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I strike again, this time hitting the side of his jaw. The weapon connects, and a tooth flies across the room in an arc before landing with a clatter on the metallic floor.
His body convulses, shaking against his restraints as I rain blows across his shoulders and arms and chest. A man like this is to be savored, not slaughtered. Screams echo through the room, the sound so animalistic and raw that my veins thrum with satisfaction.
I step back, observing my handiwork. All traces of the hardened officer are gone, replaced by a whimpering wreck. His body trembles, caked in a colorful mix of sweat and blood.
“What do you want to know?” he rasps.
“Ready to talk so soon?” I ask, feigning disappointment. “I was just starting to enjoy our game.”
He blinks up at me, with blood-red saliva trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Tell me.”
“Let’s start from the beginning,” I ask. “Who is Delta, and what is your relationship?”
He inhales a rattling breath and exhales. “His name is Dalton Grey. We trained together at the FBI Academy.”
The revelation hits me in the solar plexus like a flying kick, but I hide my shock. Both at this fascinating insight into Father and at the confirmation of his real last name.
“Go on.”
Information bursts out of Hunter like a sewage pipe, revealing the tale of a corrupt group of agents who decided to provide assassination services to the underworld.
“It started out as an undercover mission,” he says through ragged breaths. “Then Dalton and the others decided to get organized and set up a firm called the Moirai Group.”
I nod, already knowing Father was part of its management team.
“We recruited convicted and disgraced agents at first, offering them work. But paying for their silence proved too difficult.” He gulps. “That’s when Dalton got the idea to recruit teen runaways. We set up an academy and trained them to beassassins. They were loyal and dependent. Best of all, no one looked for them.”
I swallow hard, forcing my features into a mask. It’s a grisly mirror reflecting my own upbringing.
“What was your role in all this?” I snarl.
“I left the bureau to climb the ranks in the New Alderney Police Department. Someone needed to protect our interests from the inside.”
He continues along these lines, explaining the early days of the Moirai, and how it built into the country’s largest firm of assassins with Father’s unique methods of recruiting and corrupting children. I glance at the camera’s red light, making sure it’s still recording.
“Tell me about X-Cite Media.”
“Don’t you see, boy?” he asks through rattling laughter.
My pulse drums in my ears, filling the quiet room with its deafening rhythm. I grit my teeth at his condescending tone, fighting to keep my features composed.
“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice tight
“He started X-Cite Media when he fell out of favor with his partners,” he rasps. “The bastard son he fathered with one of our female operatives went rogue, poaching personnel from the organization and stealing clients. The others told him to handle you, but he failed.”
My stomach drops. I had no idea my birth mother was another assassin. Hiding my shock, I snarl, “And?”
“When he failed, they wanted you and him both eliminated.”
My jaw clenches.
I knew my acts of sabotage got him ousted from the firm, but Father was supposed to die, not skitter into another branch of crime like a cockroach.
“He left before they could kill him and bought a media company.” Hunter’s hollow laughter echoes through the room.“If you hadn’t screwed with the Moirai, Dalton would never have gotten into snuff.”
“Bullshit,” I spit, my lip curling.
“It’s true. X-Cite Media turned into a snuff site because of you. And your daddy issues.”
