Page 53 of Manacled Hearts

Weeks have passed now, and I’m just as clueless about the meaning of those words as I was when she all but spit them in my face. I haven’t laid eyes on Evelyn in just as much time.

Their meaning is a mystery, but they offend me too. What did she mean about my world? What did I, or us, ever do to her? We saved her, damn it! We helped her. Offered her shelter, food, money, even a one-way ticket back to where she came from.

Yet, as the tip of the stiletto knife draws the slowest drop of blood from under the chin of the long-haired bastard currently strapped to a chair before me, and his condescending beady eyes attempt to stare me down, I understand Evelyn’s words just a little more.

My world is this one. Where men like him roam the streets freely, kill families, rape little children, sell boys and girls, and use people like they’re worth less than cattle. My world ripped her and her little sister out of theirs and tried to take their innocence away.

Though, I can’t help but be angry and downright offended that she thinks I fit in the same category as him. What she thinks of me shouldn’t affect me like this, and I hate her because it does. I hate myself more for allowing it.

There’s no worth in me for a woman like her. My world will ruin her… I’ll find her naked body, broken gruesomely, dead in a pool of her own blood, before I can reach her. I won’t save her. I will only damn her. Just like I did Hanna.

There is no other outcome.

It doesn’t matter that Roberto Bartiste was the one who wielded the blade that cut the soul out of her; I might as well have handed it to him.

My brother, Ronan, and Vincent are idiots for bringing women they love into this world. My brother left for this reason, but I don’t think he can ever be truly out. Crime is not our job, this is not a goddamn profession. It’s a force that lives in our blood and the fibers that form our being, programming our brain from its early development. Eventually, this life will find my brother, his wife, their son, and drag them back into it. For their sake, I hope they can skirt at the edge of it rather than submerge themselves back in its enticing clutches.

Because it is enticing. I could never live a different life devoid of this power, adrenaline, and blood. This is where I belong, and no woman should be here with me.

“Who is your boss?” I ask the man tied to the chair in the middle of the warehouse we found him in.

I don’t wait for words to fall out of his mouth and sink the tip of the knife deeper into the hollow part under his chin. If I go deep enough, I’ll impale the tendons first, then his tongue.

Not yet though, I need to know who he works for. All we have are two untraceable names that are leading us in circles. And the only men who could have given us the information are dead—Morrigan’s father, Liam O’Rourke, her ex, Ryan Holt, and Vincent’s father, Lester Boseman. Now we know they were just a connection to the docks of Queenscove and the trading routes, and the operation is bigger, run by a whole other organization.

Right now, we’re almost two hundred miles away from Queenscove, on the tip Dietrich, Loreley’s father gave us. We’re finally face to face with someone higher up in the organization we’re trying to find. Higher, but not fucking high enough.

“You’re pathetic. All of you,” the guy says, laughing maniacally like he has a leg to stand on. “You came all this way, and you don’t even know who you’re looking for. Who are you people?”

I ignore the question about who we are. It’s not like he’ll be alive long enough for the answer to matter.

“You think that we would have found you if we didn’t know something? We need real names!” I say, watching his blood drip down the shiny silver, quicker after I push the blade deeper holding the back of his head steady at the same time.

A mangled cry escapes his exposed throat and satisfaction blooms. No words do, though.

Carter stands behind the man, and need sparks in his hazel eyes as he looks down at him. He’s The Carver after all, a nickname he has thoroughly earned in the last two, three years. Carving is not my thing, but torturing for information, pouring emotions into an instrument that draws blood, I do thoroughly enjoy sometimes. But Carter… he needs this. I’m not sure if blood is what he sees when he peels the skin off his victims. I don’t think it’s emotions he draws on either. It always looks more like punishment. Of his victims or him, I don’t know.

Carter is twitching now as I interrogate this man, but this one is mine.

“Give me a name. You think that there’s no point in talking since we’re gonna kill you anyway, right?” I wait and he just stares at me, afraid to breathe so my knife doesn’t sink deeper in his flesh. “But keep in mind that you’re not alone in this world. You seem to have made some commendable efforts to hide your family, but…”

His eyes widen with fear as I pause for a reaction, and what I’m seeing is what I need.

“It wasn’t enough to hide them from us,” I continue.

“Your wife is pretty…” Vincent appears on my right, phone in hand, showing our prisoner a photo of his betrothed in front of their lavish house in a secure, gated community.

“How did you get in?” The man dares to speak and hisses in pain as the knife sinks a little deeper with the movement of his jaw.

“You can get in anywhere as long as you know the right information about the right people. Everyone has a weak spot to exploit, and information is always the key,” I explain.

“For example,” Vincent continues, “I know that this photo of your wife will make you twitch, but it’s the next one that will loosen your tongue and make you spill your secrets.”

He swipes once on the screen and the man all but jumps off the chair when he sees his dear mother on it. I pull the knife down to avoid this idiot slicing his own throat on it.

Finding out he’s a mama’s boy was easy, finding out that the sick bastard has had an inappropriate relationship with her for years was a bit harder. But we did. Anyone who loves their mother that much will sacrifice their wife for her.

“Leave her the fuck alone! Where is she?!” he bellows.

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