tight for a good three years at only what I allowed in or out that passed through the West Coast. It forced anyone else to go through the East Coast or even Canada if they could be paid off.
Just like the frog put in the pot with the water slowly heated until it was too late, I’d have been caught totally off guard.
It seems leaving Kimber worked out after all, and even paid her life debt to me.
Now that we were even, I had no reason to hesitate putting her six feet under so she could face my brother in the afterlife and tell him she tried to have me killed more than once.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love that you’re suddenly a chatty Kathy here, but my problem is you’re not telling me anything new,” I commented as I didn’t catch the knife this time, and it landed, embedding itself into Milly’s arm. “Oops, sorry about that. I was getting bored and missed.”
Milly practically growled at me like he wasn’t the victim strapped to a chair in a torture room. Wait. Was he stalling? Narrowing my eyes at him, I snatched up the dropper I’d set aside and let a drop land on the back of Milen’s hand.
“Fucking goddamn bitch, what the fuck are you doing?” Milen demanded as once again the acid started to smoke, and his skin turned black.
“Do you have a partner?” I snapped. “You’re stalling, I can tell. There’s no end to this that you live, but you’re way too fucking calm for that. The only reason I’d be that way is if I knew the job I was supposed to get done is being handled.”
Milen gave me a slow smile fighting against the pain. “He warned me you were smart.”
“Who?” I barked, grabbing his throat. “What’s the plan? You were sent here to do something, and you looked worried when I said we got to this floor. There’s something here you don’t want us to find, isn’t there?”
Searching his face, I dropped more acid on his arm, making him hiss and curse at the pain. This wasn’t going to work. As long as he kept us here distracted, whoever his backup was had the freedom to do as he pleased. We’d been stupid for believing he was the only one they’d been trying to sneak in.
“Never mind, I know your game, and you almost had me, feeding me all that bullshit. I don’t doubt it’s all true, but none of it tells me anything useful.
It was just breadcrumbs to keep me interested.
” Lifting the dropper, I held his gaze as I said this next part.
“Guess what, I’m no longer interested in anything that could possibly come out of your mouth.
However, you did tell me Marco believes his sister is dead, and that will be helpful to me.
Since you decided to play games to the very end, I promised you a slow, agonizing death.
Unlike some…” I leaned in to whisper in his ear, “… I keep my promises.”
Forcing his head to the side, I shoved the dropper deep into his ear and squeezed the contents into his ear canal.
From that point, it would eat away at his brain but also flow through the nasal passages, down his throat, and eventually to his lungs and stomach.
It wasn’t enough acid to make this quick—it would be slow, making him wish for death long before it would happen.
“Wes,” I called as he snapped to attention.
“Check everything, and if there’s a way to protect the information you haven’t gotten yet, do it fast.” Weston did as he was asked, jogging out of the room.
“Tommaso, the security of this place… do you have all the codes or access to everything, or are there still places you can’t get into? ”
“This floor was the only place I couldn’t find any way to access. None of the people I’d planted had been able to get up here either. Only those who were in Diego’s inner circle could even step foot on this floor from what I gathered,” Tommaso informed me.
I waved everyone out of the room as Milen’s screaming was giving me a headache. “Last one out, shut the door. Fucker is going to blow out my eardrums with that kind of screaming.”
“Dax, do you really think there’s someone else here?” Tommaso asked me.
Coming to an abrupt halt, I glared at him. “Do you want to assume there’s not and have everything destroyed?”
“Of course not,” he said, recoiling from the venom in my words.
“That bastard was plan A, and we are now looking for plan B. I should have fucking seen this coming, but this isn’t my goddamn empire, Tommaso, it’s yours,” I growled out.
“Now get this whole place evacuated right the fuck now. We need this place empty but for us. If plan B is just to take the fucking building down, we don’t want to have mass casualties. ”
“What about us?” he demanded. “I can’t run this if I’m dead.”
“Just fucking do as your told, and I’ll try and explain this to you in small words when you get back,” I snarled, shoving past him to take a good look at this floor myself.