Page 4 of The Kingpin's Omega Lover
TWO
PRESENT DAY
“You’ll need this, boss.”
Alexander “King” Kingston gazed at the heavy winter coat that his second-in-command, Bishop Anders, held out to him. The navy coat had a fur-lined hood and a thick, parka-like quality that seemed better suited for an Alaska winter than the interior of a warehouse. But Bishop had set this entire op up on his own. King had been invited to participate once their target had been acquired.
“Do I need snow boots, too?” King asked as he slipped the coat on over his daily uniform of black linen slacks and a cotton shirt. It was the middle of summer and the warehouse was already stuffy. He began to sweat the moment the heavy coat settled on his shoulders.
Bishop chuckled in a familiar, deep rumble of dark amusement. “Not unless you want something to protect your pretty Italian loafers from the blood.”
King returned Bishop’s dark grin. “I’ll keep that in mind. Lead the way.”
Their path took them down a long, dank hallway that bypassed an abandoned room once used for production and canning, down to a row of large silver doors. Industrialrefrigeration units, most likely, and that explained the parka he’d been given. Two of Bishop’s enforcers guarded the middle of three units, attentive and silent, as unmoving in their duty as the famous British (no pun intended) King’s Guard.
“So, who came up with this location?” King asked while Bishop used a key to unlock a heavy-duty padlock.
“Ziggy thought of it, actually.” Bishop pocketed both the key and lock, and then pulled the heavy door handle. Hinges squealed. “Saw it in a horror movie, he said.”
“Fitting.” Ziggy was their top technology guy, absolutely brilliant when it came to computers, networking, and code-breaking. He was also a bit of a movie nerd. King didn’t care what his men did in their spare time, so long as they performed at maximum efficiency while on the job.
Arctic air hit King in the face when Bishop pulled the door fully open, and a fine mist rolled out to tickle his face and bare hands. Bluish light illuminated the room’s interior, which had rows of metal shelves along opposite walls, plus a line of heavy metal hooks hanging from the ceiling dead center.
Also dead center, and hanging by his wrists from one of those hooks, was a naked man, toes barely able to touch the frozen floor.
Creative indeed.
King stepped inside, leaving a respectable distance between himself and their captive—not that the cold man was in any condition to lunge at King. Bishop pulled the door three-quarters closed to keep in the chill, and King was quickly grateful for the winter coat. Bishop wore only a t-shirt and jeans, but he glared at the man with so much hatred that it probably kept him warm inside.
They both had reasons to hate the naked man who’d been installed here.
“Norris Landau,” King said, his voice booming in the enclosed space.
“Who the fuck’re you?” Landau snarled, attitude not cooled at all by his location. He was heavy-set with a chest full of hair, a head barren of the same, and plenty of vitriol for the situation. Even though his skin was pale and pebbled from the cold, he tried to stand defiantly against his captors. It was almost brave.
But men who paid large sums of money to rape and torture fellow human beings were not brave. They were animals who needed to be put down.
“So, you’ve accepted your death, have you?” King asked.
Landau snarled again, particles of spit freezing to his lips and chin. “Fuck that, man, I’ll pay you!”
My, how the attitude has changed already.
King exchanged a knowing smirk with Bishop. They had been friends since they were teenagers, had worked together for twenty-plus years (seventeen of those with King in charge), and had seen every possible way a man could beg or bargain for his life. Neither of them had ever once been swayed, not when they knew their victim deserved to pay for their crimes.
“Pay me with what, exactly?” King began pacing a slow circle around Landau, admiring the way his wrists had been carefully trussed so he wasn’t losing total circulation. Landau likely felt every tingle, every chill, every shock from a nervous system slowly freezing to death. “As we speak, all of your assets are being divided amongst several organizations that work with human trafficking survivors. It was so kind of you to do this as your last wish before leaving the country.”
“My what?” Landau’s eyes bugged out. “You can’t do that.”
“You’re partially right, of course. I do not possess the skills to hack your accounts and arrange those transfers. That’s what I pay others to do for me. It frees me up for other amusements.”
Landau shifted his rapidly blinking gaze between him and Bishop. He kept licking his lips and flinching, remembering that was a bad idea in this sub-zero room. “What do you want? Information? I can give you information.”
“I’d love information, if I believed anything you told me was the truth. In my experience, men who know they are about to die will make up anything to save their own lives. So, you can give up any information you want, and I’ll have it investigated, but I won’t expect anything useful to come out of it.”
“Try me, man. Ask me whatever you want. I’ve got resources. I know people.”
Bishop snorted loudly, and in his light head-shake, King understood what his oldest friend was thinking:We know people, too, idiot. How do you think we got to you?
