Page 35 of Taking Denver

We stop in a small neighborhood around thirty minutes from the airport. The houses aren’t tightly packed together, but it’s busy—mini vans in driveways and kids running through sprinklers. It’s picturesque, cute, and parents are too distracted by mowing lawns and watching their kids to notice the car stopping at the house on the end.

The pretty detached home would be perfect for another family on this street, and as I stride up the well-manicured lawn, I try to picture having a life here with Denver. She wants kids, a family, a life outside of our world and somewhere safe.

I can’t give it to her, but I also know that deep down, it isn’t what she needs.

As the door to the house clicks closed behind us, JJ looks up from his phone. He’s young and relatively new, but I appreciate his silence. He’s said only a handful of words to me since I hired him, and even that feels too many. He’s not the only one of my men here. There will be two others out back, one in a car outside, and an officer waiting by his phone should we need him.

“The realtor?” I ask.

JJ nods at the ceiling. “Quiet.”

“Alive?”

He nods.

Cal takes off his sunglasses. “Where’s our friend?”

JJ heads toward a door between the spacious hall and the kitchen. It leads us into the basement. It’s modern, and on therealtor’s website, it’s advertised as the perfect space for a home cinema—cozy, dark, quiet. Soundproof.

A simple wooden kitchen chair holds Adam Ledger. His ankles are duct taped to the front legs, his wrists to the arms of the chair, and tape covers his mouth. And despite the fist to the face that took him down after he was apprehended, he’s untouched.

For now.

“Hello, Adam.” I stop before him. “Comfortable?”

He stares up at me, sweat shimmering across his skin, his breathing quick.

Taking another chair from the far side of the room, I place it before him. I take off my jacket, draping it over the back of the chair before sitting.

Resting my forearms on my thighs, I watch him. “I’m not one for delaying bad news, so I’ll tell you now that you’re going to die.” He tenses, the tendons in his neck pushing against his skin. “It’s going to hurt. A lot. And it will take a long time for your heart to stop beating, and even then, I’ve instructed my men to bring you back if they can. Then they will kill you. Over and over.”

Adam trembles, tears spilling over his cheeks and the tape across his mouth.

“But I’ll give you a small bit of peace before you go.” I lean back in the chair. “Wyatt didn’t die in a carjacking.”

Adam’s eyes widen, and he pulls against the tape securing him.

I smile. “I killed him. I killed him because your piece of shit cousin was going to kill Denver. He looked a lot like this, actually.” I gesture at him. “Except he was on his knees, crying like a bitch before I pulled the trigger.”

Adam shouts into the tape, and his sobs increase when I reach into my inside pocket to produce a small flip knife. I twistit in my fingers, admiring the initials carved into the metal. ND. Nico DeLuca. Denver’s father.

“Do you know where I came from, Adam?” I ask. The rage and desperation in his eyes are like a balm to my fractured soul. I know that bringing other people fear and pain shouldn’t soothe me, but it does, and I’ll take it where I can. “I fought to survive. Literally. Underground fighting rings were my source of income, and when I was sixteen, a man pulled me aside after a fight and offered me money to kill his brother. He was fucking his wife, or stealing from him, something like that, I didn’t care. I took the cash, and I killed a man, and I had fifty bucks for formula for my kid and groceries for my girlfriend. Word spread and I was offered more money. Nobody asked me to become more creative in my kills, but I did. And there was one thing I became fascinated by.” I stand, and Adam’s head snaps up, his body trembling as I close in on him. “Eyes.”

Adam struggles when I grip his jaw. His sweat slips across my palm, but I hold him steady.

“I became obsessed with finding out how to remove an eyeball perfectly. Very little blood, but a lot of pain.” Adam tries to wrestle away, and I don’t need to say anything for Cal to approach and hold Adam’s head still. I pull open his eyelid.

Adam starts screaming into the tape, and I smile. “This is only the beginning, Adam. This is just a taste of what happens when someone tries to take from me. And each piece I cut from you, I’ll deliver to Wyatt’s mother. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

His screams become screeches as my knife dips into his eye socket.

“I hateit when you do the eyeball thing.”

I smirk at the passing scenery on the way to the airport hangar. “It’s effective.”

“You know my opinion on it.”

“Tongues arenotharder.”

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