Page 105 of Born into Madness
“I said I don’t know,” she insists, but her voice is shaky, and the rest of her body is starting to tremble as well.
“Look around, Christine. You’re in over your head here. The man who you think is going to walk in here and save you isn’t.”
I watch as her eyes start to turn glassy and her breathing picks up. Her skin is pale, but there’s a slight bluish tint to her lips, and her jaw has a light tremor that she can’t get under control, despite her fear of being cut. She’s not going into a medical kind of shock, but she is going into a psychological one. I need to get her talking before she reaches the point where she completely shuts down and becomes unresponsive.
“Tell me who took her?” I say again. I check Cyn’s location on my phone and then hold it out to Damien, telling him in Russian to let me know the second that red dot stops moving. Turning back to Christine, I force all my rough edges to soften. I gentle my voice, and I make sure I’m not looking at her like I’m two seconds away from splitting her wide open. I tell her what she wants to hear. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you go. You have my word.”
Her eyes flick to mine. Hope is an extraordinary thing, and it never ceases to amaze me. She was on her way to beingcatatonic, but that tiny flicker of hope is enough to bring her back around.
“You will?”
“Yes, but you have to tell me the truth. Who took her?” I ask.
Her eyes dart to the side, but she’s unable to turn her head because my knife is still pressing under her chin. “It was supposed to be her,” she says.
I don’t need to turn my head to know she’s talking about Savanna.
“So what happened?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, but he got the redhead instead, the chubby girl,” the words are barely out of her mouth before I press the knife in hard enough to part her skin.
“I’d choose my words a little more carefully if I were you,” I warn her. “That’s my fiancée you’re talking about.” I drop the nice guy mask long enough for her to remember the danger her ass is still in. “You mean nothing to me. It would be very unwise to forget that.”
“I’m sorry,” she quickly whispers. Her voice trembles and the fear in her eyes calms me just enough to have me easing back on my knife so I don’t slit her throat. I love Cyn’s size, but I know she would hate being called chubby in front of my entire family by this dumbass. Christine meant it as an insult, because that’s the kind of woman she is, even in what might be her last moments, she’s choosing to use part of that time to try and insult my girl. Not the brightest move, but also not too surprising. People rarely change. She was an ass in life, and she’s proving to be an ass in death.
“Keep talking,” I tell her. “Where is Ben taking her? Who gave him the pills?”
“I don’t know where he’s taking her,” she says, and then she stops, even though we both know she knows the answer to the next question.
“Who gave him the pills?” I repeat.
Instead of answering me, she says, “I don’t know who Cupid is. I swear I don’t.”
I ignore what she’s said and ask again, “Who gave him the pills?”
“You have to promise you won’t tell him I told,” she says, and if I wasn’t so worried about Cyn, I’d laugh at Christine’s stupidity.
“He’ll never know it was you,” I tell her. “Now give me the fucking name.”
“Tom Sullivan,” she whispers, making me really wish Niki were here right now.
“Give me any other names you know.” I lean in again and add, “And don’t fucking lie to me. I want every detail you know.”
“They kept me out of it,” she insists. “Tom is very careful. It took me forever to convince him to even go out with me, and he only agreed to it after he found out I work here. We’re dating, but he doesn’t trust me. All I know is the whole Alpha house is involved in this.”
“What about Cupid?” I ask.
She gives a harsh laugh, obviously starting to feel a little more comfortable with the situation. Poor Christine has convinced herself she’s getting out of this alive, and it’s made her bolder. I take advantage of her error and raise a brow, waiting for her to answer my question.
“Cupid’s a ghost,” she says. “No one knows who the hell he is.”
“Surely Tom does,” I say, but she shakes her head.
“He’s never met the guy. Every interaction they have is online. Cupid’s smart. He never gets his hands dirty. He leaves it to everyone else to do that,” she says. “Tom’s one of his most trusted men, though, or at least that’s what Tom says.”
For a second she goes back to looking panicked. “He can’t know I talked to you. If he thinks I’ve told you anything about the pills, he’ll kill me. I know he will.”
I don’t remind her that I’m the guy pointing a knife at her throat and that Tom is the least of her worries right now. Instead, I say, “He’ll never know you talked. So you’ve been helping them drug girls here?”
