Page 74 of Breaking Conviction
“A visitor?” Wes asked, unable to keep the confusion from his voice as he straightened from testing Andrew Ascot’s zip tie and cuffs. Ascot was out of shape on his best day and there was no way he was getting out of the confines, but it never hurt to make sure a prisoner was secure.
He turned to the open door to see shock and disgust in brown-hazel eyes, singed with fire.
Naomi’s gaze took in the scene, darting her eyes from Hawk to Devil, then to him, and he felt her scorching disdain, hurt, and…
Fuck, is she afraid of me?
Just as soon as he was able to analyze the emotion, she turned to look at the mangled man in the center of the room. Wes had to admit, it looked bad. The man was bent at the waist in the metal chair in the middle of the room, unrecognizable except for the bloody suit with his initials at the pocket. Okay, it looked really fucking bad. But when her gaze tripped over the drain underneath Ascot, her eyes widened in disbelief.
“What is all this? What am I lookin’ at, Wes? Because it looks a helluva lot like a fuckin’ horror movie.”
Wes was too stunned by her presence to answer. She thrust her hand at the bloody pulp that used to be the proud Andrew Wilton Ascot III, seemingly searching for something there.
“Is he dead?” she finally asked, apparently unable to answer her own question.
“No.” His voice sounded odd, even to his ears, almost detached in the echo of the metal bunker. Unable to connect with the reality that he might be losing Naomi right in front of his eyes.
“Is he gonna die?”
“No,” Devil’s deep voice answered when Wes’s voice was again caught in his throat.
She snorted. “Glad to see you have a fuckin’ medic on standby while youtorturesomeone. Who did this?” She was met with silence and finally lost her shit.
He didn’t know why he did it, but Wes looked to Phoenix for the first time. The fucker was pale with bags under his eyes and an unreadable expression on his face, but Wes knew he’d done this shit on purpose. He had to have. The man was always setting fires to watch the world burn. He was probably jealous of his and Naomi’s relationship and decided to light a match.
“Who did this?” Naomi screamed into the room. But she was looking straight at Wes. She obviously already knew the answer. She just needed to hear it.
“I did.” Wes stepped forward, his shoulders back and his face carefully blank. “It was me, Naomi. I-I lost it yesterday on a mission,” he admitted before turning to Ascot. When he turned back to Naomi, he cringed at how she looked at the man. Likehewas the victim, instead of the pervert who was helping buy and sell women. “I let my emotions get the best of me and—”
“You… let youremotionsget the best of you? What the fuck does that mean, Wes? You let me believe your bloody knuckles were fromboxing! But they’re because you were beatin’ a man to death?”
“Not to death—”
“Really?” Her sardonic chuckle slithered over his skin, making his hair stand on end. “Is that the difference we’re gonna argue about? Is it really so much better that younearlybeat a man to death and notactuallybeat a man to death?”
He wasn’t going to dare answer that. He had a feeling she’d be disappointed in his answer.
“H-help me,” Ascot groaned for the first time since Wes had fireman carried him out of the club. Devil assured them that Ascot wouldn’t die, but Wes had clearly gone too far. They were on a crunch time to figure out who was behind the trafficking and Wes had lost control so badly that Ascot had taken entirely too long to wake back up.
Wes watched Naomi’s face carefully as Ascot pleaded with her, resisting the urge to knock the bastard out again. The light ivory tint to her skin turned green.
“Oh my god, y’all have to let him go. He needs to go to the hospital—”
“Can’t do that, Naomi,” Hawk interrupted. “He looks weak now, but when he has power, he wields it to traffic young women. We need to figure out what he knows.”
“Noth-nothing. I don’t know anything.”
“Oh, god, what if he really doesn’t know anything, y’all?” Naomi asked, her voice watery with emotion.
“Naomi, I love that compassion you have, but you have to set it aside for men like him. He’ll use it to manipulate you. You have to remember why the fuck he’s here,” Wes reasoned, hoping she’d understand. “Yousawthe women that were saved from that hotel on the buy thathehelped organize. More lives than his are at stake. If he doesn’t turn over what he knows, we have to find out the hard way.”
Her angered expression faltered, and her brow furrowed when he was finished, as if she wasn’t sure what to think.
“But… how do you know he was involved to that degree?”
“We don’t,” Hawk explained. “But we won’t know unless we ask him.”
“And he’s not going to answer if we simplyask,” Devil clarified.
