Page 9 of Jagger's Remorse
Still smiling.
"Feisty." Digger wipes his face. "I like breaking the feisty ones. Give me a week with her, I'll have her telling us everything."
"Or," Poncho suggests, "we could pass her around. Let the whole club have a turn. Amazing what a woman will say after a few days in the kennels."
My hands clench into fists under the table.
The kennels are what we call the basement rooms, where we keep people who need persuading.
Concrete walls to muffle screams.
Drains in the floor for easy cleanup.
The thought of her down there, of them touching her?—
"I call first rights," Hammer cuts in. "Always wanted to fuck cartel royalty."
"Get in line." Mouse laughs. "Though there might not be much left after Digger's done with his breaking."
They're all talking about her like she's meat.
Like she's already screaming on their hooks.
And through it all, she keeps looking at me.
Waiting.
That same patient stare from five years ago.
"Well, VP?" Squirrel turns to me. "You killed her father. Seems fitting you get first crack at the daughter."
This is it.
The moment she's been waiting for.
Five years of planning, and she's exactly where she wants to be.
I can see it in her eyes—the calculation, the way she wants to rip me to shreds.
She didn't get caught. She got delivered.
"No," I say. The room goes quiet.
"No?" Squirrel's eyebrow raises.
I stand, decision made before I fully understand it.
"She's mine."
"Yours to break?" Digger asks hopefully.
"Mine. Period."
I move around the table, crouch in front of her. "You want to know what her father told her? What she might know? Give her to me."
"And if she doesn't talk?" I study her face, seeing the changes up close and personal.
The hardness that wasn't there before.
