Page 92 of Vicious King

Ricky and Bacon share a look.

“My job,” Carson replies. “Have fun with the girls. I’ll swing by later, and we can work on your target practice.”

“Can it be sexy target practice?”

My husband growls in my ear. “I’ll see you soon, Sunshine.”

Twenty-Nine

CARSON

Can it be sexy target practice?

I’d forgotten.

When Rina and I were together before, I had her in a range all the fucking time, teaching her to shoot and handle firearms. And she always called it sexy target practice because, inevitably, I ended up fucking her before the lesson was over.

Because I can’t keep my fucking hands off my wife.

And I’d blocked that out because every single memory of her was a slice through the heart.

I shake off the melancholy and leave the small office in the basement of my resort, then stride into the cell where a man is standing, fully clothed, in the middle of the room, right over the sewer drain.

“You’ve worked for me for a long fucking time,” I growl as I slowly approach him.

He’s shaking, fear pouring off him in waves.

“Six years,” Dodge says.

What is up with my men and the weird-as-fuck names?

“Six years.” I shove my hands in my pockets as I slowly walk around him. He’s not tied down. If he wanted to, he could try to run. It wouldn’t do him any good, but he could try. “And in those six years, how many of those were spent as a spy for my enemy?”

Dodge swallows hard and shakes his head. “N-no, I⁠—”

“Because the thing is,” I continue, which is surprising even to me. I’m not a wordy guy. I just fucking kill people. And I’m going to kill him, but I need some answers first. “I know you’ve been telling motherfucking Lincoln, the man who stole my wife and put me in prison, that Rina’s back with me. I have you on a goddamn recording. I’m going to give you one chance to tell me exactly why I shouldn’t simply put a bullet in your brain right fucking now.”

“I’m not the only one,” he says, the words rushing out of him.

I stop in front of him, mere inches from his face, and glare.

“Might want to keep talking,” Spider says behind me. His voice is hard, which isn’t anything new, but I know it’s because he’s almost as fucking pissed off as I am.

“There are four of us,” Dodge says. “Planted here.”

“You’ve been planted with me for six motherfucking years?”

He’s shaking so hard that his nod is almost imperceptible.

“You’ve been part of my army, privy to my business, for SIX MOTHERFUCKING YEARS?”

Dodge doesn’t even nod now. His eyes fall to my chest, and I decide that he doesn’t get to keep both of those anymore, so I pull my switchblade out of my pocket and, without a single moment of pause, grab him by the hair and carve out his eyeball, making him wail in agony.

When I cut the optic nerve and toss the eye to the ground, I watch dispassionately while he cries and slobbers in front of me, blood trickling down his ugly face.

“Who are the other three?”

He’s crying now, and I blow out a breath and stride over to the tool bench.