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“For now, your girl is probably safer out there until we’ve cleared the house,” Mouse said.
“Then let’s get clearing.” He wanted this over. He wanted Lila safe, checked out, and in a hospital receiving the medical treatment she needed. Then he wanted to take her home and spoil her rotten, do everything he could to make up for all the horror she’d been through the last few days. All the horrors she’d been through in a lifetime. He wanted to soothe each of those old hurts along with all the new ones, and make sure she knew he would always take care of her.
Together his team moved through the large house, clearing room after empty room. It wasn’t until they got to a bedroom on the third floor that they found a locked door.
Zara?
His gut said she wouldn’t hang around, that when she’d heard the gunfire she had fled, but they had no proof.
With a nod, Bear prepared to break down the door as the rest of them were ready to fire at any threat that presented itself.
One well-placed kick was all it took to splinter the door.
Inside was Ross Duffy.
The man was naked and tied to a chair. There were bruises littering his torso, his nose was swollen, both eyes black and one was swollen almost shut.
His one good eye was wide and full of fear as he stared back at them. There was a ball gag in his mouth, and even though he knew they couldn’t understand anything he tried to say he was yelling at them.
There was a distinct sense of satisfaction at seeing the man who had hurt Lila trussed up and suffering. No amount of suffering was ever going to be enough for what he’d done to her, but at least he was paying.
“Ross Duffy,” he said slowly as he stalked toward the chair, noting the way the man flinched and tried to press back into the seat as though there was some escape to be found. “Do you know who I am?”
The old man nodded frantically.
“Then you know I have every reason to hurt you given what you did to my woman. You know who they are?” He inclined his head at his team who had his back.
More nodding.
“They aren’t going to care what I do to you. They care about Lila too. You get my meaning? This can go easy, or it can go hard. That’s up to you. Personally, I’m torn. I want to hurt you, cause you even a tenth of the pain you caused Lila. But I also want to go get my girl and get her the hell out of here. So, you answer my questions, we cuff you and hand you off to the cops, and you won’t need to take a beating. Another beating,” he added with a snicker.
When Ross nodded frantically again, Surf stepped up and removed the gag. For now, he’d leave the man cuffed to the chair. He didn’t think Ross Duffy was any sort of threat, but it paid to be safe, especially when he wanted to get out there and find Lila.
“She’s crazy,” Ross blurted the second the gag was off.
“Who is?” Surf asked.
“Zara. She wants to kill Lila. When I told her that wasn’t our deal, she had this done to me.” The man looked down at his battered body. “Lila is … okay?”
“She’s none of your business. You don’t talk about her, you don’t say her name, you don’t even think about her,” he growled.
“What was the plan?” Bear asked, arms crossed over his wide chest as he stared down at the old man making Ross shrink further in on himself.
“I … I always wanted Lila, but she had proof I …”
“Raped her,” Surf supplied with a snarl, still hating that word in conjunction with the woman he loved.
“I … she was given to me.”
“She’s not a possession, she can’t be given away. She’s a person,” Surf hissed.
“I love her. I wanted her back. Zara has some issue with your team. You killed her boyfriend. She said it was a win-win. She could use Lila … umm …” Ross trailed off shooting him a nervous look. “I mean … her … use her as bait. The rest of you would come. She’d keep you all prisoner, take your wives, make you watch as she …”
“Yeah, yeah, we got that,” he snapped. “What changed?”
“I don’t know. Zara is edgy and impatient, she was talking about some plan she and her lover had to take over the government. I didn’t know anything about that. I swear. Just that she wanted revenge on you. I was supposed to be able to keep Lila after as long as I kept quiet and let her use the Swiss villa. Zara is insane, dangerous, and obsessed. She won’t stop until you’re all dead, until she gets everything she wants.”
“And that all starts with killing Lila,” he said. The need to get to her flooded his system.
