Shit, I needed to stop pining after Leon. Focus, Danny. Figure out the motives of this mission. They’d wanted to verify data that was important enough to keep Kai alive until it was obtained. And they thought the info would be in his personal phone.
So… what were they hoping to find? Contact details for someone? Email correspondence? Text messages? Call logs? Surely it wasn’t just for dick pics; Kai was all too happy to snap those and share them around like candy already. That reminded me, I would have to erase my photo from his and Jae’s phones once they were dead.
My train of thought cut off abruptly as almost deafening Russian thrash metal music started blasting from the speaker beside the camera. I covered my ears with my hands and rolled over to face the wall, finally giving in to laughter.
23
F or the first time in a really long time, I considered canceling a meeting. It was one that had been on my schedule for months, to meet with an Uzbekistani freedom fighter about supplying his organization with the firepower they needed to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do.
Okay, I wasn’t that uncaring. Even though my customers weren’t required to disclose what they intended to use my weapons for, I still looked into their motives and likely actions to ensure they aligned with my interests. This customer met my approval criteria, and so I hadn’t canceled despite every fiber of my being telling me I shouldn’t leave my island. That I shouldn’t leave her .
“Relax, brother,” Moana drawled, flopping down into the recliner chair opposite me. She had a glass of wine in her hand, and it splashed onto the cream leather as the plane hit a patch of turbulence. Cyryl was nowhere near as good of a pilot as Jae was.
I scowled at my sister as the plane bumped a few more times. “Shut up, Moana. This is your fault, remember? If you hadn’t tried to make a new friend—”
“Yeah,” she snapped, sitting up straighter, “you’re right. It’s my fault that Danny’s locked up in our old wine cellar, being tortured and terrified. Last I checked, I wasn’t the one who sexually assaulted her, then knocked her out and dragged her back to our private sanctuary based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Face it, Kai. This is entirely your fault, and I’m starting to think Jae’s right. She’s not guilty.”
Anger and determination flared hot inside me. “If she’s not guilty, then—”
“Then you’ve assaulted, kidnapped, confined, and tortured an innocent woman. And now you’ll have to kill her, too, because we both know she’s never getting off our island alive.” My sister’s glare was hard and accusing.
I swallowed heavily. She was right. Danny needed to die… I was just stalling for time now. Putting off the inevitable while inflicting more pain on her, and for what?
With a sigh, I pulled out my phone and opened the app that showed me her cell. It’d been four days with that ear-bleeding thrash metal playing at full volume through the room every second she was alone, but she hadn’t cracked. Not even the slightest bit. Not when Cyryl was cutting small, surgically precise slices in the sole of her foot, or when Moana had offered kindness in treating the wounds afterward. Not even while she was alone, with hours on hours of deafening metal music filling her head.
At some points, I wondered if it was more painful for me to watch it all and hear her pitiful pleas and declarations of innocence. Then I’d give myself a pretty solid slap and stop being a dramatic pūkeko . I was the one pulling the strings. I was the one in charge. If I didn’t want her to hurt, I could make it stop.
And yet. I hadn’t. As vehemently as I insisted that it was because I truly believed she was undercover, deep down I knew the truth. I wasn’t certain. The comms device could have easily been planted on her or on me… as rough as I’d been with her back at that house in Shadow Grove, it could have shaken free from anywhere. It didn’t necessarily mean she knew about it.
As for the bastard who’d killed Mauricio? Well… like Jae pointed out to me earlier in the week, I had a whole lot of enemies. That could have been linked to any number of different criminal organizations, none of which connected to Danny.
But the fact remained that I hadn’t stopped the torture. Because she reminded me of a great regret, one that had haunted me far more than I cared to admit. It made me uncomfortable, and it was easier to let Sam and Cyryl continue to hurt her than admit it to myself.
“She could have trained to withstand torture,” Eli commented in a quiet, thoughtful voice from across the aisle. The four of us—Cyryl, Eli, Moana and me—were heading to the meeting. Sam and Jae were staying behind to guard Danny, and it already had my stomach in knots.
I glanced up from my phone, from the camera feed showing Danny pacing her cell while covering her ears. I hadn’t even realized I was still watching it.
“If she has, then how do you break her?” I barely even recognized my own cold voice. Here I was talking about breaking a woman who may not even be guilty of anything beyond being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was fucked up, but I couldn’t seem to back down.
Mo shook her head, the disapproval sketched all over her face. “I can’t be involved in this anymore, Kai. This isn’t what we do.”
I flicked a sharp glance at her. My sister was no stranger to casual murder herself, but torture was… something different. It was messing with her head.
She just glared back at me and gulped her wine in one mouthful. “I need a refill,” she muttered, then got up and headed for the galley to leave Eli and me alone.
“So?” I prompted, already sick to my stomach at the idea of breaking Danny more.
I expected Eli—who’d had his first taste of violence at age seven when he was forced to cut off his own father’s head with a machete—to suggest something truly messed up. So I was shocked speechless at his idea.
“Play her at her own game, boss,” he said, folding his newspaper and stowing it away. He folded his fingers and gave me a level stare. “If she’s trained to withstand torture, then you’re going to risk her dying without ever telling you anything. So…” He shrugged like the alternative was obvious.
“So… what?”
“You know what they say. You catch more flies with honey?” His lips curled in a cruel smile. “She’s playing the part of an innocent victim, why not play along? Offer kindness and a gentle touch rather than a harder stick. She wants to mess with your head; mess with hers right back.”
I frowned, running the idea through my head. Would she buy it? Surely not. Then again… I glanced down at my phone in my hand, the feed from her cell still playing, and I watched her curl up in a corner with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her greasy, tangled white hair fell around her in lank clumps, and her shoulders shook as she cried.
What if she was innocent? I still had to kill her. I’d known it from the moment I put her on our plane in Shadow Grove, that there could be no walking away from my island.
Somehow, I suspected that if I showed her even an ounce of kindness, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it in the end. That ultimately, all I’d be able to see when I aimed my gun at her, was the innocent girl I’d shot a few years ago.