Page 38 of Sin City Obsession

He found his voice faster than I expected.Maybe he had some internal moxie she hadn’t given him credit for. Alessa propped her hands on her hips, letting the steak knife hang in the curve of her fingers. “You, Gwathney. What I want is with you. Your friend here is what you might call collateral damage.” She shrugged. “Consider him motivation. Or I maybe I’ll use him as an example. You’ll get to decide that.”

Gwathney’s chest rose with a ragged breath. “I swear I don’t know you,” he said. His gaze darted past her, just for a second. “I’m careful. I don’t take Cavallo money, and I never send my guys to collect from anyone I think is connected to them.”

“That’s great,” Alessa said. “I’m sure Rocco feels very reassured with that information.” She began gesturing with the hand still holding the knife. “Let’s not play dumb. You can hear it in my voice—Big Louie there made sure to point that out—I’m not from around here. I’m from Newark, New Jersey. And I’mherebecause you sent a real peach of a man intomycity.”

Gwathney cut his eyes to Lou for a lingering second, but Lou was busy glaring at her. “R-Ralph, that’s right,” he said. “You mentioned Ralph. He … he was supposed to be on assignment. Collecting money from a pain-in-the-ass who’s been dodging my calls. A man, twice your age at least, um, Wes-Wesley. Wesley Richardson!”

Alessa rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. But you didn’t really send George after Wesley Richardson, did you?”

Silence fell over the room and Gwathney’s eyes slowly widened. “I may have mentioned using his daughter … for motivation,” he finally whispered.

Alessa stepped closer and dropped into a crouch, straddling Gwathney’s still bound legs and dangling the knife between her knees. She never broke eye-contact. “Let’s just clarify the conversation here,” she said, speaking quietly before raising her voice abrasively loud. “You sent a known rapist, known abuser, clear across the country on his own, and not only did you not demand quick and efficient results, youinstructedhim to target your deadbeat client’s single, twenty-something daughter. Do I have that right?”

“No!”

Alessa raised a brow. “What part do I have wrong?”

Gwathney opened his mouth. Sweat rolled down the side of his face. “I didn’t tell him to touch her,” he said, the words weak.

Alessa slashed the steak knife over his knee, deep enough to draw blood but not deep enough to even render him permanently crippled.

Gwathney cried out anyway.

She held her position, not flinching from the shriek or the trickling of blood. “Well, he did,” she said when her voice would carry. She moved her knife to balance over the other knee. “Would you like to know why that matters to me?”

Gwathney sucked in hard breaths and bobbed his head.

“Because she’snotsingle,” Alessa said. “She is, in fact, engaged to one of my employers. And my employers are not the kind of men you want to piss off, Erik.” She pressed the tip ofher knife into his knee, letting the fabric indent so she knew he felt the pressure. “Any guesses as to the number one thing on their ‘fuck no’ list?”

Gwathney whimpered.

Alessa glanced toward Lou, finding him staring intently at her knife.

When neither man made an actual attempt to respond, she supplied the answer. “Laying hands on their family.” She plunged the knife down until the hilt was kissing the ripped, reddening fabric of Gwathney’s pants.

This time, Gwathney screamed outright, his entire body spasming as if she’d set his nerves on fire.

Alessa stood and stepped far enough back that his twitching legs wouldn’t trip her up. She left the knife where it was, turned, and made her way back to her new set of toys. After a small internal debate, she selected the wire strippers and another steak knife. The wire strippers went into her back pocket as she made her way back up to the pair trapped on the pole.

This time, she angled for Lou.

His glare snapped to her and he shouted something behind his duct tape that was probably a surly plea to stay away. Of course, she ignored that and meandered right up to his side. “You know the drill, right?” She raised the steak knife and tilted it toward his face. “If you want to be able to speak, you better hold real still.”

His eyes told her to go right to Hell. But his body stiffened.

Alessa took her time finding the ridge of his lips in the tape, pushing through, and fighting the urge to Joker-ify him. She didn’treallyneed him talking. She just worried indulging oncemight be the kind of line that got harder to uncross in the future.

Lou wasted no time spitting directly on her face. “You fuckin’ psycho bitch! I don’t give a fuck who you work for—”

Alessa actually startled when a muscular arm reached around her, the hand attached curled around Lou’s neck, and Lou himself was hauled up. Completely up. Until the bad angle on his arms had been reversed, pulling them down instead of up, and his broken ankle was forced to dangle as his toes stretched for purchase.

Rocco growled. “You think you can talk to my woman that way, in front of me, and get away with it, you shit-eating bastard?”

Alessa sighed. Probably she should have known this would be a learning curve for him, if not both of them.Wait. Why does this have to be a learning curve?Learning curves implied continuation of experiences.

Her heart clenched and her eyes darted past whatever Rocco was saying to Lou, who probably couldn’t breathe, over to Gwathney.

Gwathney had finally stopped shrieking like a frightened girl and was staring at his impaled knee in visible shock. Blood continued seeping from the wound, hindered of course by the knife she’d left there. And he seemed to have peed himself.

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