Six of my finest soldiers stood there, keeping guard. I also spotted the spy Ivan used to keep an eye on his brigadiers. He’d been on my land for several months, and so far, he hadn’t caused me trouble, so I was more than happy for him to stay.
The wallet had been placed open and I saw his name was Ewan Smith. “Hello, Ewan,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
“You’re very vocal for a dead man,” I said.
I left the torture devices on the table. When it came to getting information out of people, I didn’t go for elaborate or dramatic. Plain old kitchen and garden tools worked just fine for me. A hammer or sledgehammer to crush bones. Knives for obvious work. Pliers for the fiddlier work. Plain old twine used to repair fences were great and cut through flesh with enough pressure. I even enjoyed shears.
I dragged the chair over to stare at the man.
Spit was an issue for me, so I kept a distance.
“Fuck you, man. I’m not going to talk. You can’t fucking make me. You’re a piece of shit.”
I’d turned the chair so I straddled the back. My chin rested on my hands as I watched him.
Patience.
When I didn’t talk, he went a little crazy, trying to pull himself away from the binds. The bastard was hung upside down.
“Let me go! You’re all going to be dead men. All of you.”
“Do you know Aurora Ivanov?” I asked.
He looked like he wanted to argue but finally answered. “She’s your wife.”
“Do you know the woman you shot at today?”
“Yes.”
“Who was she?”
“A problem,” he said.
“So you were aiming for the woman today.”
“I’m not the boss, mate. I was given orders. Today, after a redhead strolls out, the next person waiting for a car, we were to shoot. No questions asked. There was no other target. Aim to kill. That was all.”
This was odd. I tapped a finger on my thigh. “You’re a bounty hunter?”
“More like an assassin for hire. I was part of a team of men. You killed them all today.”
“Any relation to the Fredo family?” I asked.
“Never heard of them.”
I found this hard to believe. “You are part of a bunch of assassins for hire and yet you don’t even know who the Fredo family are. They are my wife’s family. The woman you were asked to kill today, she is my wife.”
“Fuck, man, I know who you are, but I’m just a fucking minion. Okay? You killed the guy with all the details. I got nothing. Let me go. I will find out what you need me to find out.”
His entire outfit was unprofessional.
I stood up and moved to the toys.
I should be getting a medal for all the restraint I’d shown today. I picked up the knife first. A plain old kitchen knife.
This man nearly took my wife from me. A woman I was convinced I didn’t care about, but deep in the back of my mind, I knew that to be false.
Aurora … did something to me. I didn’t have any answers, but my anger flooded my body and I reacted, plunging the knife into his stomach. I pulled it out and repeated the action five more times all around his body.
The blood dripped onto the cement floor. In my mind, all I saw was Aurora, heavily pregnant with my child, but with blood coming from a bullet wound in her chest. She could have died.
Dead.
The end.
Lifeless.
A corpse.
Ewan was dead long before I finished with him. His body nothing more than a mangled mess.
I stepped back, and the cleaning crew were already on standby to deal with it.
I was covered in blood. I stripped off my clothes and left the scene, going to the single shower which was last on the cleanup list.
Beneath the cold spray of water, I knew this wasn’t Fredo’s doing. Whoever hired these men to kill Aurora were novices. I needed to find out if they were related to the banquet attack, and also, who had hired them to take out my woman.
Aurora meant nothing in the Bratva world. She was under my protection as my wife. Her power came from me. Why take her out unless they were trying to get to me through my wife? And that only served to piss me off even more.
Chapter Fifteen
Aurora
“This is very unattractive,” I said. “I look a mess.”
“Because of your bandaged arm?”
“Look at it.” I wrinkled my nose, indicating the clean bandage the doctor had applied. I’d pulled out my arm stitches by being in the kitchen. When the doctor said no heavy lifting, what he actually meant was to do nothing.
I couldn’t sit around all day doing nothing.
“You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb. No, sore arm. It’s my arm that’s the injured party. Look at it.”