Page 209 of Dance of Defiance
My pulse skips.
It was a month ago now that Val shared the darkest part of his past with me:Connor, the piece of shit motherfucker who abused and raped him when Val was only thirteen.
It broke me apart, hearing about the hell that he was dragged through as a fucking kid. And obviously, there isn’t a reality where I hear about that and don’tdo somethingabout it.
Somethingviolent.
At first, Connor proved to be much harder to track than I expected. I had his back story—expulsion from two different high schools for sexual assault. A brief stint in the Army before he got kicked out forallegedsexual assault. That's how he wound up back at home, living with his mom.
Preying on the foster kids she took in.
The mom—one Maggie Leary—died a few years back. Connor sold the house, moved to Virginia, and got work as a middle school janitor. Then, when he got put on probation for “allegedly” putting hidden cameras in bathrooms and locker rooms, he disappeared.
That’s where the trail ran cold—until I remembered Brooklyn telling me about Kir’s daughter, Freya.
Freya lives in Tokyo with her husband Mal, where they both work for the Mori-kai Yakuza family run by Mal’s cousin, Kenzo. She’s anexperthacker, and a freakishly good people finder. So I reached out to Kir, and he put me in touch with her a few weeks ago.
“Do you…” My mouth goes dry, and I struggle to swallow. “Did you?—”
“Yup. Found him,” she says quietly.
She and Kir don’t know the details, just that the man I’m looking for is a piece of shit child molester and that I’m hunting him so I canhurt him.
Badly.
“You’re in luck,” she continues. “He’s in New York, up in the Hudson valley just north of the city.”
I’m shaking a little as I nod my head silently.
“He’s going by the name Ken Leary now. Texting you the address.”
“Thank you,” I croak.
She’s silent for a second before she clears her throat. “My dad told me what kind of monster the fucker is. Do me a favor. When you hurt him—I assume youaregoing to hurt him?”
“I am.”
“Good,” she hisses. “Do something real fucking gnarly for me, too, 'kay?”
I smile grimly. “Consider it done. Thank you, Freya.”
The text with the address comes through right after I hang up. I swallow, fishing around my pocket for my car keys before I suddenly pause.
“Vaughn!”
I catch up with him two blocks away, about to step into the back of a black Bentley. The three guards with him turn, their hands moving to their obvious sidearms before Vaughn waves them off, quietly shaking his head. He straightens his jacket and rolls his neck as he walks over to meet me.
“Iknewwe were having too much fun to simply?—”
“What are you doing right now.”
His brow furrows. “Why.”
“Because there’s something I need to go do.” My jaw tightens. “And I think it might be something you need to do, too.”
Connor Leary—AKAKen—sobs and gurgles, spit and blood oozing from his mouth and dripping all over his bare chest as he shakes on his knees at the edge of the cliff.
“I believe he’s trying to say something, Roman,” Vaughn says thoughtfully, his eyes glinting with a quiet madness I fully understand. A bloodied blade twirls in his fingers as we look down at the sniveling, writhing piece of garbage at our feet with his hands tied behind his back.
