Page 22 of Passion's Wicked Torment

“Are you?” He looked at her sternly.

She had to make her reply convincing. She bent forward and kissed him on the lips, a full, languorous kiss. Then she backed away and stared at him with an expression that said: Does that answer your question?

“Dallas always was a little bit crazy,” Ironman confided. “Not what you’d call your typical hood. But if he’s crazy enough to throw away someone like you, he don’t deserve you.” His eyes became excited. “But I do!”

He came forward and grasped her shoulders, pulling her toward him. He kissed her hungrily. His beefy hands pawed all over her body greedily, ripping open her blouse, caressing and squeezing her breasts. He was not gentle, and despite the pretense of refinement he aspired to, he was nothing more than the brutal savage the newspaper headlines made him out to be. Only now Kristin was experiencing his roughness firsthand, rather than reading about tales of how he had beaten or killed men who stood in his way.

He did not unbutton or unfasten any of her clothing; he ripped everything off. When she tried to move inside, back into the penthouse, he grabbed her wrist and stopped her. He pushed her down onto the warm artificial grass covering of the patio and made love to her right there. She stared up, past his shoulder, to the blue sky and white clouds, her eyes wide, stunned by the quickness with which this was all happening. Ironman was inside her, his hard, virile, stocky body pressing down on top of her, his flesh searing her flesh.

After a few minutes, he did something that had never been done to her before. He flipped her over onto her stomach, and despite her cries he came into her sex from behind, reentering her womanhood, which by now had become excruciatingly sensitive. She tried to resist, feeling panic at the unfamiliarity of this new position. But he had her pinned to the warm patio surface, his arms circling around her from behind to clasp her breasts in his hands.

He kept snapping himself into her sex, squeezing her breasts. Then, finally, he grunted deep in his throat. He moved off of her. Surprisingly, he took her wrist and helped raise her to her feet. He was smiling at her. But she cast down her eyes. He took his robe and put it over her shoulders now. Kristin pulled it tightly around herself. It felt pleasant. She discovered that she liked the feel of expensive silk against her skin, despite the fact that most of her mind was dwelling on the terrible incident she had just been through.

“I don’t want you to see Hunter anymore,” Ironman said. “You and me, we’re going to get along fine. I’ll treat you right. First class all the way. You won’t be wasted on me, doll. I promise you that.” He pointed sharply with his finger. “But don’t you go seeing Hunter again. Ever. That’s an order.”

“I don’t have any desire to see him again,” she said in a subdued voice.

He grunted his approval. Then he tapped her lightly on the behind and said, “You go in and shower. Then I'll take you to the snazziest eatery you ever laid eyes on. You and me, doll, we’re going to be a team. We’re going to be one hell of a good-looking couple.”

As she turned to go back into the penthouse, Ironman made one last comment in a very casual, nonchalant voice. “It’s good you don’t want to see Hunter anymore. Because if I ever get the impression you still care for him even a little bit—I’ll kill him.”

CHAPTER 13

After Ironman took Kristin to dinner that night, he dropped her off at his hotel and told her to go up to the penthouse and wait for him. He had to take care of some business. It would only take a short while, he assured her.

Then he had his driver take him to a secret location in the basement of an abandoned illegal drug factory. He was let in by Ladislas Terry, one of the men on his payroll.

Ironman did not waste time on words. “Has he talked yet?” he asked.

Ladislas Terry shook his head. “He’s a tough one, Ironman. Doesn’t look like he’s going to talk.”

Ironman grimaced angrily and stared across the room at the bound-but-not-bowed figure against the far wall: Chad Fleming. Fleming’s white shirt was stained with drops of dried blood from the many times he had been beaten. Bruises marked his face, closing one eye completely. Chad returned Ironman’s stare, forcing a grin onto his bruised lips. “Well, well,” Chad said in a taunting voice, “the big cheese himself.”

“Shut up, you,” said Ironman, removing his kidskin gloves and stuffing them into the pockets of his expensive Chesterfield coat. “I want to hear just one thing from you: the name of the federal agent who’s infiltrated my organization.”

“Sure, Gianelli. I’ll tell you who it is: Santa Claus. Now will you let me go?”

Ironman did not smile. He looked accusingly at Terry, who held his hands out helplessly. “He won’t crack,” said Terry defensively. “I’ve beaten the hell out of him, and he still won’t crack. The guy’s tough, I tell you.”

“What are you, a pussycat? I thought I was getting more for my money.”

“Ironman,” Terry said, straightening up, showing by his tone that he would respect Ironman’s authority but would not let himself be unfairly insulted, “I’m not some kind of flower. I’m one of the best there is at getting information out of a man. But some men just won’t talk. I can go further, if you want. But if I do, he’ll just end up dead. There isn’t much more I can do that I haven’t done already.”

Ironman said nothing, just continued staring at Chad Fleming. The tough gangster was feeling bitter frustration. “The best bet,” said Terry, “is that strategy you were working on. Finding his sister. That would do the trick.” “You leave my sister out of this, you bastards!” shouted Chad from across the long, narrow basement room.

“Yeah,” said Ironman, “that would do the trick. If we could work her over, in front of him, he’d tell us what we want to know. But the bitch disappeared into thin air.”

“She’s a teacher, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, yeah. But she quit her school, saying she was going to California to stay with relatives. I’ve got people scouring that state from one end to the other, and I still can’t find her. I even had people checking the hotel registers for this Molly Fleming—that’s her name, Molly K. Fleming—and still no luck.”

“So that’s why you’ve been keeping me alive this long,” Chad called from across the basement, realization dawning. “You were trying to bring my sister in, thinking that that would make me crack. It won’t work, Gianelli! Nothing will work. You might as well kill me now. I won’t tell you what you want to know.”

Ironman started across the basement toward him. Terry was walking at his side. “It’s all the fault of that damn T.J.,” Ironman said, shaking his head bitterly.

“He made the stupid mistake of not grabbing the girl at the same time as he grabbed the reporter here. T.J. was the only one who got a good look at her, and now he’s dead. Rooney’s men got him during the warehouse raid.”

They stopped in front of Chad. His wrists were tied behind him, his left ankle tied to a plumbing pipe that ran along the bottom of the wall.

“You going to tell us who the infiltrator is, kid?” Ironman asked him.

“What infiltrator?” echoed Chad harshly.

“You going to tell us the address of your grandparents in California where your sister is staying?”

“What grandparents? What sister?” Chad glared at Ironman.“What state of California? Never heard of it.” Ironman slugged him. Chad winced at the blow, but then, after the pain receded a bit, he stared back at Ironman, defiantly.

“At least he stopped denying that he knows who the infiltrator is,” Terry said.

Big deal!” said Ironman. “He had to. He knows we saw that report he made to his editor, where he says he discovered there’s a T-man working undercover in our organization. And that he knows who he is.” Ironman turned to Chad. “Why didn’t you say who the fed was in your report? You could have saved us all this trouble. And yourself all this pain.”

“Here’s why, Gianelli: Because I know you’ve got eyes and ears throughout the pape

r, just like you do throughout the city government and throughout the police force. And I knew that if the man’s name got out, his life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. There’re corrupt people everywhere, ready to spill their guts for a bribe. I didn’t tell my editor the man’s name. And I’m not going to tell you either.”

“You want to die, kid?” asked Ironman with a look of false concern for Chad’s welfare. “Maybe you just don’t realize how important it is for me to weed out this bastard, whoever he is. Let me enlighten you. My organization is being completely disrupted because I don’t know who I can trust. I can’t even let my accountant handle the full ledger anymore because I don’t know for sure that he’s not the fed. I have to get receipts and reports from my different section heads, then put them into the big book all by myself. I have to do all this, kid—and I hate it!”

“Tough,” said Chad.

“I have to watch who I talk to. Who I give assignments to. I have to be careful twenty-four hours a day.” Suddenly Ironman’s face turned red with rage, and he screamed, “You’re ruining my life, kid! And I’m going to make you pay! Now tell me who the damn infiltrator is so I can get the son of a bitch out of my hide and get back to work! Huh!”

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