Page 40 of Sin City Obsession

Gwathney shook his head, the motion slow and jerky.

Lou groaned, the sound an odd combination of gruff and wet from blood building up in his throat. Rocco had beaten him badly enough that his face was already bruising and really his entire head looked out of joint.

Alessa locked her stare onto Gwathney. “Where’s the documentation of your deal with Richardson?”

Gwathney swallowed hard. “I-in the safe, in my office. That’s the real paperwork. The stuff on the drive is fake.”

She pressed the pointed tip of her tool up, under his jaw, just above his Adam’s apple. “How do I get into those files?”

His lips trembled. “P-please…”

She added pressure. “Answer the question, Erik.”

His nostrils flared. “The tablet is biometric! I use my thumb. Left thumb. Everything’s saved from there. All the digital stuff, I mean. No typed passwords.”

“Just your left thumb.”Fantastic.She really didn’t want to keep his damn thumb around, on ice no less, while they slunkback into his office and hunted down his tablet. “And where is your tablet?”

Gwathney’s voice shrank like a wilting flower. “M-middle drawer on the right, in my office. The keys are … in my coat pocket.”

Alessa indulged him, eased the pressure off his neck, and dipped her free hand into his pockets until she found a small set of keys. There were only three on the ring, and one had been customized black with electric green edging. It wasn’t hard to guess which one she needed. “Very good,” she said, holding them up to eye-level before curling her fingers around the keys and tucking them away. “Cooperation is good, Erik. It means less pain.”

He sucked in a breath.

She smiled. “Now, how about that safe? Tell me everything.”

Rocco wiped his hands clean with some damp paper towels he’d grabbed from the attached half-bath, a strange, unsettled feeling twisting in his gut. He hadn’t meant to snap. He’d even told himself to guard against the urge. It hadn’t exactly been hard to anticipate that insults would be flying in this situation.

But the moment that gorilla bastard had spit on her, all Rocco had seen was red. Rage burned like lava through his blood. The other man’s foul words roared in Rocco’s ears andhe’d thought nothing at all of demonstrating the consequences that came with disrespecting his woman.

Until he realizedhehad disrespected her, too.

The understanding left him cold, all his remaining fury directed inward.

So he stood back, like he was supposed to, like he’d promised to, and watched. He watched as Alessa teased terrible pain and in the process extracted crucial information. He watched as she tossed instructions to Em like it was second-nature. He watched as she played her captives with precision—and he realized something in her behavior had changed.

The tone of her voice was flatter. Her facial expressions looked tighter, like they were forced, and instead of gesturing while she talked, she had taken to holding perfectly still.

Rocco clenched his fists at his sides. He knew he’d fucked up, knew there was a chance she was mad about it, but this felt worse than that.

“Looks like we had ice left in that freezer, after all,” Em declared as he re-entered the room, holding a small pot and a roll of plastic wrap.

“Perfect,” Alessa replied as she finished sweeping her paring knife through Lou’s bloodied shirt. She’d already sliced open Gwathney’s, and as she had the first time, she made no effort to remove the fabric. She simply pushed it aside to expose their chests. Then she straightened, tucked the knife into her waistband once more, and walked around to the backside of the pole. “Bring it here. We need to ice that thumb as soon as it’s severed.”

Rocco had clear line-of-sight for the moment Gwathney realized he was going to lose his thumb in the most unpleasant way imaginable. It would have been satisfying if he weren’t feeling so … ignored.

He ground his teeth as he watched. Alessa hadn’t lifted her eyes to him once since his apology. She’d looked in his general direction a few times, but never high enough or to the side enough to make eye-contact.

“Did you need one of the bigger knives?” Em asked as he carefully rounded the space to move closer to her.

Rocco saw her short, sloppy ponytail dance when she shook her head.

“I’ll be using these.” Her words carried, but she was obscured enough by the pole and increasingly squirmy bodies that Rocco couldn’t see what she referred to.

Em let out a whistle. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“Hold still now, Erik,” Alessa said moments before Gwathney let out a fresh whimper. “This is going to hurt.”

Gwathney tried to beg her out of it, his voice building steam just in time to shoot up into an ear-splitting wail thatalmostdisguised a very unnatural snap.

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