Page 65 of Midnight Legacy

“I would have considered divorcing my wife and marrying her myself for the money we’re talking about. If she’s anything like her mother, I wouldn’t have had to try very hard to be interested in the bedroom.”

My fist connected with his face without any conscious thought. He spat blood out on the floor.

“Who’s looking for her?” I demanded.

“Some of the bigger gangs would love to tap that resource. Billions have a tendency to do that. Men have gone to war over less.” He gave me another bloody grin. “You need to ask yourself why you married her, considering her first two children have been bequeathed huge trust funds.”

My fingers formed a fist at my side.

“That’s easy,” Jordan intervened. “He fell for her and knocked her up before he even knew who she was. Money means nothing when you have your own billions in the bank.”

Clive laughed before he winced in pain. “My father told me a long time ago that the first time you marry it should be for money and the second time for love. You can destroy a man when he loves something.”

“Cassandra is perfectly safe,” I commented, but fear gnawed deep in my stomach at the thought of a price on her head.

“And your child? Are they safe when the prize incentive includes being the father of her first-born child?”

My control started to slip and the red mist that normally ended in someone’s death began to descend.

Jordan stepped forward, twirling a scalpel between his fingers. “Now I need to address the matter of your business and how it links into the Council.”

He threw Jordan a filthy look. “I told you enough, now kill me and leave my family alone.”

Jordan tutted. “Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that.” His scalpel kissed the skin of Clive’s chest. “How did Malcolm get the kids he abducted out of the country? I’ve seen your accounts and he’s been paying you for years.”

That was news to me, but nothing ever escaped Jordan’s attention.

“You included fitness centres and gyms in your business expansion a few years ago. That would give you access to the personal details of thousands of vulnerable women.” He pressed down on the scalpel and blood trickled down Clive’s chest. “I checked. Dozens of females have disappeared—and guess what the connection between them is? Your clubs all over the country.”

Clive took that opportunity for his bladder to fail him.

“Motherfucker!” Jordan shouted. “What is it with these fuckers and pissing on my boots?”

“Better that you scare the piss out of them than the shit,” I quipped.

“Seriously?” Jordan demanded, shaking his foot and giving Clive a look that said he would happily dispatch him to the afterlife right now. “Give me your exit routes, or I will send your kids into the clutches of those sick fuckers.”

“You’ve already told me you don’t know how they’re shipped out.”

Jordan laughed. “Oh, but I know how they’re selected. I noticed the statistics that all the missing people shared, the fitness code they were assigned along with a recommendation for a personal trainer to help them with their core strength. I almost missed it the first time I crossed your files with the missing persons register.”

“Fuck you!”

Jordan rolled his eyes. “Let me give you a little incentive,” he coaxed.

My stomach rolled as Jordan wielded his scalpel. Interesting fact—the human male can have his testicles removed with little blood loss but an extraordinary amount of screaming. A skinned penis was nothing more than a piece of raw muscle.

Clive’s lips trembled and his legs shook. “You are a sadistic bastard like your father,” he wheezed. “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I’m sure he’s very proud that nature is stronger than nurture.”

Jordan’s parents were murdered a long time ago when he was too young to even remember them properly. His grandfather raised him, removing every trace of his father from his life. He told him that the past only had the power to hurt him.

A smile that would make me run a mile in the opposite direction appeared in Jordan’s face. “Thank you. I never knew my father, but at least I know that these dark desires that course through me are genetic.”

I’d witnessed some shit in my life, but I’ve never watched a grown man sob quite the way Clive did. He was fully broken.

“Give me the route and you can die,” I coaxed.

“We have a special shipping container in Dover. Our contact in France is waiting on the other side.”

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