Page 119 of Demanding Mob Boss

Including everyone above foot soldier status.

Martina is deluded if she thought she could take control of even part of Chicago with an army that size. Did her father really think she could do it?

Or were they relying on something else?

If the Anthrax gambit had worked, that would have taken hundreds if not thousands of lives before we knew what hit us. The real question is: are there other patsies like Carmen that have been weaponized for biological warfare?

It's not a question that can wait to be answered, so after checking in on Connor with the Butcher and learning he doesn't need surgery, just sewing up, I take a couple vials of adrenalin down to the holding cells.

Ronan is already in the room with the doctor and the fury on his face tells me he wants to question this bastard.

I toss him a vial of the adrenalin and a syringe. "Have fun with him. I'll go next door and wake upEl Fantasma."

"My pleasure." Yeah, he means it.

Ronan Byrne will get every piece of information Berdardino has to give, and he will enjoy doing it.

I don't enjoy torture, but it is necessary in my line of work. The fact thatEl Fantasmais a woman doesn't make any difference to me. She's not innocent.

She sent her underlings after my sister. For that alone, she will die. That she planned to kill my mobsters and anyone they came into contact with through that fucking implant in Carmen? That just means I won't regret the method I have to use to get the information I want out of her.

~ ~ ~

I drag Martina Vega-Gutierrez into the interrogation chamber and attach her to the same bench her cousin was on before waking her up with the adrenalin.

Ronan has the doctor strung up from the ceiling by his hands in the room beside us, the table of instruments ready. The glass wall makes it possible to see what is happening. It can be frosted to prevent it when needed too.

The walls are soundproofed down here, including the one between the two interrogation rooms. However, we have a speaker system set up so that if we want sounds to travel between the two chambers, they can.

I can hear Bernardino's heavy breathing, so I know Ronan has the sound piping from his room.

Maybe the man's screams will motivate Martina, even if her own pain doesn't. The doctor isn't a trained soldier. He went to medical school. He has a role in the cartel that protects him.

Well,protectedhim. If he hadn't been a cheating bastard, he wouldn't be here, would he?

His first scream sounds just as Martina's eyes flutter open after I give her the shot of adrenalin. She turns her head and sees her lover take a blow from Ronan's knuckle duster covered fist.

Without blinking, she looks away and glares at me. "Do your worst. I'm not saying shit."

I do and she's wrong. She has plenty to say. So does her lover.

Most importantly, I learn that there are four more biological weapons prepared and stored at a secondary site. One we do not have on our list of locations to secure.

Martina and Bernardino weren't being called back to Colombia because they failed. They were leaving the city because they planned to lay waste to its underworld with Anthrax.

I do not feel remorse for killing to protect my mob, or to further its interests. But I always consider the risk-benefit ratio. This plan? Would never have made it past the proposal phase. And I probably would have killed whoever was shortsighted enough to suggest it.

Four damn targets. Did they fucking want to take out half of Chicago?

What would have been left for them to claim? And something like that would have brought the FEDs in like snow in winter, thinking some kind of terrorism was at play.

I may be a sociopath, but I am not a megalomaniac incapable of rational analysis of cause and effect like Eduardo Gutierrez. If he had ever been a man of reason, that time is past and his daughter shares in his delusions.

They would have destroyed my city without a qualm in order to claim it, but in doing so would have created a territory not worth claiming.

Fucking fools.

It's nearly dawn when I'm done interrogating Martina.

---