Page 52 of A Captive Situation

I smiled into the phone, knowing it connected to the emptiness inside of me. “I’m no longer a cop, Uncle. And here I am. Picking up the old trade. It’s like riding a bike again. I forgot the rush you get from torture—”

“Jacob, stop! Stop. Please ... Please. Just. Fucking stop. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

I met Crispin’s eyes. He was looking at me like he’d never known me, as if I’d sprouted a second head. Then again, maybe he never knew that his father began molding me into being the family’s own personal assassin because at the end of the day, that’s where I thrived.

“What do you want to know? I’ll—what do you want to know, Nephew?”

“Let’s start with Nicolai. How did he become appointed the head? Because the last I knew of him, he wasn’t on top of the food chain. He was on the bottom, and somehow he shot up to the top spot. Who’sreallycalling the shots, Uncle? Is that who put the hit out on me?”

His tone went flat, but he sighed. “I think you know better than to have this conversation over the phone—”

I cut him off, impatient. “Stop fucking with me or I will start cutting. You know if I start, I’ll finish. That’s how you trained me. Remember?Stopwith the games. Crispin’s phone is encrypted. You have him here to oversee the storage and distribution you use for this nightclub. Saving your boy’s life isn’t enough incentive? Fine. I’m aware of what you have in this basement. It would be easy for me to drop a tip to the right person. Let them know the drugs, the black-marketgoods you store here. It’s up to you for that one. You want me to call law enforcement? Or Ashton Walden?”

He got quiet, real quiet.

I showed my teeth to his son, who was watching me so warily now. “I’mpissedoff, and I have nothing left to lose.”

“Nephew—”

“Time’s up.” I aimed the knife, ready to lodge it into Crispin’s leg.

Crispin and Penn were both screaming through their tape. Crispin was trying to break free from his chair. Penn was trying to roll at me, but I kicked him away.

“—wait!”

He cursed on his end.

“Too late,” I clipped out, raising my hand with the knife.

“We don’t know him!” my uncle cried out.

I paused before lowering my hand back to my side. “Explain.”

“Why don’t you come here? We’ll send a plane. It’ll be a quick ride. We’ll have dinner. The family. We can talk over a nice meal. Be civilized.”

I was done. He was still not remembering who I was.

I moved in a flash, lodging the knife in Crispin’s thigh.

His scream went up a notch. Bloodcurdling.

“OhChrist. Christ. Jacob—stop! Please.”

“Start talking, Uncle, or ...” I dragged the knife down Crispin’s thigh until I got to his knee, then ripped the blade out.

Crispin got silent, and I looked. He’d passed out. I shook my head, tsking into the phone. “Your boy’s already out. I’ve barely started, Uncle.”

“Fuck!” he yelled into the phone. “We—he’s not one of us.”

I paused, hearing an answer. Finally.

“Creighton Lane,” Uncle Toby said hurriedly. Frantic. “I don’t know if you know of him, but—”

“I know who he is. What does he have to do with the hit on me?”

Creighton Lane ran Cincinnati. He was a self-made mobster who rose from the streets. By the time he was nineteen, he was running everything. I knew people who’d gone after him, and none of them came out alive. As a cop and an organized crime detective, the few times I heard about him, I’d been thankful he never came to my city. We had the West and Walden Mafia families here and they were enough to handle, but Creighton was a loose cannon. He was a whole different sort of animal.

“He’s behind the hit.”

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