Chapter 40
Forty
MATEO
This guy’s screams are music to my fucking ears.
We decided to separate the two men so we could play them against each other and take turns in the two cells. After about an hour, they’re still not talking.
But we’re getting closer.
Julian and I are in this cell together with our number twos, and Carson and Rome are next door.
“He told us that you’re the idiot soldier,” I sneer in the guy’s face, and his eyes, both swollen, fill with anger. He doesn’t like that. “Not very smart. Easy to fuck with.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I shake my head and turn to Julian who’s already holding a knife.
“Fingers?” He asks.
“Definitely.”
My brother takes a lot of joy in removing appendages. If this asshole doesn’t start talking, he won’t have arms and legs for much longer.
“Which hand do you use to jack off?” Julian asks him calmly.
“Go to hell.”
Julian shrugs and slices through all four of the guy’s fingers of his right hand, sparing his thumb, making him bellow in pain once more.
And then he repeats the motion on the left hand.
“I guess it doesn’t matter which hand you use. No more jacking off for you.”
“Man, that sucks.” I shake my head as if I feel sympathy for this moron. “So, why don’t you save the rest of your body and tell us where Lincoln lives?”
“No.”
I lift an eyebrow. Up until now, he’s insisted that he doesn’t know who Lincoln is.
“Well, we’re making progress. So, you know who he is, you just don’t want to tell us where he is.”
“I didn’t say that.”
I fire up the blowtorch to cauterize the wounds, and when the stench of burned flesh hangs in the air, we leave the cell and join Rome and Carson with the other guy.
“Well, they’re having fun,” Julian mutters as we walk inside the room and see that this guy is missing his nose, and Carson is peeling the skin off his hand.
“That’s gotta hurt,” I reply as I cross my arms over my chest.
“Gonna leave a mark,” Julian agrees.
“Where is Lincoln?” Rome asks, and when the man in the chair, who hasn’t even flinched, simply stares at him, Rome punches him in the mouth.
“We know that you work for him,” I supply, and his eyes shift to me. “Your buddy over there has been very helpful. How long have you been with him?”
No answer.
Carson doesn’t just continue meticulously taking his skin. He rips it off, making the man grunt with the pain.
“You get to decide how bad we make it hurt,” Julian reminds him. “You’re dead anyway. Just tell us what we want to know, and this all ends.”
“Fuck you.”
“They always offer sex,” I say, shaking my head.
“No, I don’t want to have sex with you in exchange for letting you loose.
Although, we could fuck you with that knife over there.
” I cringe. “Talk about pain. I bet having a huge knife like that rammed up your ass over and over again will make you cry for your mama. Let’s try it. ”
Carson grins, the crazy motherfucker, but the man in the chair says, “Wait.”
I turn and lift an eyebrow.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Lincoln has a compound about twenty minutes outside of Vegas. He’s there for tonight, no idea where he’s going after that. He doesn’t stay in one place very long.”
“Address,” Carson barks.
“I don’t know the mailing address, I’ve never sent him a birthday card,” he growls back, and I admit, I kind of like him.
But I still pick up the knife.
“I can give you directions.” He starts rattling them off, and Julian opens his laptop, punching the keys, and then he narrows his eyes and looks up.
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not bullshitting you,” he insists. “That’s his place.”
I look over Julian’s shoulder and feel my stomach roll.
It’s practically next door to Julian’s mansion out of town. No more than a mile away.
Fuck.
“Don’t kill him yet,” I mutter to Julian, who’s body is so tense, so coiled to destroy this motherfucker, and I can’t blame him.
“Tell me about Rose.”
I’m staring at his face when I ask, and I see recognition flicker, but he says, “Who?”
“No, don’t do that. Don’t get all shy and coy now, after you’ve already told us where Lincoln is. Tell me about her.”
“There’s nothing to tell. She’s the boss’s old lady.”
“How long has she been there?”
He scowls. “Who the fuck cares? She’s just some whore that he fucks and takes with him everywhere.”
“You need to care,” I reply, the knife still in my hand.
“See, I don’t buy that you’re a foot soldier like the kid next door.
I think you’re higher up in the ranks and you know way more than you want to tell me.
I already know where he is, and I’ll be going there shortly to kill that motherfucker, but I want to know everything you can tell me about the girl. ”
“I told you, she’s his woman. One of several, actually. He gets bored easily.”
“Charming,” Rome says.
“She’s been around for a long time. I’ve been with him for ten years, and she came around a few years later. Usually, when he brings girls in, we can pass them around, but he took a special interest in the redhead. Didn’t let anyone else touch her. Still doesn’t.”
“And is she with him tonight? At that compound you claim he owns?”
“She’s always with him. Yeah, she’s there.”
“Why didn’t he go to the gala with her tonight?” Rome asks.
“Got word that it was a setup. So he sent us in instead to kill everyone so he could take over all the families.”
“Who’s the mole?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the fucking truth. Lincoln has a guy that works for both teams, that’s all I know. We were just sent to the Four Leaf to kill a bunch of mobsters.”
I snort at that. “Not one family head was killed tonight. You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots.”
I turn to the others.
“Let’s go kill him.”
“You won’t,” the soldier says, making me pause. “You won’t be able to kill him. You have no idea what you’re walking into.”
He starts to laugh now, and Carson grips him by the throat and rips his trachea out of his body, instantly killing him and making a huge fucking mess.
“God damn it,” Julian says when he’s caught in the blood spatter. “Why are you always so fucking messy?”
“It’s fun,” is all Carson says as we walk out of the cell.
“We keep the other one alive until we know for sure that this intel is right,” Rome says, and we all nod in agreement.
“I need to go up to see Violet and tell her that we’re going to get her sister.”
“We also need weapons and to assemble the army,” Julian reminds me.
“We’ve got that,” Spider says, and Diego’s already on the phone. “We’ll go to the armories here in the city and gather what we need. We’ll be ready in less than an hour.”
“This is what we fucking do,” Luke agrees.
Yeah, we have a strong fucking empire.
I nod. “See to it. The girls will stay here with guards.”
“We have to go change,” Julian says. “The girls are safe here. I don’t want to move them until this is done.”
“Agreed,” Rome says, and he pulls his phone out to call his wife.
“Be back here in thirty,” Carson says, and the three of them hurry off.
I head up to the penthouse and find the girls in the living room, talking quietly.
Lulu’s on the phone.
“Well?” Violet demands as she stands. She changed out of her dress and is in sweats and a T-shirt.
My T-shirt.
“We’re going to get her. You girls will stay here, with all of your guards, until we get back with Rose. Staying put is the safest.”
“Rome just said the same,” Lulu says as she hangs up and rubs her baby bump. “I’m comfy here.”
“I’m going with you.”
I shake my head at my wife. “No. Absolutely not.”
I stride up the stairs to the bedroom, but my girl is on my heels.
“Yes, Mateo. Do you think that Rose will willingly go with you? All of you big, scary, strange men? After all she’s been through, there’s no way she’d let you take her. I have to be there for her, to make sure she’s safe and understands what’s going on.”
“You have no idea how fucking dangerous this is going to be, Savage. I will not survive if something happens to you. I—”
“I’ll stay at the car with Bobby and Lucky,” she insists as she frames my face and pulls me down to her. “I promise, I don’t want to get in your way. This is too important. But she’ll be scared and confused, and I have to go. There isn’t another choice for me, Mateo.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you about this. I just don’t. We have to go.”
“Great.” She whips her shirt over her head and strides into the closet, choosing the same outfit she wore to the warehouse that night. “I don’t want to argue either. You won’t even know that I’m there.”
“You’re my wife, Violet, and you think I’m going to let you walk into a war zone?”
“Yes.” She pulls on her pants and zips them up. “Because you know I’m right. And you know that I can handle myself. I throat punched a dude during a gunfight tonight. Never thought I’d add that to my résumé, but here we are.”
“Baby, I love your sense of humor, but now is not the time.”
“I’m fucking terrified,” she admits and shakes her head.
“I don’t want to go there, but I’ve been searching for her for so long, Mateo.
I have to see this through. I have to be there when she comes out of that building so I can wrap my arms around her and assure her that everything’s going to be okay.
I failed her once, and I won’t do it again.
So you take me with you to get my baby sister, and then you get to be in charge of all of the scary Mafia shit in this family moving forward. ”
Her eyes are glassy with tears, and it almost destroys me, so I pull her against my chest and kiss the top of her head.
“You stay with Bobby and Lucky.”
“I promise.”
“Don’t make me regret this, Savage.”
“I promise.”