Page 36 of Vicious Addictions

“Well, well, well,” Rolo smirks as we approach. “Look who finally showed up. You werethisclose to missing all the fun.” He reaches out, tugging at Felix’s tie.

Felix doesn’t rise to the provocation, preferring to remain silent while keeping his posture tight. Talking back to Rolo in front of Victor wouldn’t do him any favors right now, no matter how much he wanted to.

I don’t have such problems.

“You ready to pop your cherry, Romano?” Rolo grins, flicking the lapel of my suit.

I swat his hand away.

“Don’t touch the suit. Stupid doesn’t come off in the wash.”

Rolo’s eyes flash a deep, menacing blue, his cocky smirk twitching with barely concealed rage.

“We have work to do,” Remus steps in, ready for business before Rolo’s temper has time to escalate. “You two can play later.”

Fucker.

Victor, however, is completely oblivious to our exchange, his attention fixed on the captives sitting in front of him, especially the one at the center.

“Who do you work for?”

“You, boss. We work for you,” the one in the middle says maniacally, snot and tears running down his face.

I don’t know all the associates who work for the Firm, but from the way Victor singled out the one in the middle, he must be the one to have ties to the organization.

“No.” Victor shakes his head, looking calm and collected. “You don’t work for me. If you did, you wouldn’t have been adding junk to my product. So I’ll repeat… who do you work for?”

“We don’t work for anyone,” the man to the right, the least battered one, says hurriedly. “I swear… we did this. We came up with it all by ourselves.”

Victor exhales a slow stream of smoke before he leans forward. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s your bad luck,innit?” the guy to the left spits, a glob of blood and saliva hitting the floor between his feet.

“Are you thick, lad? Do you know who you’re talking to?” Felix interrupts, knowing that this idiot is about to get himself killed.

“Some old geezer?” He laughs with a bloody grin.

Victor stares at him for a bit, long enough for the tension to coil tight, before rising from his chair. Without further warning, he swings his gun and puts a bullet in the skull of the man sitting to his right. The crack of the shot echoes through the warehouse, the spray of blood painting the floor in an instant.

One of the captives flinches, his eyes widening in horror as his accomplice’s body slumps sideways, head lolling unnaturally, while the other beside him relieves himself of his bladder, too afraid to be embarrassed about his now drenched state.

Victor barely reacts, blowing out a slow breath of smoke.

“That’s right. An old geezerwith a gun.” He crouches down, looking straight into the eyes of the man who dared defy him. “Now, how about you start telling me what I want to hear?”

The guy trembles, chair rocking as he tries to jump away from the corpse beside him, his breath coming out in ragged gasps.

“You won’t get away with this, you old fart!”

“Is that so?” Victor laughs, though there is no humor in his tone.

“You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

Victor’s grin sharpens at the idiot’s slip of the tongue.

“Then enlighten me.”

But instead of the fool telling Victor what he wants to hear, we’re all met with nothing but silence.

---