Page 12 of The Mercenary's Guide to Mishaps and Romance

Two of his men drag me back into the room where he sits down, like there’s not a dead guy on the floor about five feet away. I’m plopped down on a couch across from him. The two men take up their stations on each side of him. One is a big man who looks like he could crush my entire body with his fist and the other is a smaller, thin man who is watching me with narrowed eyes like I’ve singlehandedly ruined his life.

“Let’s talk,” Arthur says.

“I know nothing. Literally nothing,” I assure him. “I was like sixteen. I didn’t even know what was going on. One day, I was told that we were moving somewhere far away, that I had a new fucking name, and that my father had disappeared. That’s all I know. I promise.”

“Oh, I’m sure you know something. I’m sure if you put your thinking cap on, you’ll think of something.”

“I’m positive I won’t,” I say. “My father and I were never very close. You really think he told me some shit that was so secretive that we were driven away from our lives because of it? I don’t knowanything.”

“Miller, see if you can help him remember something about Zachary. Anything, really. What might have happened to his father. Or what his father might know. Anything works for me.”

This Miller guy is the smaller of the two, and I find myself weirdly happy it’s not the macho guy that he’s calling over, untilI’m made well aware that someone doesn’t need to look like a fucking brick house to knock the air out of me.

I gasp as I slump forward and realize that maybe I want the fucking abductor cult to come back and drive me around in a trunk some more.

“You remember anything now?” Arthur asks, but I can’t even fuckingtalk,so how am I supposed to say one way or the other?

Miller slams his hand into my face as pain explodes through my cheek and up into my eye.

“How about now?” Arthur asks.

“I-I don’t fucking know.”

I’m punched again and again until Arthur’s phone starts ringing.

“Hold a second, Miller. I’m enjoying this too much to miss any part of it.”

I’m panting, blood dripping from my nose as fear eats at me, rolling up into a tight ball in my stomach. I really don’t know shit. My father wasn’t just jumping around, telling his sixteen-year-old son all of his secrets. I’ve always wondered what he had gotten into, but I have absolutely no idea and probably never will. I assume the secrets are off wherever my father is… if he’s still alive. I often wonder if he’s dead somewhere. Why else would he have just… disappeared?

I really didn’t think his secrets would come back to bite me in the ass twelve years after his disappearance.

“What a fucking mess. Miller, go put him in the basement. Let him think and see if he can come up with anything. Then go deal with this irritating fellow. If I’d known he was going to be such a dreadful mess, I would have had someone else find our guest.”

FIVE

TAVISH

Funnily enough, Ellis wasn’t lying about not being the killer.

Imagine that.

Kind of makes me feel like I’ve been a wee bit of a dick to him.

Arthur the Evil Asshole obviously wants him for a reason, but it isn’t exactly the reason I was led to believe. He probably knew I wouldn’t have wasted time hunting him down if I knew the real reason. And clearly, whatever is going on here is secretive enough that he wants me dead because of it.

I tuck myself into a corner and try to think about what the fuck I should do now. I mean… if this was a normal situation, I would just hotwire some asshole’s car and drive off, only to come back later and make them regret every moment of this.

But being on a motherfucking island off in the middle of nowhere makes this a bit of an issue.

I still have my phone, so I quickly pull it out and send a call to the only men who might be of any semblance of help.

“Hellloooo, is this Tavish the Tremendously Tiny Dick calling?” Leland mockingly asks.

“Fucking hell, I didn’t call you for a reason. I swear I called Jackson,” I growl. “Let me talk to him.”

“Jackson is busy being sexy and can’t come to the phone right now,” Leland says.

“Is Cassel there?”

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