Page 60 of Wild Heart
Ben made a rude sound from somewhere behind me. From the corner of my eye, I saw the blurred edges of his shadow against the stained floor. It grew as he approached me, coming so close I felt his breath on the back of my neck when he spoke, “Did you ask him a single fucking question, Koslov?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Nope.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“He was just another one of Delgado’s pawns. Anything he could’ve told us, we already know.”
“So, you dragged him back to our warehouse for a forty-five-second kill?”
“He stole something from my boy.”
Flexing my fingers, I placed the heel of my boot on the edge of his chair. The metal made an ugly grinding noise as it skidded a few feet, rocking back and forth on thin legs before it tipped. The dead man’s skull cracked against the ground, the hollow sound echoing off the walls in a way that sent an excited shiver down my spine.
Blood still oozed across my face in a crimson river, but I didn’t dare wipe it away.
Solnyshko likes to play.
Rolling my shoulders, I popped my neck once before I brought myself toe to toe with my boss.
Christ.
Only Benjamin Thomas would wear a goddamn suit to a fucking murder house. I’d watched him kill men in those exact clothes and then waited while he switched his tie out for one that wasn’t smeared with blood. He looked different tonight, though, a blink and you miss it sort of change that I suspected had everything to do with the wedding band wrapped around his fourth finger.
I glanced at it. “Should I say congrats?”
“Fuck you, Koslov.” He gave me a look like he wanted to punch me square across the jaw. “My new husband is in my fucking house, sharing ice cream with your boyfriend instead of stripped naked in my bed.”
Ben’s penthouse was locked up tighter than the concrete box my father was rotting in, and that was theonlyfucking reason I dropped my boy off and left him there.
“I’ll give Delgado twenty fucking minutes of my night, and then I’m going home to my husband.”
I recognized the impatient, sour look he wore across his otherwise pissed-off face. One glance in a mirror, and I imagined I’d find something similar smeared across my own. I didn’t fucking enjoy being away from Marcos. His absence was nothing but a hand around my throat. The farther away I got, the more dizzy and on edge I felt.
Ben jerked his chin, and I followed him across the warehouse. The space was quiet, weighed down by death and violent promises. Seeping down the walls was the sharp, metallic scent of blood. It curled against stale cigarette smoke, creating something so potent I could taste it on my lips.
The ground was wet with the icy water that dripped from an old spigot. One drop after another ran toward the drain in the floor. There were hooks in the ceilings and cabinets of old weapons that made this place look like the set of a cheap thrasher film.
It was all intentional.
A ruse.
A simple mind game we played with the men we brought here to die. They begged, and they screamed, and they cried, and theywaited… wondering which weapon was the weapon we’d use to take their life.
Ben stopped beside an old table, one we’d built from wood pallets and cracked brick. He slapped the folder he held across the top and slammed his fist into the rotting wood. It made a cracking sound when it split beneath his knuckles, sending frayed pieces of wood soaring through the air.
It wasn’t often we had to work this hard to rob a man of life. Delgado had fucking pissed us off, and for that, he earned himself a few extra bullets. What the fuck kind of example would it be if he didn’t?
He had a maniacal kind of confidence only psychopaths and top-tier narcissists possessed. He needed to be put down before the rest of the underworld thought they could start stealing our shit and killing our men.
Retribution was our specialty, and Delgado didn’t have enough brains in his skull to be afraid.
“We’re done chasing that piece of shit. It’s not fucking likely we’ll win any game he created.”
“He’s moving too fast for us to track because it’s the only fucking move he knows how to make,” I said.
It was a coward’s strategy—one he’d nearly perfected. Delgado crawled from hole to hole and left his men behind like sacrificial puppets.
The dead guy on the floor was just a gambit in a never-ending game. We’d found him down a manhole Delgado was spotted climbing in and out of, squatting next to a four-foot stream of sewage. The only weapon he had was a rusted over pipe. When he clipped me across the temple, I nearly drowned him in that river of shit.
