Page 98 of Gray Area

“I’m closer to a yes with every second you evade me,” Axel whispers.

“Please don’t—”

Axel moves so fast, I don’t even see him reach for the gun, but a shot cuts off whatever Kent is going to say, and then he fucking is screaming like the bitch he is. Axel grabs him by the hair and pulls his face up. “That was your fucking baby toe. I’ll keep working my way up if you don’t start telling us something fucking useful.”

“I told him you were obsessed with Vivian!” Kent shouts as he rocks and grabs at his foot.

“And then what?”

“I-I called her! I told her I needed her to come over.”

I think back to all those years ago when Vivian asked me if I had ever killed anyone. I hadn’t, and I told her as much, and while I have hurt a lot more people, and a lot of them were close to death when I was done with them, I still have never directly killed anyone.

But I have a feeling Kent will be the first.

I feel my nostrils flare.

“What did he tell you to do?” I demand through my teeth. This fucker Matthews has a plan for sure. He didn’t just take Vivian and leave, and Kent is no actor.

Kent looks at me and now the fear is gone. Instead he’s glaring at me. “She says your name in her sleep, you know,” he tells me, sounding angry. “Do you know what that’s like to have a woman you worship, that you’d do anything for and want nothing more than for her to have even a glimmer of affection for you, and when she is the most relaxed, when she is at the will of her own subconscious, she says another man’s name?”

I punch his face and am positive I fracture his cheekbone. Blood goes flying out of his mouth. Since that bone isn’t already broken, I wonder how little torture this fucker endured before he served Vivian up on a platter to a fucking arms dealer. I push Axel away from him and grab him up by his neck, and I squeeze.

“Where is she?” I growl through my teeth.

Kent claws at my hand, as he wheezes to try and get air in. I know he can’t answer me while I am cutting off his airway, but I want to kill this man so much in this moment.

“Declan,” Slade says, bringing me back. And I instantly drop Kent, allowing him to fall to the floor in a heap, coughing and clutching his throat.

I kick him over to his back and put my foot to his chest. “Where is she?”

“He said for me to call him,” Kent wheezes out. “He said then he will let you know when to come to him—” I kick Kent in the head, like I am kicking the winning field goal for the Superbowl, and he goes unconscious. I reach in his pocket for his phone and toss it to Axel.

“Find her.”

Slade is patting down the now unconscious Kent while I pace the room. Meanwhile, Axel has Kent’s phone and is connecting it to his laptop, going through it with a fine-tooth comb.

“We’ll get her back, Declan,” Slade assures me. “But first we have to check the validity of what he is saying. We can’t go—”

“I need air,” I say, ignoring him. I am still a little pissed at him for saying that Vivian leaving me is the best thing that ever happened to me. What the fuck kind of fucked-up shit is that? And now someone has her, some fucker has taken her. This is the thing I had always worried about for her, and it has happened.

I move through the now empty building and go outside, taking a deep breath. I close my eyes, and a sharp pain in my side sends me to the ground, and then a punch knocks me out.

I wake up some time later and my shoulders fucking burn. I roll my head up and find out it’s because I am chained up to a fucking wall, my arms out straight and a little above me, like I’m being crucified.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” a voice says, and I roll my head to the side. It’s still too heavy for me to actively hold up. They must have given me something. I see a man in a suit eating an apple as he sits on an overturned bucket, staring at me. I try to movemyself against the chains and get myself up, but it’s impossible. “Gotta chain up animals when they get too full of themselves, Falco.”

This guy is baiting me. I don’t know who the fuck he is for sure, but I have a feeling. I don’t ask though. Sometimes it’s better to not know things while you get your bearings. That is something my dad taught us, really drilled it in. So I ignore the wiseass in front of me and instead assess the room I’m in. There are bars in front of me, but I can’t tell if they are closed, and it is cement everywhere else, so I am most likely in a basement of some sort.

“Nothing to say?” the man asks. He’s feigning indifference, and he sucks at it. His face looks passive, but I can see his breathing has picked up, and his nostrils flare a little at my defiance. “Maybe we can encourage you,” he says and nods to someone in the shadows.

A big lump of a man comes sauntering over to me, cracking his knuckles and working his head back and forth on his neck. The lump is amping up his tough guy image way too hard. I know his type, and I can’t wait for him to get close to me to show him how well I know it.

“You gonna talk?” the thug asks me, still coming closer. He’s about a foot from me, and I whisper something unintelligible from my lips. The stupid fucker comes closer, and when he is where I want him, I wrap my legs around him and pull him off his feet, sending his head smacking to the floor near my feet, and then I kick his head, hard.

Commotion comes all around me as two more goons appear, taking the guy away from me, and another punches my face. The suited man stays seated and just watches.

“You piece of shit,” the guy that hit me says, pulling my head up and getting into my face. “Who the fuck do you— Ah!” he screams out as I headbutt him right into his nose, blood hittingmy face as he drops to his knees. I land a kick right in his gut, sending his head smacking to the floor like his buddy’s.

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