Page 90 of The Beautiful Dead

Maybe I had trusted him more than I had ever trusted anyone.

And that was my greatest mistake.

“Boss. They’re here.”

I shook my head, snapping back to the present. Back to blood, to violence, to control. “Good. Have them bring him to the wet room. I’m going to get answers.”

Angelo snorted. “Let’s hope this one lives long enough to give you what you want.”

The glare I leveled at him was glacial when I spun around to face him, enough to make the six-foot brute shrink and shiver like a child waking from a nightmare.

“You are paid to do. Not to talk. Not to joke.”

His throat bobbed. “Sorry, boss.”

I exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of my nose as we walked through the warehouse. The pulse of my anger was constant now, coiled and waiting for release.

Men and women stood at long steel tables, cutting, weighing, and packaging the vast quantities of drugs moving through our pipelines. Their quiet murmurs silenced as we passed. This was one of our biggest processing centers, but like all our properties, it served multiple purposes. How much you knew depended entirely on where you stood in the hierarchy.

Angelo, as one of our enforcers, knew more than most—but less than he wanted. He had ambitions, whispered in my father’sear like a serpent, pushing for us to take the Gallos’ territory. He had tried to manipulate me. Thought he could use me for his own ends because I was younger than him.

He had learned how futile that was.

I had taken his fingers for every transgression. One by one. Now, he teetered on the edge of life and death every time he stepped into my presence, but he had been leashed just enough to fall in line. I had no doubt he saw his death in my eyes.

The way he shrank when I looked at him was proof enough. But nothing could quench my thirst for blood at the moment. With Remi’s revelation festering in my skull, infecting every second, every breath—I was a ticking bomb, waiting to detonate.

“Tell me what he did to warrant being brought to me.”

Angelo held the unmarked door open, the dark stairwell illuminated only by bare overhead bulbs. We descended into the soundproofed wet room, another one of my playgrounds.

A single metal chair sat in the center, the base roughly cut out above the drain. My eyes raked over the white tiles, stained with age and blood. The air was thick with the stench of sweat, desperation, and death. I inhaled it like the breath of life.

My fingers itched to peel flesh from bone. The monster inside me snarled against its cage, tasting death. We both hungered for it. To take life, feel it slip away and drown in the power.

“He came into Nocturne intoxicated, but Palo let him in?—”

My gaze snapped to him, I stopped dead and the flinch that wracked his body was satisfying—but not enough. “Why would he do that?” My voice was a low, guttural snarl. “We have rules.”

Angelo raised his hands. “Palo said the guy had been in before, never caused an issue.”

My patience thinned. I stalked toward the back wall, my fingers grazing the array of implements neatly fixed in place. Blades. Hammers. Clamps. Chains. Each one had a purpose. Each one could tell a thousand stories.

“Why was he willingly allowing known Gallo associates inside?”

“T-that I can answer.”

He stepped back as I plucked a serrated blade and a hammer from the wall. Then I reached for the box of wood splinters and laid them out carefully on the metal table.

Angelo cleared his throat, voice wavering. “The guy—Stephan—tried to push MDMA. Unsuccessfully. But before we could get to him, he started screaming that the Gallos were coming. That the DeMarcos were going to fall.”

My fingers tightened around the handle of the serrated blade. I had heard enough. In the blink of an eye, I had Angelo pinned against the wall. The teeth of the blade bit into his skin, pressing just enough for pinpricks of red to bloom.

“What. Else?”

Angelo swallowed hard, forcing the blade deeper into his throat. “He—he attacked one of the girls.”

Not unusual. Customers paid for the privilege. Nocturne had its own cleaning crew for this reason. They doubled as bouncers until the situation required something messier.

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