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A knock at the door revealed Elio, carrying a nifty treasure in a bucket. Glowing hot coals. The smell filled the room.
The guy in the chair turned ashen when he saw them. I knew he was lying. He was Castillo cartel, and the stupid fuckers thought it was a wise idea to try to scope out Casa Nera.
Maybe displaying dismembered body parts on castle walls should become the standard again. Nothing imparted a message like a healthy reminder that being hanged, drawn, and quartered wasn’t fun.
I took one of the coals from the bucket, holding it with tongs, and hovered it over the bound man’s neck. He wriggled, like that could save him.
“Who sent you here? I want names.”
“No one, I swear,” the guy whispered.
Idiot. “Very well. You’ve made your choice,” I said dispassionately and yanked the gag back up. Then I pulled his T-shirt open at the neck and dropped the hot coal inside.
He screamed, writhing in pain as the scorching coal slid down his body, melting flesh as it went, and stopped somewhere near his gut. His eyes bulged with pain. The coal burned through his shirt quickly enough, and I flicked it out with the tongs.
“Again, I’ll ask you – who sent you? Tell me his name.”
“I said I don’t know! I didn’t get told to do it directly. Juan Castillo, maybe, I don’t know.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Since that motivated you so well, we’ll repeat the exercise, but this time, I’ll drop it down your pants,” I warned.
“No! No, I seriously don’t know anything, man. I was just told to get close and see your setup, see if the women were here.”
“The women?”
“The bitches that got Miguel killed.”
Bitches? Oh, kid, this is really going to hurt.
“Why does Juan want them so badly?”
“I mean, he’d like to even the score, and he wants to take you out. There’s someone else helping him, though, some old white guy who lets us bring our product in along the shore and gets the cops to look the other way.”
Now that was interesting. “Elaborate.”
“I don’t know anything else, I swear. I’ve told you everything, I promise.” The guy was crying and shaking now. The smell of burned flesh was enough to make me queasy, and I had a strong stomach for that kind of thing.
“Okay, relax. You did good. Well done,” I reassured the blubbering mess of a man. Really quite pitiful, here at the end of his life. I could have made it quick to reward him for the information he’d given me; a final gift for a dying man. But he’d fucked that up.
He’d lost that chance when he’d called Charlotte a bitch.
I flicked a glance at Elio, who moved behind the guy and held his head in a punishing grip. Taking another hot coal in the tongs, I shoved it into his screaming mouth. Elio forced his jaw closed and held it shut against the fiery coal on his tongue. The man screamed wordlessly, unable to shift his face from mysottocapo’sgrip.
For calling Charlotte a bitch, he’d have his tongue burned out of his worthless mouth. For attempting to spy on Casa Nera and my family, his body would fertilize the roses that Charlotte would carry in her bouquet.
The circle of life was a beautiful thing.
I patted his shoulder and gave him a smile as I made my way out of the basement.
* * *
“Are you whistling?”Giada accused as I strode into her office later. It was as chaotic as her personality, and I hated to spend a minute longer there than I absolutely had to.
“I don’t know. Was I?”
Giada narrowed her eyes at me. “Got it bad, I see, for our resident medic. How interesting. Good job you decided to marry her instead of kill her.”
“I was never going to kill her,” I revealed. While I'd initially planned to give Charlie a week to prove her worth, the blazing fire between us quickly burned that plan to dust. And even if I'd gone through with it, I knew now that no matter what the outcome of that trial period, I never would've been able to kill her.
