Page 46 of His Kidnapped Irish Mafia Virgin

Marcus must have heard the urgency in my voice, because he changed direction immediately. Instead of running toward the main gate, he cut between two rusted trucks and climbed onto the back of an abandoned trailer, using the height to try to reach the outer wall of the dockyard. I closed the distance.

He jumped from the trailer onto a stack of wooden crates, but the wood shifted beneath his weight. One of the crates cracked loudly, and his balance gave way. His body lurched sideways as he tried to recover, and in that instant, I caught his ankle and pulled him down with all the force I had left. He hit the concrete hard, the impact knocking the breath from him, but he was still fighting.

He rolled onto his back and reached inside his jacket, his movements frantic now. I grabbed his wrist before he could pull his hand free and slammed it against the ground. A knife slipped from his fingers and clattered across the dockyard, disappearing beneath one of the trucks. I pinned him there, my forearm pressed against his throat while the fog curled around us.

Diggs and Michael appeared from opposite sides of the yard, closing in silently until they formed a wall around him. Marcus looked from one man to the other, then back at me, and I watched the realization settle slowly into his eyes. He understood that the chase was over. And he also understood that I wasn’t going to let him leave that dockyard until he told me everything I wanted to know.

I tightened my grip on the fixer’s throat for a moment longer, watching the panic spread across his face as Diggs and Michael closed in from either side.

“Get him inside,” I said quietly. They hauled him to his feet before he could regain his strength. He tried to pull away once, twisting violently enough to make Michael curse under his breath, but Diggs drove him forward with a hard shove between his shoulderblades. Marcus stumbled through the fog-covered dockyard, his boots scraping against the concrete as we dragged him back toward Warehouse Twelve.

The small service room near the loading docks was empty except for a rusted table, two metal chairs, and a flickering lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Michael forced him into one of the chairs while Diggs secured his wrists behind him with plastic restraints.

I closed the door behind us, and the room fell silent. Marcus lifted his head slowly, blood running from the corner of his mouth where he’d bitten down during the chase. He tried to straighten his posture and recover some of the confidence he’d lost in the dockyard, but the fear in his eyes betrayed him.

“You’re making a mistake,” he said, his voice rough. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

I pulled the second chair across the floor and sat directly opposite him. “No,” I replied calmly. “The mistake was yours. You walked into my bar, you followed Nora through my city, and you left a threat believing you would disappear before anyone found you. Now you’re going to tell me who sent you.”

He looked away. I reached forward and grabbed his jaw, forcing him to face me again.

“Look at me when I speak to you. I don’t have the patience for lies or silence. Tell me the name of the man who hired you.”

His breathing quickened, but he said nothing. I released his jaw and stood slowly.

“Diggs,” I said without taking my eyes off Marcus, “close the blinds. Michael, make sure nobody comes near this room until I say otherwise.”

The blinds snapped shut, cutting off the weak daylight. Marcus swallowed hard.

“What do you want to know?” he asked finally.

I leaned forward, resting my hands on the table. “I want the truth. I want to know who hired you, how long you’ve been following Nora, and what your instructions were. If you lie to me, I’ll know, and you’ll regret it.”

He stared at me for several seconds, as though weighing whether silence was worth the pain that would follow. Then his shoulders sagged.

“Victor Hale,” he whispered. “He was the one who hired me.”

Nora’s stepfather. I kept my expression cold.

“How long?”

“Three weeks,” he admitted. “He paid me to track her movements, report back to him, and help coordinate her retrieval when he gave the order.”

“Retrieval?” I repeated, my voice dangerously soft.

“He wanted her brought back to him,” Marcus said quickly. “That was the job. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I stared at him for a long moment, letting the words sink in. Victor Hale hadn’t merely been watching Nora from a distance. He’d sent people to bring her back to him. And now, finally, I had the confirmation I needed. I rose from the chair slowly. Marcus looked up at me, something desperate flickering in his eyes.

“I told you the truth,” he said. “I gave you Victor’s name. I gave you everything you wanted.”

“Yes,” I said calmly. “You did.”

For a brief second, relief crossed his face. He thought the truth had bought him something. He thought his confession had created a path out of this room. I reached into my jacket.

The sound of the gun leaving its holster was soft in the cramped room, almost gentle.

The color drained from Marcus’s face.