Page 7 of Righteous Enforcer
An hour passes.
Blood pools beneath his chair.
My methods grow increasingly creative, yet his resistance remains.
This is becoming tedious.
My boredom is the most dangerous for my prey. When I’ve lost interest is when I kill them and move on.
“You do realize that we've barely started,” I say, hoping to get him to say something.
Still nothing. Frustration burns through my veins. Perhaps it's time to end this. One less Bratva soldier to fuck with us.
I position the blade against his throat, ready to finish it.
“I don’t know about Ivan, but I do know something else.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t care about anything else.”
“It’s the girl… she’s alive.”
I blow out a bored breath. “What girl?”
His words slur through broken teeth. "The one who betrayed us. The one Ivan wants more than anyone."
Okay, so that is interesting. What girl would have Ivan scouring the earth to find more than anything else?
Fuck, I hope it’s not Valentina.
I make a mental note to contact Luca and Cristian to make sure Valentina is safe with her new baby in Chicago.
I press my knife deeper, drawing blood. "What girl?"
"The one who disappeared from the Dantes. Eva-something. She worked for you, right?"
The name hits me like a two-by-four. My grip on the knife tightens, nearly slicing his throat by accident.
"You're lying."
"No… no, I’m not.” Dmitri’s energy rises, as if he knows the effect hearing Eva’s name has on me. As if this will save him. “Ivan found her. After all these years. "
"Eva Santoro is dead.” I grip Dmitri's throat, squeezing just enough to make his eyes bulge. The darkness inside me rises like a tide, threatening to drown us both. It would be easy to crushhis windpipe, to silence this cruel lie. "Do you think this game will save you?”
"Not lying," he chokes out. "Ivan… has been tracking her for years. She disappeared… but left traces."
I release him abruptly, watching him gasp for air. Logic tells me it's a desperate ploy to stay alive.
Eva is dead.
But there’s a certainty, and genuine knowledge, in his story that keeps me from cutting his tongue off and shoving it up his ass before I disembowel him.
“Where?” I demand. "And pray to whatever god you believe in that I find your information useful."
Fear radiates from him. "New Jersey," he sputters. "Small town called Lakewood. Before that, she was near Newark.”
What the fuck is he talking about? Even assuming he’s right, if she’s alive, how is she so close and I don’t know?
“You’re full of shit.”
