Page 26 of Fierce King (L.A. Ruthless 1)

Alejandro

I walkedinto the old warehouse and nodded to the four men who had been keeping the gunman from last night hostage.

Jax, my oldest friend and my second in command, walked over to me, flicking his lit cigarette into the distance.

‘Those things will kill you,’ I said to him.

‘Well, something’s gotta,’ he replied with a grin.

‘What do you have for me?’ I asked.

‘Layton Cooper. Forty-four. Lives in Virginia. Wife left him last year. They had a daughter. She died a little over two years ago when she was sixteen. Suicide, apparently.’

‘Has he said much?’

‘No, Boss. As per your orders we haven’t interrogated him yet. And he’s been as quiet as a church mouse all night except to ask for some water.’

‘Gracias,’ I said and walked over to where Layton was bound to a chair.

I picked up a bottle of water from the table as I passed. My men had been there all night and had taken provisions, and I knew they wouldn’t have shown him any mercy by agreeing to his request for a drink.

I pulled up a chair and sat in front of Layton. ‘You thirsty?’ I asked him.

He looked up at me. ‘Yes,’ he whispered as his eyes lingered on the bottle.

‘Why did you try and shoot my wife?’

‘To hurt her father,’ he said.

I opened the bottle and held it to his lips, offering him the cool water. He gulped it greedily until I took the bottle away.

‘Why do you want to hurt her father?’

‘Because he took everything from me.’

‘Do you have a death wish, Layton?’

He shrugged. ‘I have nothing left to live for. Why don’t you just shoot me in the head and get it over with?’

I smiled at him. ‘I’m not sure you appreciate who you’re dealing with. I don’t just shoot people in the head, Cabrón. I like to torture them first.’ I watched as the color drained from his face and he suddenly realized the situation he was in. ‘Especially when they put a gun in my wife’s face,’ I snarled.

‘I’m sorry about that. I would never have hurt her,’ he shook his head. ‘I just wanted to scare her. I wanted her to tell him how terrified she was, so he would know exactly how it felt.’

‘What exactly did Foster Carmichael do to you?’

‘I told you. He took everything from me. He took everything from me,’ he started to cry.

‘Well, I’m going to need a little more than that. Or would you like me to pull out your fingernails to make you talk?’

He looked up at me, his eyes wide with fear. And then Layton Cooper told me all about why he hated my father in law so much.

I walked out of the warehouse and wiped the blood from my hands. Jax was two steps behind me as the rest of my men cleaned up the mess inside. In a little over an hour, there would be no trace of Layton Cooper left to be found.

Jax and I climbed into the car. ‘Take me to the hotel. Use the underground entrance. I need to get cleaned up,’ I said to my driver.

‘Of course, Boss,’ he nodded and put the car into drive.

‘Did you have any idea Carmichael was involved in that kind of shit?’ Jax asked me.

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