Page 100 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“I wouldn’t make up stories.” She pulls at my hand. “Please, if you’d just?—”

“Tell me,” I demand. “Would they allow excuses? Would they care?”

“What happened tosecretly soft-hearted?—”

“Tell me! Would they care?”

“No.”

“What did they do to traitors?”

She tries to turn away, but I catch her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze.

“Tell me.”

“They... they killed them.”

“How?” The word comes out like gravel.

“Luka, please?—”

I slide my other hand into her hair, fisting it tight. “Tell me how they died. Paint me the picture.”

“Exile...”

“Try again.”

“What? Exile would be a death sentence.”

“What else?”

Tears spill down her cheeks. I force myself to tighten my hold on her hair because traitors don’t deserve mercy.

“Impalement, dismemberment... they would make it gruesome to serve as a warning to others.” Her voice shakes. “Make sure everyone saw what happens to those who betrayed the clan.”

I study her eyes, pale green shot with brown. For one insane second, it comes to me to make a joke about the standard-issue criminal punishment for betrayal.

But that part of us is gone now.

She gazes up at me like a rabbit that knows there’s no escape from the predator—terrified but unable to look away. My chest fills with unnamable darkness.

It would be so easy to snap her neck. I’d send somebody to make the body disappear. They’d wipe down the room, not that I touched much—aside from her.

Storm had a guy spray-paint the cameras I couldn’t avoid before I arrived. I’m a ghost. I always have been.

I let her hair go. “Pack your bag.”

I watch her hesitate. She wants to say no.

“You could always refuse. Yell out. Sound the alarm. I promise you won’t like the results.”

I watch her think through what I could do to her. To her people. To her world.

I see the moment she realizes compliance is her only option.

With shaking hands, she gathers up her things.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

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