He stayed silent, simply smoking and watching him. That was his primary tactic. People always underestimated how powerful mastering silence could be, especially because human beings always tried to fill it. It was a psychological torture tactic – one of Dante’s personal favorites and one that the artist in him appreciated – because it let their imaginations run wild. Would he kill them? How would he do that? With a bullet, a knife, or a wire? Would he torture them? Break their bones? Pull their nails? Or something worse?
It was his favorite because before he even asked them a question, they scared themselves on their own enough to show him a crack. And then, Dante put a nail on the crack and hammered, and hammered, until it split.
He took in a deep drag, letting his emotions simmer under his skin, watching the man’s face swell.
“What do you want?”
Crack.
Dante simply sat there, watching him steadily. He knew that freaked them out – this huge dude just smoking calmly, no response, no crazy look, nothing.
“Look, I don’t even know who you are.”
Lie. The man had recognized him, paling like he’d seen a ghost.
Dante blew out a cloud of smoke. Feeling a little evil, he started making smoke rings in the air, seeing them float towards the man.
The guy pissed in his pants. Dante didn’t react, still sitting five feet away from him, even as the stench filled the room.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” he blubbered. “I have a wife, kids. I love them. Please let me go.”
Yeah, and a pig was flying overhead. The fucker couldn’t be serious.
Dante crossed one ankle over his knee, placing his hand with the cigarette down over the other.
“Syndicate,” he uttered one word.
The guy swallowed. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking ‘bout.”
Dante didn’t respond, just kept watching him silently. One minute passed. Two. More. After a few minutes, the guy squirmed.
“I just got drafted into the organization last month,” the man admitted. “Today was my… um, induction party.”
Fucking sleazy slimeball.
Dante inhaled another drag.
“That’s all I know.”
Not likely.
“What’s your name?” Dante asked.
“Um, Martin.”
“Martin, how did you get to know about them?” Dante asked. The guy swallowed but stayed silent. Dante gave him a deliberate smirk, the one that really got to people after his silence, fueling their imaginations some more.
“I… you only get in through… reference,” he confessed after a few seconds.
Dante nodded. “Very good, Martin. And who was yours?”
“A… a guy I met in a … chatroom online.”
“And what did this guy tell you about the Syndicate?”
The guy shivered. “Just that… they were an organization that catered to… what I was looking for.”
“Kids, you mean,” Dante grit out, feeling the rage pulse in his blood.
The guy looked away, apparently ashamed. Yeah, the fucker had had a hard-on a few hours ago, so Dante didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him.
“And this guy,” Dante redirected the interrogation back on track. “He was recruiting? How does it work?”
“If I tell you, will you let me go?” he straightened in his chair, trying to be brave.
“Depends on what you tell me, Martin,” Dante drawled out, leaning back in his chair. “I get in a good mood, you get out of here.” In a body bag, Dante didn’t add.
The man nodded, believing him. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Good.
“The guy,” Martin began, looking to his feet. “I just know him by his username. MrX. He said he was a part of a group that could arrange… what I wanted for me. All I had to do was show up to the induction and show them I was serious, get the tattoo, and they’d give me the instructions later. I just got the tattoo today. I don’t know anything else.”
“And this MrX,” Dante asked, his mind working to put the pieces in place. “Have you ever seen him?”
The guy shook his blown-up head. “No. The guys tonight were all inductees and a tattoo guy. MrX had cameras they said they’d be watching us with.”
Dante believed him. He tilted his head to the side. “And during the entire month as an inductee-in-waiting, did you ever hear anything you think I’d be interested in? Bonus information always puts me in a very good mood, Martin.”
Martin hesitated.
“Don’t make me stand up, Martin,” Dante warned.
The guy was a wuss. “There was one thing,” he stuttered. “I don’t think MrX wanted to let it slip.”
“What?”
“About a Shadowman,” the guy said. “We were just talking about it and he said this Shadowman or whatever kind of kept his eyes on the Syndicate, so to be careful of my day-to-day activity.”
Shadowman.
Fuck.
Dante had heard about him, whoever he was, only in rumors. Even in his side of the underworld, the name was a frightening legend. And if the guy was on the Syndicate’s tail, then he had a deep, deep knowledge of their world. Dante had just hit the tip of the iceberg, and this guy was already deep in the ocean. He’d never had the reason to try and find the person, but that could change now.
“Anything else? What about MrX?” Dante asked.
The guy thought for a second before his eyes blinked. “I don’t really know, I swear. He just mentioned he had retired as a recruiter. He used to be a handler of some sort.”
Dante felt his gut tighten. He stayed quiet, waiting.
“He…,” the man swallowed. “There was this one story he told me, warning me about what happened to rats. It’s… he’s kind of pretty well-known in the group.”
Dante just blinked, flexing his fingers.
“Said he had a girl interrogated fifteen years ago in your city… because she heard some shit she wasn’t supposed to. He hired the guys and they kept her for four days, I think he said.”
“Three days,” Dante corrected, red slowly creeping at the edges of his vision, his blood rushing to his ear as the vein beside his neck began to throb.
“Y…yeah,” the guy stuttered. “He… was warning me. Telling me he had them torture and rape her just to see if she knew anything, and then had her rescued by an anonymous tip.”
Torture and rape her.
Torture. And. Rape. Her.
Rape her.
Amara.
His Amara.
At fifteen fucking years old.
All his doubts over the years solidified and suddenly memories flashed through his mind – her stiffening if he came up behind her, her hesitation the first time she’d undressed him, the panic that hit her out of nowhere in the middle of fucking sometimes. Dante had always chalked it up to her post-traumatic stress, well aware that the experience of her physical torture would never entirely leave her. He had had his doubts sometimes, but never, not once, knew she’d been violated like that. The doctor had never said a word about it during the days he’d spent at the hospital, the police report had nothing about it. She had never said a word. Not. One. Word. Every time he had been with her, fucking her brains out or eating her pussy or talking dirty to her, she had never shared something that he should have known.