Page 18 of All Tied Up
“Y-yes,” the man belted out.
Bane nodded, like he was pleased at the response, almost as if he were talking to a small child, explaining something to him.
“He’s a fucking asshole when he’s unhappy. Impossible to be around,” Bane said. “And because of you, he’s had something taken from him that has made him a world-class cocksucker.” He paused and shook his head. “Not easy to live with.”
“I was paid! It was my j-job!” the man blurted out.
Bane tsked. “That’s a shame. I suggest you get a new job.”
“I w-will duh-duh-ta.” He started with the nonsensical words again, and his head twitched.
“Was he this fucked up before, or was this shit all your doing?” Locke asked Bane.
Bane gave him a brief glance. “Messed-up childhood from what I dug up. Had inappropriate relations with his aunt, starting when he was twelve.”
“I did not!” he cried.
Bane narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you going to lie to menow?”
The man swallowed hard as he stared in horror at Bane.
“Ransom,” Bane said.
“Yeah?”
“You have a lot of pent-up anger, don’t you? Rage you need to release?”
I nodded my head once.
A sadistic grin curled his lips.
“Why don’t you take some of that out on our friend here? He can’t seem to remember that I don’t like being lied to.”
“No, please. I did. I did. She was young though. She came on to me.” He began to spill things that I was sure Bane already knew.
“She was ten years older than you, and you fucked her for years. Until you knocked her up when you were nineteen and took her to Mexico to have an abortion that also ended her life. What about that? No one in your family knows why she went to Mexico. Or how she ended up in that low-rent motel room, which was burned to a crisp.”
Fucking hell. This man had some dark shit in his past.
He let out a long, high-pitched wail, and his body shook as he began to cry.
I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to this man to cause more agony than Bane’s mental attack was doing.
“I didn’t know,” he blubbered. “I was y-young. Sh-she wasn’t s-supposed to d-die.”
I shook my head and walked over to the pack of cigarettes Locke had left lying on the bench beside him and tapped one out. Yeah, I was fucking angry. My insides were a damn mess. I wanted to see Noa. Hold her. Fuck her. But beating the hell out of a man in the middle of a complete mental breakdown wasn’t going to help me. The dude was already broken.
“Thought you were quitting,” Locke said as he held out the lighter to me.
“I was,” I said, taking it from him. “That was before.”
“If I let you walk out of here alive,” Bane said to the man, “will I have to come shut you up permanently, or can you forget all that you learned?”
“I can forget,” he sobbed. “I swear it. I can forget it all.”
Bane nodded. “Very good. Now, how do you feel about a location change? Somewhere less hectic? Perhaps even tropical? Even a name change would be nice. Don’t you think?”
The door to my office opened, and my head snapped up. An angry snarl curled my tongue, as I was ready to lash out at whoever was interrupting me. I’d had little sleep in the past two weeks, and my mood had gone from bad to murderous. Having my every fucking move monitored was making it worse.
