The Family Business 3(31)

His eyes widened, letting me know his answer, but I wanted to hear it from him. I waited silently, staring him down until he admitted, “Yes.”

“I hear you’re a real trooper. Do you want me to kill you?” I asked, leaving no question in my tone that I could do that swiftly and mercilessly. “Are you ready to die?”

“I’m not afraid of death, if that’s what you’re asking. Besides, we both know you’re going to kill me anyway, so you might as well get it over with.” He locked his eyes on mine. This guy was devoid of fear, or at least he desperately wanted me to believe that he was, but the one thing I’d learned was that every man has an Achilles’ heel. I just had to find his.

“I probably am,” I told him, “but there are just so many different ways to die. And who knows? I might be feeling generous today.”

“Fuck you,” he spat as he sat back, waiting for the abuse to begin. “You can’t do any worse than your boys.”

“Just tell us something. You do not want this man putting it on you,” Ahmed said, sounding as if he was genuinely trying to spare Lincoln some pain.

Lincoln stubbornly shook his head, refusing.

I moved closer to him, pulling my secret weapons out of my pocket. Lincoln’s eyes grew fearful as I placed Lenny and Squiggy on the ground. I squeaked, and they ran up under his pants legs, making their way up to his thighs. He started squirming, trying to move them, but with his arms tied behind his back, there wasn’t much that he could do. They were having a field day on his legs.

“Aagghhhh!” Lincoln screamed. I looked around and saw some of my men grimacing as they witnessed this.

“They like dick, but they especially like nuts,” I said, laughing.

“What the hell is this? What type of sick f*ck are you? Stop!” He was pleading, but I wasn’t ready to give in just yet. I was enjoying the effect my pets were having on this hard-ass. I always enjoyed it. I’d seen these two take down sadistic motherf*ckers who were doing consecutive life sentences, guys so tough that they made Lincoln look like a little bitch.

I leaned in close to him, speaking calmly. “Tell me about the Duncans or I will let them devour your dick. If you think you’re in pain now, can you imagine how much pain they can inflict on something as sensitive as your balls?”

“That’s a whole lot of pain,” Elijah commented. “If it were me?” He threw his hands up, admitting he would have surrendered by now.

“They will chew your nuts into tiny bits,” I said.

“I’ve seen it. It’s not very pretty,” Elijah added.

“All right! All right! Please! I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Lincoln cried out.

I squeaked twice, and Lenny and Squiggy came scurrying out of his pants legs. I reached down and retrieved them, giving each a kiss.

“Tell me what you know about the Duncans, and don’t leave out anything.”

Lincoln couldn’t take his eyes off of Lenny and Squiggy squirming in my hands.

It took him a minute to compose himself enough to speak. He finally said, “Honestly, man, I don’t know much. The Duncans are like that. They keep things compartmentalized so that nobody outside of the family has that much information about them.”

“But they’re not just car dealers,” I said, expecting him to confirm what I already suspected.

He hesitated, and I lifted Lenny and Squiggy closer to his face. That was all it took to get him talking again. “They’re probably the largest distributors on the East Coast. I hear their business expands all the way from Canada down to the islands. I think they even do business in Europe.”

“You hear? You think? How come nobody seems to know about them?” I asked angrily.

“Mainly because they are so good at what they do. Word is LC’s not greedy, always makes his partners money, doesn’t do business with street level people or folks he doesn’t know, and most importantly, he doesn’t trust anyone other than family. Men like that don’t grow on trees. Shit, some say he was Ollie North’s partner in Iran-contra.”

I saw the look Elijah gave me. These people were seriously connected.

“And Junior, is he the most dangerous son?” It made sense to me that he would be the bad-ass because of the way he took out Samuel in that elevator.

“Junior is no joke, but the one I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley is his younger brother, Vegas. You wouldn’t know from looking at him, but dude’s supposed to be some kind of Jason Bourne type one-man army. He had motherf*ckers scared from his jail cell.”

Ahmed jumped in. “Wait, I heard of a guy named Vegas on the inside. That cat had Sing-Sing on lock. He might as well have been the warden. Even the COs answered to him. That shit was crazy. But he wasn’t a bully; he was calm and deadly.”

“Yeah, that’s him. He just got out.” Lincoln shook his head. “He can be the nicest person, and in a second he turns into a cold-blooded killer. You do not want to get on his bad side.” Lincoln smiled at me, looking like a devil as he revealed his bloodied teeth.

“He’s the one the Jew warned us about,” Elijah said. “Who else they got worth talking about?”

Half a squeak from me and he was talking up a storm this time. For someone who claimed not to know much about the Duncans, he suddenly had information on every member of the family. Lenny and Squiggy had really done their job getting what I needed out of this guy.