Page 72 of Final Vendetta

“I swear! I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know who it is.”

“Then how did you get the job?”

“An unmarked package arrived on my doorstep one day. It was a burner phone.” His eyes briefly darted toward a drawer in the kitchen before returning to me. “It rang, and the man said he could help me get back on the force if I did something for him. So I agreed.”

I removed the knife from his bullet wound and approached the drawer, opening it to find a flip phone inside.

“Is this the burner?” I held it up.

Vargas hesitated, then nodded.

I opened it, wishing Henry was here. He’d be able to figure this thing out in a heartbeat. I hadn’t operated a flip phone like this in ages. But I wasn’t desperate enough to remove Vargas’ restraints so he could do it for me.

Finally, I stumbled on the contacts, finding only one saved.

“Mom?” With a raised eyebrow, I clicked on the contact.

“What are you doing?” Vargas asked, clearly panicked.

I smirked, keeping my weapon trained on him. The metal glinted in the dim light of the room, a sharp contrast to the fear in his eyes.

“What do you think? Giving your mom a call.”

“That’s not how it works. I don’t call him. He?—”

I silenced him with a hush when the ringing cut off, a voice barking out, “This better be important.”

“Where is she?” I demanded.

There was a pause. Then a low chuckle. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the man of the hour. I wondered when you’d show up.”

“Tell me where she is, or I swear to God?—”

“You’ll what? Kill Vargas? Be my guest. I’ve got plenty more like him.”

The indifference in his tone was infuriating. It almost made me not want to kill Vargas.

Almost.

But he was responsible for what happened to Imogene.

For that, he would pay.

“Where. Is. She?”

“She’s an interesting subject, isn’t she?” The man’s tone turned contemplative, almost amused. “The daughter of a serial killer, yet so determined to be good. It’s fascinating, really. I’m curious how much pressure it would take to break her. To see if she’s truly her father’s daughter.”

My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat. “She’s not.”

“How can you be so sure? Haven’t you ever wondered about the line between nature and nurture? Between good and evil? For instance, what turns someone like you, a man who once claimed to value life, into a killer? On the flip side, what makes a woman like Imogene, with that dark legacy of hers, cling so desperately to the illusion of innocence? I’ve always been curious about what drives human behavior. I’ve spent decades creating environments to test those limits. As you’re well aware. After all, you spent nearly four years in several environments I created.”

I blinked repeatedly, his words like a punch to the gut as the realization dawned on me.

“The fights…” I exhaled, the rage bubbling inside of me growing with every passing second. “That was you?”

“I prefer to call them experiments,” he purred.

“You ruined my life,” I growled. “And for what?”

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