Page 85 of The Bratva's Captive

Sloane doesn’t need to see this shit.She was tough, but it was unnecessary to be subjected to this.

“What other man?” Nik and I asked at the same time. With our senses heightened and on edge like this, it was important to keep in mind how quickly details could pop up as the incident unfolded. Clues would be noticed. More things would be found. It was all part of the investigation, and we had plenty of resources and staff to address a thorough review of this incident.

“Saul oversaw his capture just outside the building,” the soldier reported. “It seems there were two of them working together, one to get inside and the other as a lookout.”

Reaching the dead man who’d failed to poison my father, I grimaced and loathed how few clues we’d be able to get off him. He had come with the intention of being unidentified. No obvious signs of who he was. With his face—and head—a mess from his self-inflicted gunshot, there was no chance we’d be able to tell who he was. What looked like a black mask lingered, but that, too, was ripped and distorted from the gunshot.

I wasn’t going to hold my breath for any clues from him. He wouldn’t have broken in here with a wallet or any other identification on him.

But I had to hope the other man would be different.

I nodded once at another soldier who was supervising the scene. Acknowledging him was a courtesy, nothing more, and he was trained enough to handle this without my guidance.

Instead, I headed downstairs with Nik to find our brothers. Saul was pacing outside the largest room in the dungeon. More men were available, but they blended into the background as backup should anything go wrong. It was comical, that all these men would be necessary against the one lone asshole tied to the chair.

He didn’t have a chance in hell to get free.

Damon was the Demon, showing us all how damned good he was at torturing our enemies. Father had never reconsidered delegating Damon to lead the executions and grisliest methods of obtaining intel, and my brother reveled in it. We were all sick bastards at heart, unafraid to react to the world with violence and death, but Damon was something else.

He stood off to the side, seeming to calculate what tool he’d want to use next. So far, it seemed the dents and gaping cuts on the man were all from the hammer in Damon’s hand.

Before he could select a knife or something sharper from the table and wall of tools, he looked up, noticing my arrival. Nik glared at the bloody pulp of a man tied to the chair.

Saul turned too and approached us. “Is Grandmother all right?” he asked Nik. Then, frowning at me, he added, “Sloane?”

They knew that she mattered to me, but now wasn’t the time to wonder if they understood that she’d become more than just a guest. Her act of helping our grandmother was another piece of evidence that she was really getting involved here.

“They’re fine,” I answered as Damon exited the bloody room where enemies were tortured. We had several such spaces for this dark business, but this one was the most useful of them all with the biggest drains in the floor to hose blood and body matter into them before it’d all be ground up and disposed of.

“Anything?” I asked Saul and Damon.

“No,” Damon growled, using a cloth to wipe the blood off his knuckles. “He won’t say a fucking thing.”

Saul shook his head. “I doubt he will.”

“I’ve only gotten started,” Damon argued.

“Yeah. But I can tell.” Saul narrowed his eyes on the man who seemed to struggle to breathe. His chin rested on his chest as he tried to inhale air through the pain of his head that was so beaten.

“How?” I asked, glaring at the asshole. Most people had a breaking point, after all.

“I can just tell,” Saul said. “He’s numb. You can see it in his eyes. He’s not going to tell us shit.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Where was he?” I asked. Over the course of the next couple of days, I would be given many reports about what happened tonight. Even though information would still be coming in, my brothers would be reported to as well and they could funnel the big picture to me.

“He was taken down outside. It sounds like they hacked into the security system and messed up the cameras’ feeds from the west side of the property. Once they had a window, the one rushed up to get inside and the other was lingering back.”

“Probably to secure an escape for the other,” Nik said.

I agreed.

“That’s why it’s always best to work alone,” he muttered.

It was. Not having backup was risky, but it was less to manage in case things went wrong in an operation. With all this rage I bottled in from someone trying to kill Father, though, I could only view what they said as cold facts of war against us.

For a long while, we shared the little we knew. Supervisors came to fill in more as they investigated, but none of it made me happy. The property had been fully searched. We were secure once more. But Nik’s guess didn’t please me.

“Maybe we’ve got a mole or a traitor,” he said.

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