Page 2 of Explosive Vengeance

“Can you talk yet?” she asked him in a bored tone.

Though she was anything but bored. She was pumped, and more than ready to end this evil, privileged asshole’s reign of terror for good.

Dubois blinked several times, agitation clear on his face as he tugged at the nylon ropes keeping him immobilized. A worm, wriggling on a hook. “What the fuck do you want?” A tremor of fear shook his voice.

“I’m so glad you asked.” She stepped up to him, stopping close enough to smell his expensive cologne, and put her face inches from his. “I want to destroy you, Dominic. I’m going to take everything from you. Starting with the money you’ve made off selling women.”

He bared his teeth, looked like he might spit at her, so she slapped him across the face, cracking his head to the side. “Fuck you,” he spat, his eyes promising murder. “I’ll fuckingkillyou for this.”

She laughed in his face. “I’m not the one dying tonight. Now. How do you know my name?”

“I knoweverything,” he spat.

Nope. He couldn’t. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to interrogate him about that further. The clock was ticking. She needed to get this done and be out of here within the next twelve minutes if she was going to make it to the RV point in time with the captive she’d just freed.

Turning her back on him, she strode to the island where she’d left her tablet, then spun back around to face him. “I’ve got your secret stash account information right here. You’re going to give me your password, so I can transfer the money in it to me.”

He gave a derisive laugh. “I’m not telling you shit, bitch.”

“No?” She drew her silenced pistol, aimed at his thigh, and fired.

He screamed as the bullet ripped into his leg, writhed in his bonds and snarled more threats at her.

She gave him a cool stare, unmoved by his pain. He deserved to suffer. “I’ve got a full mag here, Dom. I’m fully prepared to use every shot and then some to get this done if necessary. It’s up to you. How many holes do you want punched in your oily hide?”

“Fuck you,” he gasped out. “Fuck you, you—”

Chloe drew her knife from the scabbard on her thigh and hurled it at him.

A high-pitched scream rent the air as the knife buried to the hilt in the wall an inch beneath his spread groin. His eyes were so wide the whites showed around his irises, full of terror and shock as he stared first down at it, then back up at her. “You’re fucking crazy,” he choked out.

He wasn’t the first to say so, and he wouldn’t be the last. He also wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, I am. So, we doing this? Or shall I keep going?”

His chest was heaving now, his face sweaty and pale, looking like he was going to be sick as blood dripped down his pants and onto the spotless marble floor. “You won’t get to keep the money long enough to use it,” he snarled, his eyes glazed with fury and pain. “You’ll be dead before you can spend a single Euro.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She’d heard threats like that before. She raised an eyebrow, then her pistol, taking aim at his other thigh. “Password.”

He gave it, then snarled a stream of obscenities and threats. Chloe tuned them all out as she made the transfer, satisfied only when the thirteen million landed in the account she’d set up specifically for this transaction.

“Pleasure doing business with you.” She tucked the tablet into a pocket on her thigh and looked over her shoulder at the woman huddled in the far corner of the kitchen. “Kaya, you can open your eyes now. It’s done.”

She waited until those wide, dark eyes focused on her, the terror in them twisting her heart. But Chloe wanted Dubois to see this next bit. Wanted him to see this woman he’d kept as a slave walk free while he was powerless to stop it. “I need you to go pack one small bag, quickly, and come right back down. Do you understand?” she said to Kaya.

That frightened gaze remained locked on Chloe. But she nodded. “Oui.” She pushed to her feet, shaking, then shot a panicked look at Dubois and fled upstairs.

“You can’t take her,” he rasped out, still bleeding all over his pretty floor. “She’smine.”

The man was delusional. Beyond any chance of redemption, in this life or the next—if there was such a thing. He was about to die, and that’s what he was worried about? “She was never yours, you fucking psychopath. And she’ll never be yours again. Her or any other woman. Because you’re about to die for what you’ve done.” She stalked over to yank the knife out of the wall, paused with the blade against his groin and enjoyed the flash of stark terror in his eyes.

Kaya reappeared a minute later, a tiny bag in hand, her gaze darting between Chloe and Dubois. Chloe gave her a reassuring smile. “Time to go.” Kaya had been terrorized far too much already. She didn’t need to see the rest of this.

But before she left Dubois to his fate, she couldn’t resist one last parting shot. She took a moment to rake her gaze over the length of him, helpless and bleeding on the wall. “No one’s going to protect you this time. You’ve been playing with fire for way too long, and now you’re finally going to get burned. See you in hell, asshole.”

His threats and shouts of rage followed them into the garage. Chloe put Kaya in the front passenger seat of his Audi, then reversed out into the street and shut the remote garage door. “Close your eyes,” she told Kaya as they drove away. “You’re safe now.”

When the woman did, Chloe slipped the small detonator out of her hip pocket and pressed the button.

The resounding thud of the explosion reverberated in her chest. She glanced up at the rearview mirror to check her work.

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