Page 136 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“Fine, come here,” Bender says. “I’ll adjust them.”

“You will?”

Bender taps the bars with his keychain. “Put ‘em here.” He points at Mary. “You—back to the wall.”

Mary backs up to the wall.

I go to the bars and turn so that he has access to the cuffs.

Can I grab his phone? His gun?

He circles my wrists with his hands, and there’s a sickening click before he makes them tighter.

“Ow! Hey!”

Mary rushes up, but he backs up just in time, laughing. “Any other requests?”

“Gimme the keys!” Mary demands.

“She’s not gonna need those hands anyway.”

“Come on,” Mary pleads.

“Psycho,” I say.

“My goodness, such attitude! I said I’d help you find Mary, didn’t I? And look. I brought you right to her. And now you’re giving me attitude? Is that any way to treat the newest kyre of the Ghost Hound Clan? The last remaining brother?”

My blood goes cold. Luka is dead? No, there’s no way. “You’re lying.”

“Your boyfriend is currently ensnared in what I like to call a triple trap. Do you wanna know what that is?”

“No,” I whisper miserably.

“A triple trap is a trap inside a trap inside a trap,” Bender says. “By now, he’ll have learned that one of his own loyal men gave up his hair for testing. Sad.”

So he’s not dead yet. Okay.

“Doesn’t say much about his leadership, does it? His own guy heard I wanted one of his hairs for testing and sought me out. He was that desperate to bring Luka down. The Albanians are extremely serious about their bloodlines,” Bender continues. “Sadly for Luka.”

I grit my teeth. Luka was good to his men and a good leader, and one of them turned on him? He’d hate it.

Worrying about Luka helps take my mind off my hand, at least.

“He’ll have the address of the lab by now, aswell as the schedule, which is slated to be on the testing docket...” He glances at his phone. “In about one hour. The place is out in New Jersey, and my guess is that he’s already there. I’ve got sharpshooters in place, and he’ll be killed before he even gets in.”

I feel like throwing up.

“I’ve also got an assassin inside just in case he makes it that far. And you know what else is so perfect? If I’d killed Luka myself, I’d have the whole clan gunning for me, but if somebody takes him out trying to stop a DNA test?” He gives me a smug shrug. “Nobody avenges the death of a fraud.”

I shift my shoulders, trying desperately to ease the pain. “He’ll smell your trap.”

“He’ll still go in.”

Bender’s right, of course. Luka doesn’t back down from things. Nobody takes what’s his.

“Not only that, but he’ll go in alone. It’s not the kind of thing he would ask his men to help him with.”

“If Luka wants to stop the test, he’ll stop the test.”

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