Walking into the warehouse, I nodded a greeting to Jax, who stood smoking a cigarette near the entrance.
‘Are they all in there?’ I asked.
‘Yup. And suitably shitting their pants, amigo,’ he said with a flash of his eyebrows.
‘Good,’ I growled. They’d be doing more than that by the time I was finished with them.
I walked into the warehouse, with Jax following close behind me. He flicked then end of his lit cigarette into the distance and the four men standing in the center of the room turned when they heard our footsteps. I could smell the fear even from thirty paces away.
As they stepped aside, the sight behind them came into view. A single chair with a naked man strapped to it. There was also a single table, full of all manner of surgical instruments. I took off my suit jacket and placed it on the table before removing my cufflinks and putting them down beside it.
The man tied to a chair let out a muffled cry through the rag stuffed into his mouth. The four men who were standing moved to form a line directly in front of me as I started to unbutton my shirt. They stared at me, their eyes wide with fear as they watched me. These men weren’t my enemies, but they feared me just as much, and they had every reason to.
‘Can any of you tell me why the fuck that isn’t Blake Fielding tied to that chair?’ I asked them.
‘He’s disappeared, Boss,’ Anton said.
‘He was in the wind before we could get a lead on him,’ Kain added.
I nodded as I slid my shirt over my shoulders and placed it beside my jacket. I looked up at them, searching each of their faces for something that might make me any less angry, but I found nothing. ‘So, you’re telling me, that some low-life, scum-sucking Cabrón from Chicago, has avoided four of my best fucking men?’ I barked.
‘We’ve got his cousin, Boss –’ Anton started.
‘His cousin? I don’t want his fucking cousin. I want him!’ I snarled. ‘And the fact that you have brought me here tells me that his cousin knows fuck all, or you would have extracted that information from him yourselves, wouldn’t you? Or are you all so fucking incompetent, you can’t even do that now?’
‘He’s given us some other leads to chase, Boss,’ Anton said.
I stepped towards him, pressing my face closer to his. ‘Leads? It’s been a fucking week and all you have is leads? Are you fucking shitting me?’
The four of them shuffled uncomfortably, looking at the floor and their feet, while Blake’s cousin continued to whimper in the background.
‘Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you,’ I snarled.
They lifted their heads until their eyes met mine. ‘You do realize that this hijo de puta threatened my wife? He put his hands on my fucking wife!’ I shouted, the noise echoing around the empty warehouse. Three of them visibly flinched but Anton remained steadfast. He had worked for me for longer that any of them. He was loyal and he was trustworthy, and usually he was good at his job.
‘You have fucking let me down,’ I glared at him.
He simply nodded. ‘I know, Boss.’
He had barely finished his sentence when I punched him square in the jaw. He staggered backwards and fell onto the floor.
‘We’ll find him, Boss,’ Kain said as he stepped forward.
‘Oh, I know you fucking will. Because, I you will not set foot back in this city until you have that fucker with you!’
I walked past them and towards the man tied to the chair. ‘What is this Cabrón’s name?’
‘Calvin,’ Kain replied.
I looked him over. He was covered in welts and bruises and his left leg was obviously broken. I grabbed a handful of his hair and tilted his head up to look at me. His eyes were glassy, the pain making him lose focus and slip in and out of consciousness. I took the rag from his mouth and tossed it onto the floor.
‘Pass me the epinephrine,’ I snapped and someone handed me the hypodermic needle from the table. I injected it into a vein in Calvin’s arm and his eyes focused on me and he started breathing heavily. I slapped his face. ‘Hey. Focus. Where the fuck is Blake?’
He started to shake his head violently from side to side. ‘I don’t know, I swear. I don’t know.’
I held out my hand and Jax placed a small scalpel into it. I pressed the sharp blade against Calvin’s chest. ‘Where is he?’ I repeated.
‘I don’t know!’
I sliced through his chest, ripping open his pectoral muscle and slicing his nipple in half. He screamed in agony as I took hold of his hair again and leaned down to him. ‘The next cut will be your balls. Now tell me where the fuck I can find your cousin.’
He tried to shake his head as tears and snot ran down his face, but I held him in place. ‘I don’t know,’ he sobbed. ‘You need to speak to his girlfriend. She’s not who she says she is –’
I lifted my foot and kicked him hard in the groin and he vomited bile onto the floor. ‘You think I don’t already know that, mal nacido! You think I don’t know who Lucy Callaghan really is? You think I’m fucking stupid?’
He shook his head as his body convulsed with sobs.
I held the scalpel close to his face. ‘You’re going to die, Calvin. But, I can make it quick and end your suffering right now, or I can drag it out for days. It’s up to you. Tell me what I need to know.’
He blinked at me, his eyes full of defeat and I knew that he didn’t have the information I needed. I could go on torturing him but it wouldn’t get me any closer to finding Blake Fielding. The old me would have tortured him anyway, just for the hell of it, and because I was fucking raging. But, I thought about Alana, and all I wanted to do was get home to her.
I turned around and looked at Jax. ‘End him. Now,’ I said as I walked back towards my employees. Taking one of chlorine soaked rags from the table, I wiped my hands clean of Calvin’s blood. A few seconds later, the sound of a gunshot echoed around the warehouse.
I pointed to the four men who were standing in front of me. ‘Find me Blake Fielding, or the next time I see any of you, it will be you strapped to a fucking chair, and I will personally castrate the fucking lot of you!’
They nodded. ‘Yes, Boss,’ they replied I unison.
Grabbing hold of my clothes and cufflinks, I walked towards the exit and Jax walked behind me . ‘Clean this fucking mess up,’ I shouted as I shrugged on my shirt.
