Page 10 of Corrupted Deception

He’d sold out the Lucianos. He’d gotten one of our men killed. So, I had no doubt he’d sold out this Cade Finley as well.

The wheels were turning behind his eyes, searching for a way out. When his drug-addled brain realized there were none, he nodded. “It wasn’t personal. Just money.”

“The same reason you sold out the Lucianos?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

His breath caught in his throat, and his eyes widened. “No. No, wait. I never said—”

“Did you sell out this Finley to the same man to whom you sold out the Lucianos?” I asked, not certain how I felt about my path and Charlotte’s converging on one common enemy.

Marín was finally sobering. Now, he looked like every other man in his position, eyes wide with fear but with a desperate hope lurking in the backs of them. Hope that I’d change my mind, hope that mine wasn’t the last face he’d ever see. The same hope I’d quashed over and over again.

The tears in his eyes welled over, and silent sobs wracked his chest. He’d regained some control over his muscles now, and he was trying to maneuver his whole body further up on the bed in what could go down as the slowest, most futile escape attempt ever.

Vito looked down at him, an amused grin playing at the edges of his mouth.

“Your tears are pointless, Daniel,” I explained. “They don’t mean anything to me.”

I’d like to say they once would have, that the apathy had been bred over time, that it was the result of hardening or thickening of armor, but it would be a lie.

To drive home the point—pun intended—I retrieved another needle, the thickest gauge in the briefcase.

“All right, yes!” he cried the moment the sharp tip touched his skin.

“Give me a name, Daniel,” I commanded, holding the needle there while Vito hovered close by, ready with the gag.

“I’ll… tell you,” he panted. “It—” He gasped, sharp and sudden.

His eyes rolled back, and his eyelids closed as his whole body went slack.

Well, this was inconvenient.

I pressed two fingers to the man’s carotid artery, checking for a pulse, but there was none.

A heart attack. Not the first I’d witnessed during an interrogation.

“Hand me the epinephrine,per favore,” I told Vito, holding out one hand while I located the midpoint of Marín’s outer thigh, three fingers below the hip bone.

The moment Vito handed me the syringe, I jabbed it in and depressed the plunger.

This wasn’t the movies, so Marín’s eyes didn’t fly wide open suddenly, body revived and ready to continue our conversation.

“Son of a bitch,” Vito muttered under his breath as he covered Marín’s mouth and nose with a resuscitation mask and I started CPR.

Thirty compressions, then Vito blew two breaths into Marín’s lungs.

Thirty compressions.

Two breaths.

No pulse.

We repeated the process, and I found a certain tranquility in the monotony of it, if not in the dwindling possibility of success.

When fifteen minutes had passed, Vito returned the used syringe inside my briefcase along with the resuscitation mask.

Daniel Marín was dead, his lifeless body beginning to turn pale and blue-lipped.

I wasn’t impressed.

---