“We will make you scream if you don’t answer.” Fabian sat behind his desk, feet propped, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, the complete image of nonchalance.
For those who wondered, it wasn’t feigned. The prospect of violence didn’t bother him, and while he might have a problem hitting a woman himself, there were other ways to make the opposite sex talk.
His mate, however, didn’t know this. His vixen, who insisted on being present, frowned. Leaning down, she whispered into his ear, “Um, you’re not really going to torture her, are you?”
He didn’t bother to modulate his voice. “Damned straight I plan to torture her. She had no problem in attempting to kill you. Do the crime, pay the price.”
“I thought that term was used by law enforcement when talking about criminals.”
“It applies to anyone who dares to do something they know might get them punished. In this case, Blondie over there”—who wasn’t looking so tough tied to a chair—“thought she could come into my territory and attempt to murder someone in my care.”
“In your care? You make me sound like someone’s pet hamster.”
Snagging her around the waist, he yanked her onto his lap. “I was being polite. Would you have preferred I said this bitch dared to try and kill my lover and now her ass is grass?”
“Yes.”
A grin stretched his lips. “So sorry then.”
“You should be.” Primly said, but he could see the glint of mirth in her eyes. “What are you going to do to her?”
“If she were a man, I’d probably bounce her face off my desk a few times. Break her nose. Make it bleed. Then hit her a few more times for good measure to make sure that nose never goes back straight. Then I might think of removing an ear, or two. For some reason, that really bothers people.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. But I might add, I only do that in the most dire situations. One of the reasons my kind has flourished is because we don’t purposely draw attention to ourselves. Killing people and maiming them tends to have the opposite effect.”
“Weak,” muttered the blonde.
“Try ‘smart,’” Fabian corrected. “There are other ways to make a point, subtle yet powerful ways. Ways you’re about to discover.”
A knock at the door saw Fred entering bearing a plastic grocery bag. “The items you ordered, sir.”
“Thank you. Please place them on my desk.”
“Do you require me to apply them, milord?”
“No, I think Vixen and I can handle it from here.”
“Very well, sir.” Depositing the mysterious bag on the desk, a bag his vixen eyed, Fred turned around and left.
“What’s in the bag?” his mate asked.
“Why don’t you take a look?”
She rose from his lap—a shame, he did so enjoy it when she sat there, especially when she wore less clothes. As she walked away to circle around his desk, he admired the shape of her ass.
Dressed in one of her new outfits—a pencil tube skirt, white blouse, with a black bra peeking through the silk—she presented the image of the perfect businesswoman. A woman he could have tossed on his desk to have his way with that moment, if they didn’t have pressing business at hand.
He found her choice of attire interesting. Whether she realized it or not, her subconscious had guided her when shopping. The end result told him that his vixen was a woman used to dressing for success. A woman in charge. A woman who should have made waves when she went missing.
Stopping on the other side of his desk, she peeked into the bag. For a moment, she stared, then laughed. “Seriously? These are the tools you plan to employ to make her talk?”
“I wouldn’t scoff. I assure you, they will be very effective. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
“Actually”—his vixen grinned wider—“I think I’d like to give it a whirl.”
While his mate might have seemed somewhat squeamish a moment ago at the prospect of bloody torture, she at least understood the need to get answers.
Seating herself on the desk, legs crossed, her height asserting a level of dominance, his mate spent a moment staring at the assassin.
The captured killer stared right back. No remorse or chagrin in her expression. Yet.
His vixen braced her hands on the edge of his desk to maintain her balance when she leaned forward to ask, “Why?”
Simple, and to the point. He liked it.
“Bite me.”
His mate stood and circled around to the back of the blonde. “Is that your final answer? Because, it should be noted, you are not in a position to throw insults.”
“Your man just said he won’t kill me. Too messy. Pretty little princess might get his soft, pencil-pushing hands dirty.”
An insult to his face? The nerve. Apparently, he’d have to lay down the law in the less-than-savory circles and bring back the respect and prestige a man in his position was due.
And for her information, while he might have soft hands—Fred insisted he lotion them every day—he was most certainly not a pencil pusher. On the contrary, Fabian was the one pushing around those toting the pencils.
“Fabian isn’t afraid of getting dirty. I would know.” His mate shot him a look that was several shades of naughty promise. “But he’s right. Violence isn’t always the answer, even if it is sometimes fun.” Grabbing the hair of the blond assassin, long tresses that probably took hours to blow-dry, his vixen yanked her head back, hard enough to earn a squeak.
If he didn’t love her before, he certainly did now.
In a cool, modulated tone, his mate said, “Listen, I don’t know who you are, hell, I don’t know who I am, but I can tell you right now that I am annoyed, feeling kind of irritable, and apparently I am willing to go fairly low to find some answers. If I were you, I wouldn’t push me on this. You will tell me everything you know.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo. Someone lost her memory. I don’t give a fuck, and I ain’t telling you nothing,” spat the blonde.
“Were you dropped on your head as a child?” his vixen asked. “Is this why you’re so deliberately stupid now?”
“Trying to hurt my feelings?” taunted the killer. “Like I fucking care what you have to say.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“Yup. And if your boyfriend here hadn’t come along, I’d have succeeded, too. Hell, when I escape, even if there’s no money involved, I’m going to decimate you just as a matter of principle.”
Wrong answer. Fabian didn’t bat an eye when his mate popped the mouthy killer in the face. He did, however, hope the blood from her dripping nose didn’t ruin his rug. Cold water did not remove all stains. He knew from experience.
“Fucking bitch!”
“I somehow doubt that’s the name I was given at birth,” his vixen remarked. “Want to try again? I’m pretty sure you can fix that broken nose, but you might look kind of funny if I shave your eyebrows.”
His vixen released the prisoner but only so she could shove her hand in the bag and pull out a razor, a cordless electric one.
Without warning, his vixen braced a forearm against the blonde’s head, pushing it against the seat back.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
When his mate stepped back, it was to the sound of the blonde cursing. “You crazy, fucking cow. You shaved off my eyebrows!”
“I did. But at this point, that’s pretty easy to fix, and they’ll grow back. Now I’m going to ask you again. Why am I being targeted? And by who?”
“I won’t tell. It’s part of the code. Just ask your boyfriend.”
Fabian raised his hands and shook his head. “Hey, don’t throw this back on me. You’re the one being asked to answer for her actions. I should also mention that, while I am interested in those answers, it is not me you need to worry about but the one wielding a weapon of hair destruction.”
For emphasis, his vixen let the razor whir. He fought not to smile. Who would have expected he’d have such a grand ol’ time. Could he truly be so lucky as to have a mate who would truly be his partner? What would it be like to rule his kingdom with her by his side?
An alpha king and his queen, a queen who wasn’t done getting answers or playing with her prey.
His mate reached out to grasp a hank of the blonde’s hair. She held it up and then let it drift from her hand. “How long did it take you to grow your hair? I’m wagering years. Lots of years.” Buzz. Buzz. His vixen got the little motor of the razor whirring and held it inches away from the blonde’s prized locks. “You know, I hear reverse Mohawks are all the craze.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” The blonde narrowed her eyes.
Wrong answer. While a certain brash assassin screamed, his vixen shaved a strip, right up the middle. It proved too much hair for the poor razor to handle. With a grinding sound, it stopped.
“Oops. Did your tool fail?” the assassin cackled. “So you shaved a bit of hair. Like you said, it will grow back. Besides, I was thinking of changing my look.”
“Well, I am glad to hear that because I’ve got just the thing to help you get started.” His mate dropped the razor on his desk blotter and reached into the bag. She pulled out the next tool. This one also made a buzzing sound but resembled a thick pen. “Forehead or chin? And what should the message be? Sucks dick? Loves anal? Or do you want me to surprise you?”
The blonde visibly shrunk. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Buzz. The tattoo pen hovered in front of the killer’s face. “At this point, I would dare pretty much anything. I’m tired of this crap. No more screwing me around. Either talk or forever walk around with a tramp stamp on your face.”
Would his vixen really do it?
Apparently, today wasn’t the day he’d find out. The blonde grimaced, not a pretty sight given the blood dripping off her chin from the nose his vixen had smacked. “Fine. I’ll fucking talk. It’s not like I have much to tell you. I got this job anonymously via text only a few hours ago.”
“And do you always take anonymous jobs?”
“Is she for real?” the blonde asked him. “What other kind are there? No one is going to send me a business card and say, ‘Hey, mind killing so-and-so?’”
“How do you know it’s not someone setting you up?”
The killer shook her head. “You don’t, but those who have my number are few.”
“If they’re few, then how can you not know them?”
Fabian cleared his throat. “In the assassination field, there are usually middlemen, brokers if you will. Men with connections in the underworld. A client contacts them and expresses their need. These middlemen hook them up without either side knowing about the other.”
“That is seriously messed up,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose.
Fabian shrugged. “Perhaps, but that is how things work in the underworld. So you see, her story isn’t out of the ordinary. Chances are she does know nothing.”
“And I don’t give a shit who pays me. So long as I get half of the money up front, I’m your girl.”
“Okay, so you got the job via a text? What did the message say?”
“Said if I wanted to make an easy hundred Gs to get my ass down to the shopping district and kill you.”
“So you know who I am?”
“Nope. Never heard of you before today.”
Fabian saw her deflate at the news.
“How were you supposed to find and kill me if you never met me?”
“Easy. The buyer sent a pic.”
“An image of me?” His vixen perked up. “I want to see it.”
His mate turned to him, and Fabian held up the phone they’d confiscated from the killer. “Sorry, vixen. I went through her texts. Nothing there. She must have deleted it.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “Of course I deleted it. Only an idiot keeps that kind of evidence on their phone. Anyhow, I knew what you looked like and where you were supposed to be. The orders were to kill you and dump the body if I could on Fabian Garoux’s property or, if I couldn’t get you there, then at least make sure I planted the cuff link that was couriered to me in your hand or on your person.”
Ah yes, the cuff link, lost a few weeks ago, and not something he’d thought much of until it turned up in the hired killer’s pocket. The plot thickened.
“Why does your client want me dead?”
“How the fuck should I know? I’m just paid to do a job. I don’t care what the reason is.”
“Why try to implicate Fabian then? What would be the point?”
The point was obvious to Fabian and to the killer, who rolled her eyes. “So he’d get the blame.”
His vixen looked troubled as she asked, “But why kill me specifically? Wouldn’t anybody have worked?”
It was in that moment that Fabian connected the dots and wondered how he’d not seen it before.
“Because you’re obviously related to someone important and your death, supposedly sanctioned or done by me, would start a turf war or, if the cops got involved and arrested me, leave my organization in disarray allowing someone else to step in.”
The question was, who was brazen enough to challenge him?
And just who was his vixen related to?