Page 42 of Property of Azrael

“What’s your fucking name?” I snarl. “Tell us, or my friend here will keep wrenching that wire around your neck.” Van twists it tighter. The man flaring his feet, trying to connect anyone or find enough leverage to break Van’s hold on him.

“Make it easier, dude. Just tell us your fucking name.”

“Mike!” he yells.

“Mike what?”

“Robertson. Mike Robertson.”

“Well, Mike, let’s talk about what happened today.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Oh, that’s not true. You certainly had a lot to say to me earlier, Mikey. What did you call me again?” I pause, pressing my index finger to my lips. “That’s right, a poser. A biker wannabe. How the tables have turned.”

“Pussy piece of shit,” he snarls. “I should’ve fuckin’ taken you out when I had the chance, before you had your boy band backup to help you.”

“Do it.”

Orion goes to the rusty metal table he found when we were scouting out this place. He drags it over, the top, holding some of his favorite toys. Selecting a pair of borrowed pliers, he stalks over to Mike, grips his fingernail with it, and pulls. The nail rips clean off, and Mike screams in pain.

“Who’s the pussy now, Mike? Wailing like a bitch over a nail bed. Pathetic.”

“What the fuck do you want from me?” he whimpers through the pain.

“Who’d you tell about our scuffle today? Did you call your club? Did you tell them about it?”

“No, I didn’t tell anyone. Check my phone.” He shakes his head back and forth. “I didn’t talk to anyone, I swear.”

“We’re checking your phone,” I assure him. Van had found it when we emptied his pockets. Mindy had hacked it within seconds, and was hard at work tracing the calls. So far, he was clean. No videos. No calls. He didn’t even have his email inbox setup. For all intents and purposes, he was clean, but leaving him alive was a risk we couldn’t take.

“Not even your girlfriend?”

Mike’s eyes grow wide. “Yeah, didn’t think we knew about her, did you?”

“She has nothing to do with this. She dragged me to that fucking book signing. My club didn’t know about it.”

“He’s lying,” Asher interjects. “He knows more than he’s telling us.” Taking the pliers from O, he cranks down on his index finger, twisting and turning it until a sickening snap of the bone breaking under the pressure echoes through the room. Mike wails, thrashing against his bonds and his pain, the wire garrote still around his neck, with Van holding on tightly. Asher tosses the pliers back on the table and takes something out of his pocket. The gleam of a knife shimmers in the moonlight.

“Your club gets off on hurting women, killing them. Did you know that your mother chapter killed my fiancé? Did they brag about how they strung her up and made it look like an accident?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man. I have killed no one.” Mike thrashes, knowing he’s running out of time.

“Yet your club has a history of it,” Asher bites out. “Your hands may be clean, but theirs aren’t. What if I told you we had your little girlfriend?”

I peer over to the guys who all shrug. We didn’t have his girlfriend. At least, none of us had her. Asher, though, I couldn’t be too sure about. He’d stayed back at the hotel, so he did not know what had transpired until I called him. He has to be bluffing. Fuck, I hope he is.

“No!” he shouts. “Leave Mary out of this.”

“They didn’t leave Kennedy out of it. Why should I spare her?”

I cross the room and lay my hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs it off. “He didn’t kill Kennedy, Asher.”

“It doesn’t matter. He wears their colors. He’s one of them.”

I reach for his knife, but he holds it out of my reach. “Killing him won’t bring her back.”

“But it’ll give us one less Hellion to worry about. Don’t you want that for her? To wake up every day knowing that she’s safe from all of this? Not having to worry about losing her every second of the day, jumping at the sound of a car backfiring?”

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