Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(37)

His phone buzzed, making him curse in his head. He straightened and pulled it out quickly in case it was Yuri.

It was Samuel.

He went into the closet to get undressed as he obeyed the terse text demanding a call.

“Are you home?” he asked when he heard his brother’s voice.

“Farah is, but I’m at the hangar. You’re going to want to come out here.”

He stopped in the middle of shrugging out of his suit jacket. “Why?” Aside from the one on the property that housed the chopper when not in use, they kept two hangers at a small airport near Channelview. But only one of them was used for conducting business they wanted kept private.

“Maksim’s red flags popped up for a reason, and we have ourselves some company.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t you dare kill anyone.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

Pulling his jacket back over his shoulders, he walked out of the closet feeling the presence of his gun under his arm. He debated whether or not to wake Dale to tell her he was going out, but in the end, stayed quiet as he closed all the blinds to darken the room.

After silently shutting the door behind him and starting down the hall, he texted the boys to get back out to the chopper.

Because this directly involved his father, he refused entry to the guilt knocking on his door. He wasn’t putting business ahead of Dale by leaving her alone on her first night/day in her new home.

He was simply being the man his father had raised.





ELEVEN


Fifteen minutes after arriving at the hangar, Lukas paused, waiting for howls of pain to subside before continuing. When they did, he pressed the trigger to start the drill again.

His boys were near, so were Samuel and Maksim. Vasily, Gheorghe, and Sergei were standing a few feet away, watching the festivities with no expression on their faces. The bodyguards and anyone else involved in the night’s capture were hanging around the vehicles that had been swallowed up by the massive building upon arrival.

Two Bloodhounds, who Lukas had already thanked for their impeccable hunting skills, were off to the side smoking a joint. Samuel had taken care of the money transfer to pay their steep fee before Lukas had arrived.

When another fresh round of wails from one of their organization’s accountants tapered to a mere gurgle, Lukas let up and placed the tool on the steel-top workbench on his right.

“You screwed us,” he murmured, looking at his handy work. “Now I have screwed you.”

James Szabo was sitting on a heavy wooden chair that looked to be a dark cherry red but hadn’t always been. The unfinished wood had begun to turn color when Lukas had first started drilling. Now that he’d gotten the fourth screw in—two in James’s knees and two just beneath his shoulders to securely anchor him—the chair was saturated. The pattern left behind would be patchy and uneven as the blood might not seep all the way beneath the heavier parts of James’s body. Sometimes, the designs turned out to be something some might consider artistic.

He gave the outsides of James’s thighs two solid slaps which produced outright shrieks. The piercing sound forced Lukas back, and he moved to the end of the workbench to submerge his hands in a deep pot filled with hot, sudsy water that smelled of a potent antiseptic.

“Nicely done.” Maksim was resting his ass on the table, his arms and ankles crossed. He’d asked half a dozen times if Lukas wanted a hand, and had seemed put out whenever he’d been refused. “What did you use?”

Lukas looked at Yasha. “Lag screws?”

“Structural wood screws.” Yasha struggled with the proper name because, as he hadn’t been in the U.S. as long as the rest of them, when he became upset, his English suffered. He took the box out of his pocket, adding, “Unthreaded shank allow for painful movement.” When an r dared to show in his speech, the damn thing was sent rolling all over the fucking place.

Maksim nodded, looking intrigued. “I’ll have to remember this. What will you do now?”

“Provide way out,” Yasha answered, his voice chillingly flat, his emotionless gaze glued to James’s bobbing head. He, Milan, and Adam were front and center during the procedure as they had a vested interest in the reasons for last night’s shooting. Losing their uncle had been a blow they had yet to take the time to process. None of them had, for that matter. But they would.

As Yasha spoke to Maksim, he picked up a screwdriver. “If pussy withstand pain and frees self, Lukas promise to go out into city. We give small head start. Then we begin search.”

Milan revived their guest by waving a small vial of Nose Tork directly beneath James’s nostrils, leaving the older man wide-eyed and sucking in harsh breaths. His thin body was sweating profusely.

Lukas finished drying his hands with a towel he threw directly into the trash that would be burned before they left, and accepted the screwdriver that he carefully placed in the small space between James’s trembling legs.

“Depending on how determined you are, you might still get out of this alive,” he said as Maksim came to stand next to him. They both studied James.

“If they don’t free themselves, and depending on the circumstances, my father has been known to leave the chair for the survivors to find on their front lawn. A decorative memento, if you will, to remind them not to repeat their loved one’s mistakes.”