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Charles’s eyes flare as sweat drips into his panting mouth. “Twenty thousand dollars!” he blurts. “Give me twenty grand, and I’ll get out of town and stay out of trouble.”
I turn to Dominik and Gedeon. “Is he negotiating with me?”
Gedeon shakes his head. “He’s got balls; you gotta give him that.”
“Or he’s just that stupid,” Dominik suggests.
“Fifteen, then,” Charles counters. “Fifteen and I’ll be gone.”
I roll my eyes. “Dom, bring me the bat.”
Dom makes a show of pulling out a huge, bloodstained baseball bat from the trunk of my Bugatti and twirling it in his hands as he crosses the pavement.
He tosses it to me, and I snatch it out of the air. “Why, Charles, would I spend good money on a problem I can take care of for free?”
Charles whimpers. “Please… don’t hurt me.”
“Like I said, Charles, I have no intention of hurting you.” I walk past him to his vintage convertible.
Just as I predicted, he thrashes against his bindings, damn near taking the fence down with him. “No!” he screams. “Please! Don’t touch the car!”
I wait for him to run out of air—for the begging to stall into silence—before I take my first swing.
The glass in the side mirror shatters like a prop, like it’s breakaway glass and it was made for this. I smash through the windshield before taking each window in turn.
Andfuck, it feels good.
Charles screams like I’m breaking his limbs. Like it’s his own body under my bat. But only once the convertible is a crushed piece of scrap metal do I put the bat down.
“Gedeon, care to do the honors?”
Charles watches in horror as Gedeon pours gasoline all over his precious—and almost certainly ill-gotten—car before I light a match and toss it onto the wreckage.
Flames explode out in every direction, white-hot and greedy. I turn back to where Charles is limp against the fence, the heat of the flames at my back.
At long last, he seems to be fresh out of words.
“If you ever come near my family again,” I growl, kneeling in front of him, “it won’t just be the car that gets burned. I’ll fry you to a husk and dump you with all the other bodies I’ve disposed of over the years.” I turn my back on him and head for the Bugatti. “Dom, loosen his restraints. Let’s give him a fighting chance of getting out of here before the car blows.”
A few minutes later, we’re driving off, plumes of smoke billowing into the air behind us.
Gedeon takes a sharp left to avoid the sirens heading in our direction. “That was quite the show you put on.”
“Charles’s ego is directly linked to his possessions,” I say. “I doubt a few broken bones would have gotten the message across as clearly.”
Dominik rolls down the window, looking back at the smoke. “Gedeon and I could’ve handled this. You didn’t need to be here.”
“This was my responsibility. I’m the one who promised Laila I would take care of her father if he showed up again.”
I promised her a lot of things, though. And they know that as well as I do. The air is thick with all the things my two right-hand men are not saying.
“I’m not like him,” I bark into the silence. “I’m not like Charles, and I want Laila to know that.”
Gedeon stays quiet, but short of stuffing his fist into his mouth, I know Dom won’t be able to stop himself.
“Laila might know that, but what will Nina think?” he asks.
I want to shove him out of the car, but the loyal bastard would just find his way back home.
