When Dominic turned to face me, leaving the gun on the ground, his eyes were glassy yet wide with fear at the realization. We caught him by surprise indeed.

With a gesture of my head, two of my men moved in and snatched his arms. Dominic was panicking as they lifted him and pulled him out of the office. He was pinned in place and forced to look at me.

“Wait, please!” He blurted; voice slurred. “There’s no need for violence. What is it you need, Yaro?”

“I’ll be the one deciding that,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at him. “You know exactly why we’re here.”

Dominic swallowed harshly from his place, held firmly by my men. A look of recognition crossed his face, yet he didn’t say anything intelligible as he rambled.

Steeling myself momentarily against the desire to lay into him then and there, I approached the office again and looked inside.

The room was a disaster of empty booze bottles littered all over the floor, along with a small cot covered messily in a single blanket and a bag of clothes not far from it. I threw him another look over my shoulder.

“You’re living here?”

What little composure he had snapped, and the grown man before me crumbled. Sniveling, he nodded, and his face bloomed with color.

“The b-bank is claiming everything…along with the other warehouses,” he managed to say despite the swell of emotions. “This is all I have for the time being.”

My brows furrowed. “You burned through the cash already?”

He gave me another shameful nod.

All that money—gone. We had just recently paid him too.

I was seething on the inside as my molten anger took hold, but I couldn’t let it consume me yet. There was a point to be made, and I needed him to be scared shitless.

With a forced breath, I snagged a bottle half full of vodka. I looked at it pensively and turned to face him again. I pretended to study the bottle, then dangled it in the air before him. “All for this, I assume?”

Dominic gave me an uncertain expression, surely wondering what I was getting at, and why I hadn’t thrown a fit yet.

“Y-yes…”

Trying to look understanding, I nodded absently.

In one swift movement, I sent the bottle flying against the nearest wall. On impact, it exploded in tiny glass shards, and Dominic shrunk into himself with a strangled cry.

Even Vik flinched.

I was on him at a moment’s notice, a black glove gripping the soiled collar of his shirt. I tightened the material against his neck as a result, and he wheezed from the force.

“I know what you’ve done!” I yelled at him, feeling the tension in my whole body.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Cut the shit,” I snapped, aware of how menacing I surely looked to him in my gear. “I brought my best men—all well-versed in ways to make anyone talk. I want to hear everything you have to say.”

Releasing his collar, I took a step back and took in the alarm that further spread through his face, despite his attempts to hide it.

“Yaro—”

Pulling my gloves up, I snickered at him. “I hope you have enough booze in your system already, Dominic. What comes next will be excruciating for you.”

As my men tightened their grip on him, making the man an easy target for me, my fist collided with his jaw before he could get another word out.

He grunted from the force of it, and the beginnings of a bruise erupted across his skin. Dominic’s teeth already gleamed with blood as he sucked in a rigid breath.

“Alright,” he heaved, forcing in those drunken breaths. “The money’s all gone. From the last payment and the ones before that. I distributed some of the products to make more. I know some guys who pay good money for it.”