Page 34 of Sacred Vow

“And you are?”

“Peter, Sir.”

“Well, Peter,” I said, “this is how this is going to go. Dante here is going to beat you until you die, and that’s just a fact, but he can do that a lot of different ways. For example, he can go slowly, using techniques to keep you on the edge of death for days. You’ll feel every slice, every ounce of pain from the nails pried from your fingers, the pinch of the bolt cutters when we start on the joints, the heat from the blowtorch… well, you get the idea. The only one here who can save you from that is me. I suggest you fall in line and tell me what I want to know.”

Peter licked his chapped lips and tried to stare me down.

I stepped back. “Dante, if you please.”

Peter started fighting, trying to resist the inevitable, but Dante slammed his own huge hand over Peter’s, pinning it to the arm of the chair, and with one swift, efficient yank, the man’s right index fingernail was gone. Peter’s body bucked against the pain.

“I’m going to give you a moment,” I said, pulling over a chair to sit facing Peter, out of Dante’s way. “Because I want you to think about this, Peter, I really do. I want you to make the right decision—“

Another fingernail, and finally a scream.

”—while I’m still in a listening mood. Oof, that one must have hurt. I do have other things to do tonight, Peter, and when I decide to go do those things and give up on you, I’m not going to kill you first. I’m going to tell Dante to take his time, make it last as long as possible. I think the record is eight days.”

“Ten,” Dante grunted and tore out another fingernail.

“I’m a spy!” the guy screamed.

Dante looked at me quizzically and stepped back at my nod.

Peter sagged against his bonds, gasping for breath, blood dripping onto the concrete floor from the tips of his mutilated fingers. “I was sent… to spy on your operation… and report back.”

That was almost too easy, considering how well the guy had held up under Dante’s fists. “To whom?”

“I only know his first name. Ardo. I’ve never met the guy. He leaves his instructions on a voicemail, but it’s not really his voice, it sounds like a machine. The money magically appears at my doorstep. The guy’s a ghost, I swear.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” I nodded to Dante and seconds later, two more bloody fingernails lay in a neat row on the table, but I stopped him before he moved onto the other hand.

I studied the man before me, sobbing and drooling, blood dripping, and still trying to convince me he didn’t know anything. Still coherent. Still thinking.

“I don’t think the fingernails are working,” I said and nodded at Dante’s toolbox. “Start on the knuckles.”

“Wait! I’m supposed to report to him. Maybe…” Peter licked his bloody lips. “Maybe you can track his location.”

Massimo went over to take the guy’s phone from one of his men, and even from this distance, I could see it wasn’t the usual cheap burner. “Is this your personal phone or did he give it to you?” Massimo asked.

Peter spat blood and sagged again, seemingly too dazed to answer.

I held out my hand, but Massimo didn’t give me the phone. “What’s the unlock code?” he asked.

Peter lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. “I’ll only tell him.”

Massimo and I exchanged a swift glance as every warning sign clicked into place, and then he threw the phone and we were all running out of the warehouse. Over the sound of my brother shouting for backup, I could hear tires screeching outside.

“We’ve got company. Try and leave one alive,” I yelled. Just then the warehouse shook from the force of a muffled explosion and the roof fell in. A bomb, probably in his damn cell phone, the one he was trying so hard to get me to hold. What a fucking clusterfuck!

Behind us, the warehouse was on fire. Massimo’s men were quickly lost in the smoke, some stumbling deeper into the smoke, screaming as the fire swallowed them. Outside, survivors were being gunned down as they staggered out of the building, choking and blinded by smoke.

I grabbed Massimo, Dante and a handful of others and headed back the way we’d fled, around the flames and out the back, where I found Fausto and a few men firing back on our ambushers.

“Do we know them?” I demanded, sliding into cover behind some shipping crates.

Fausto took aim and fired. He was not a good gunman in the way our world thought of them, but at times like this, there was no one I’d rather have with me in a gunfight. He might be slow, but he was accurate, and every time he pulled the trigger, one of the enemies went down for good. “No idea, but—“ Another shot; another dead man tumbling off the dock into the water. I leaned out to provide a covering spray of bullets while he calmly reloaded. ”—but they sure know us.”

“I want one alive to question, Fausto,” I ordered and moved beside Massimo.