Page 56 of Blackmail
I reach into my pocket and pull out my brass knuckles. “I have a story for you,” I tell him.
“W-what?”
“See, I was the product of a threesome. Crazy, right? My parents were into sharing the love and all that good stuff. Except they met this man who looked and acted like Prince Charming—my mom’s words—on a trip to New Orleans, and they liked him so much the three of them spent the entire summer together.”
Behind me, Lehman clears his throat. A subtle suggestion that I need to slow my roll. But I’ve started the song and dance, so I’m going to let it play out.
“Why is he telling me this?” The man looks left to right between all of us. “Why are you telling me this?”
“There was trouble in paradise, unfortunately,” I say as I slide the brass knuckles on. “Turned out the guy was seriously unstable. Violently possessive. So my parents moved far away, to escape him. Which was fine until he found them years later, found out about me, and realized I looked exactly like him. Know what happened then?”
“I don’t know. How the fuck would I know?”
Well, I suppose he wouldn’t, but my dark side is coming out and I’m enjoying his fear. “I’ll tell you. They disappeared again. He followed, paranoid my parents had ‘turned me against him.’ I didn’t even know who the hell he was. Managed to grab me at my bus stop when I was fifteen. Convinced me he was a friend of my mom’s.”
I curl my fingers around the brass knuckles. “He gave me these. Belated birthday gift, he said. Back then I was a skinny kid, and he said I should always have a way to defend myself because people are always out to betray you. Then he used me to get my mother into the car and tried to take us both away. So he was right; people betray you. He betrayed me, and my mom, and then on our way out of town, he was driving so erratically that he flipped the car. My mother was killed right away. I got away with this.” I gesture to the scar on my cheek.
“You want to know how it ends?”
The guy’s sweating. Rivers of it flow from his temples down his face. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Oh, come on. It’s pretty good. See, I managed to crawl out of the car. I got my mom out too, but she was already gone. My sperm donor, however, was stuck. He begged me to help him out, which I did. Then I did this.”
That’s when I take a swing, landing a punch to the right of his chin.
“Fuck!” The guy jerks in the chair, but his hands are cuffed behind him. “I think…you broke my jaw.”
Given how he’s mumbling, and his face is already starting to swell, I’d say he’s right.
My phone pings, a message from the emergency vet letting me know that the dog I brought in is finally ready for surgery, and the night vet on duty is going in to set his broken leg. I excuse myself briefly to reply, and when I return, the man in the chair has stopped screaming, though he seems to be crying quietly. His head hangs low, and his body is at an odd angle.
“Did you dislocate his shoulder?”
Liam shrugs slightly. “You did authorize me to get the information in any way necessary.”
I did. “Has he said anything else?”
“He’s sticking to his story that he acted alone, and he and his other friend just wanted to have fun with a pretty girl. The van they had parked near the airstrip was registered to the same company as the plane, so someone else held the purse strings, and that someone else was either in charge of the operation or higher up on the food chain.”
I approach the man, curling my fingers around the knuckles again.
I’m pent-up after having to walk away from Simon. Pissed off that Tony’s still refusing to sign the paperwork. After two weeks, the PI I hired to follow Tony around hasn’t gotten anything worth using. Whatever Tony’s been up to lately, it hasn’t been fucking whores.
This man in the chair, all bruised and bloody, he’s drawn the short straw of being the place I let out my anger. And I like it. I like letting it all flow out through my hands. The blood and bruising doesn’t light me up the way it does when I hurt Simon, but it’s satisfying.
Perhaps I’m more like my sperm donor than I’ve wanted to admit. Would Simon be horrified to see me like this? Or would it be, as he put it, disturbingly hot?
Perhaps I’m a monster after all, and Simon was right to send me away.
“Who’s paying you?” When the guy says nothing, I drive my fist into his stomach. When he still doesn’t answer, I hit him in the face again. “Where did you get Lilliana’s information? Where were you taking her? Where was the party you took her to? How did you get her? Was there going to be a ransom?”
I get into a rhythm of question, pause, hit, but with each one our captive refuses to answer, my frustration grows. With each round, my fist sinks deeper into his flesh. By the end, the man is half out of it and doubled over, or at least as doubled as he can get the way he’s restrained.
Lehman stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of him. He can’t answer questions if he can’t talk.”
The look in his eyes tells me he’s worried I’m losing it. I shake my head and step away, answering his silent question.
Then he glances at Liam. “Sorry. You can see why kidnappings are a sore subject with him.”
