got one chance, motherfucker, before we tear you a new one. Where is she?” a low whispered voice said.
I blinked away the water to try to identify the speaker. The face that belonged to the voice was on the edge of my mind. The name that belonged to the face was on the tip of my tongue.
“Where is who?” I asked as I fished around for the name.
A husky chuckle. “Wrong answer.”
Bright, shocking pain tore through my brain. Ripped it open and poured gasoline on it before someone lit a match and tossed it in there to set the whole thing on fire.
I tried to move. Tried to evade that all-consuming pain. I was stuck. Unable to move anything but my head as my vocal cords tried to escape the fiery pyre of my scorching body.
As quickly as it started, the pain vanished.
“Where is she?” the man with the broken voice asked again.
I blinked, tried to push the pain aside. The man’s face swam into focus as the reverberating agony eased the slightest degree. “Massimo? What the fuck?”
A smile pulled at his mouth. “Wrong answer again.”
This time I got to watch as he laid the long, black tube against my chest. It sparked and arced with blue light right before it touched my skin. Excruciating pain fried my brain synapses.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I could only feel. And it was sheer hell.
Just as the darkness began to close over my mind, the pain stopped.
“Where is she?” he asked again. No inflection. No emotion.
I shook my head. “How the fuck should I know?”
His smirk promised more pain. More agony.
I tried to jerk back. To escape. To think. “I left her at the shop. I left her at the shop.” I almost tripped over the words. “She was fine when I left her there.” I hadn’t been this close to begging in a very long time. He would regret this.
I’d make sure of it.
Massimo shook his head. “Not good enough. We’ve been calling her all fucking morning. No answer. Now her phone isn’t even ringing. It’s going straight to voicemail. She missed her party. The book cake is still in the cooler. I’m going to ask you again. Where is she?”
My mind reeled as the bourbon I’d downed last night created a blank fog of my memories. “I swear. I dropped her off at the shop.” I didn’t remember anything after getting home and taking that first mouthful of alcohol.
What preceded that alcohol, I remembered with teeth-clenching crystal clarity. I wasn’t going to share those facts with the mob enforcer currently zapping me with a modified cattle prod. I might be stupid, but I wasn’t an idiot.
“What time?”
“Right around ten.”
He bared his teeth. “It was ten at night in Oldtown and you dropped her off at her car without waiting to see that she got off okay?” He laid the prod against my chest again.
My bowels loosened as my mouth worked to loose the scream that stalled in my seized throat.
I gulped air by the lungful as he pulled the implement from my body. All I could do was breathe as I tried to get my brain to work. “Aren’t there security cameras over there or something?”
He shook his head. “They were broken sometime in the last two days. We only found out when we went to go view the footage.”
My brow furrowed. “How were they broken?”
He shrugged.
“You come into my house, stab me with a cattle prod, and you still don’t even have basic information?” As soon as I got free, I was going to beat this man to death. Stupid. All of them were stupid. And so quick to torture people. I shuddered as he waved the cattle prod from his hand.
He shook his head again. A simple slide right to left. Nothing else. No expression. Nothing.
“Let me loose and I’ll figure out where she went.” Fuckers didn’t even know how to use the city’s security system. What good were they as a mafia if they didn’t even know how to exploit the natural weaknesses of the constantly recorded footage that tracked every inch of this city?
He studied me for long minutes.
I raised my eyes to meet his gaze. “Do you really have time to judge me right now? If she’s been missing all morning, then I’m assuming she’s in trouble. Let me go.” I tried to keep the fear out of my voice. The dread from sinking into my brain.
If something had happened to her because I’d