Page 32 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

Instead of talking to me, Roxie had crossed her arms over her chest and glared out the window for the entire four-hour drive to Boston. She didn’t ask to stop or look over at me or uncross her arms once.

When I pulled up to the curb of Mickey’s house, she finally glanced at me. The dawn sun flooded into the car and hit her brown eyes, making them a sea of gold.

She uncrossed her arms and sat up. “What are we doing here?”

“Same thing we did to Charlie.”

All the blood drained from her rosy cheeks. “Why?” she asked me, voice barely above a whisper.

She turned in my direction, and I couldn’t tell if she was truly intrigued or if she was terrified by the mere thought of torturing someone else.

Instead of sugarcoating this for her, like I had with any of my previous girlfriends, I undid my seat belt and pulled the keys out of the car. “Because he groomed and raped a thirteen-year-old girl. And to make matters worse than fucking that, he did it in one of my restaurants.”

She widened her eyes and grasped her seat belt until her knuckles turned white. “Are you serious?” she asked. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Did he really do that to someone?”

“Yes.”

“Can I stay here?” she asked.

“No. If you’re going to be my wife one day, you’re going to watch everything I do.”

She tore her gaze away from me as soon as the word wife left my mouth and opened her door. I followed after her and walked to the front door, knocking twice on it with the side of my fist and waiting not so patiently for him.

Dressed in nothing but a barely closed robe and some glasses, Mickey answered the door. When he noticed it was me, he stood up straight and widened his eyes. “Cristian. I-I didn’t expect—”

I stepped into his house without an invitation and waited for Roxie to come in before I shut the door. Mickey stepped back to create distance between us, but I moved closer to him, feeling the rage seep into my veins.

Instead of giving him a chance to explain himself, like I had promised myself I would do, I punched him straight in the jaw and listened to his glasses crack into two pieces. He stumbled back into a closet and nearly took the door off its hinges.

“Cristian,” he got out. “Wh-what was that—”

“You know exactly what it was for,” I said, grabbing him by the neck, pulling him out of the closet, and pinning him to the wall. My fingers dug into his neck until the skin turned pink. “You must have known that this was coming for months now. But you couldn’t seem to keep your hands off that girl, could you?”

He widened his eyes even more and grabbed my wrist. “Cristian, you should be focused on your shipments. Not worrying about stupid little shit like this in the family. There are far more important—”

I slammed my other fist into his jaw and watched his eyes roll to the back of his head. When he came back to consciousness, I let my nails dig into the sides of his neck so hard that I drew blood. He spat at me, and I spat right back.

“I stay out of your business. Why do you even fucking care about what I do?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

He let out a lifeless chuckle. “And racketeering, dealing drugs, and murder aren’t?”

I blew out a deep breath. Child trafficking or sex with a minor was more than just wrong. I had witnessed what it could do to a person. I dropped my hand from his throat and glanced over at Roxie, letting my eyes linger for a moment longer than they should’ve.

“Do you want to do the honors?” I asked her.

She scrunched her nose and stepped away from me, crossing her arms over her chest. I pulled out a knife and slid it right across Mickey’s neck, letting his blood drip all over my hands. He grasped his throat to try to stop the blood and doubled over onto his knees.

Someone screamed at the top of their lungs, and I glanced toward the stairs to see Mickey’s wife.

“C-C-Cristian. Wh-what did you do?” she asked me, running down the stairs and crouching next to her husband. She placed her hands on his neck to stop the blood.

“If I find out you were in on this the entire time, you’re next,” I sneered at her.

I washed my hands off in the kitchen sink, grabbed Roxie’s hand, and pulled her out the door and away from the hysterical woman, doubled over her disgusting husband.

Roxie stayed silent the entire ride to the hotel, pressing her lips together and staring wide-eyed through the windshield. After fifteen minutes of silence, she parted her plum-colored lips. “Why didn’t you torture him, like you had with Charlie?”

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