Chapter 57: Distracted

CASSIAN

The air in the old meat processing plant was thick with the copper tang of blood and the damp, cloying scent of concrete rot. It was a beautiful symphony of decay, really. The kind of place where the world forgot you existed, which made it the perfect stage for Antonio Lopez’s final performance.

He was currently screaming. It was a guttural, wet sound that echoed off the soundproofed walls, losing its edge before it could reach the street outside. I didn’t look up.

I was busy.

I sat in a sleek leather chair, brought in specifically for the occasion, as I refuse to let my suit touch industrial filth, and tapped the screen of my tablet. The screams were nothing more than white noise, like the hum of an air conditioner or the distant thrum of traffic. They were the background music to my research.

Alexander Hendrix. The “Angel CEO.” The man who had looked far too comfortable with his arms around my toy earlier today.

I scrolled through the report my investigator had sent over. It was… clean. Too clean. The six months disappearance and series of NDA was too suspicious not to dig deeper…

But

My investigator came back with nothing but “useless dust.” It was as if someone had taken a pressure washer to Hendrix’s soul and scrubbed until there was nothing left but a blinding, suspicious white.

Not even a professional could find anything.

I clicked my tongue, the sound sharp in the quiet moments between Lopez’s gasps for air.

Alex was too good at hiding his tracks. Or maybe I was just looking at the wrong place.

I hated that it bothered me. I hated that the image of Hendrix catching Noah, faces inches apart, pulses likely racing, kept looping in the back of my mind. It wasn’t just about my toy being handled by a rival. It was the carelessness of it.

Noah’s naivety was a jagged pill I couldn’t quite swallow. He walked through the world like it was a goddamn playground, never seeing the shadows stretching out to trip him. He reminded me of Julian.

Julian had been too trusting, too. He’d looked at the world with those same wide, expectant eyes, believing that if he played by the rules, the rules would protect him.

I’d spent years trying to protect him, to show him the teeth behind every smile, but he’d remained soft. And that softness is exactly what the Vincenti family had used to crush the life out of him.

I felt a surge of cold, black irritation. I was protective of Noah because Noah was an idiot. He didn’t see the danger coming, which meant I had to be the danger that stood in its way.

And then there was the unreviewed file. Noah’s background check. It was sitting on my desk back at the office, untouched. I never forgot details like that.

Information is the only currency that matters, yet I’d let his slip through the cracks. Perhaps because he seemed so utterly, boringly harmless. Or perhaps because I was becoming distracted.

I didn’t like being distracted.

I signaled my men with a lazy wave of two fingers. The heavy thud of a fist against Lopez’s ribs stopped, replaced by a pathetic, wheezing moan.

I handed the tablet to one of my guards and stood up, smoothing the front of my jacket. I approached the chair where Lopez was slumped. He was a ruin of a man, fingernails gone, skin a map of burns and bruises, blood pooling beneath his feet.

“Please…” he croaked, his eyes darting toward me, wide with a frantic, flickering hope. “Please! Hear me out! I, I was just following orders! The Vincenti… they told us it was just a warning! We never meant to kill him! We never meant to kill Julian!”

I stopped just out of splashing distance of the blood. I chuckled, a soft, dry sound that didn’t reach my eyes.

“You’re fine, Antonio,” I said, my voice smooth as silk. “After all, you weren’t the one who pulled the trigger. You were just… logistics. The man who cleared the path.”

Lopez’s face lit up. It was sickening to watch. He actually thought he was negotiating. He started rambling, the words spilling out of him in a desperate, pathetic rush. He started giving up routes, arms shipments through Valencia, cocaine drops in Málaga, money laundering fronts in Madrid.

I listened politely, nodding once or twice like a bored professor.

“I can get that kind of information from a dozen different sources, Antonio,” I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave.

He opened his mouth to offer more, his jaw trembling. I held up a single finger, shushing him.

“Shhh,” I whispered, leaning in until I could smell the iron and sweat on him. I smiled, and I saw the moment he realized that the “civil” had left the room and the “savage” had arrived. “Do you know why you’re being kept alive?”

He shook his head slowly, a tear carving a path through the grime on his cheek.

“It’s so you can feel what Julian felt too,” I murmured. “So you can beg the way he did too.”

I straightened up and gestured to my men. They gagged him instantly, the cloth cutting off his final plea. I pulled off my leather gloves, folding them neatly and tucking them into my pocket.

I started with my fists. It was clinical at first, testing the strength of his jaw, the give of his ribs. I wanted to feel the impact. I wanted the knuckles I’d used to touch Noah’s skin to be stained with the reality of what happens to people who cross me.

Then, I reached for the sledgehammer.

The first swing took out his right knee. The sound of bone shattering was like dry wood snapping in a fire. Lopez’s body jerked violently against the chains, a muffled, agonizing shriek dying in his throat.

I didn’t stop. I moved to the left knee.

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