Page 18 of King of Cruelty

My stomach churned, shotgunning bile into my throat. I heard all about the dirty ratholes where Luca Adams kept Kenzie and the other women he trafficked. If he had one in other cities, it shouldn’t have surprised me he had one just outside of Cinco too. There was no one around here for miles.

No one to hear the girls scream.

I didn’t waste a minute. “Give me your phone.”

“Wha—?”

Bang!

I shot the other foot, kicking off another round of screaming and wailing that made me roll my eyes.

“Stalling by acting stupid is right up there with lying, bro. You heard me just fine: give me your fucking phone!”

Abraham flung the blood-stained thing at my head. “You’re next, bitch! I promise you! I swear it on the severed heads of your disease-ridden family! You’re next!”

“Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.” I typed in Kenzie’s number.

She answered on the third ring. “Hello? Who is this?”

“Kenzie, it’s me.”

“Genny? Genny, oh my gosh! Are you okay? How are you? Where are you?! Sienna? Sienna!” she called. “It’s Genny!”

“Genny?” I heard from the other end. “Are you sure it’s her?”

“I don’t— How do I know it’s you?” she demanded.

“It’s me, Feisty, and you’ll know it for sure when we finally bed down for that threesome we’ve got booked.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely you,” she muttered. “Are you okay? What’s that noise?”

“It’s the noise that follows me everywhere I go. The sound of grown men begging and bawling at my feet.”

“Fuck you!” Abraham roared.

“As for if I’m okay...” The lightness drained out of my voice. “No, Feisty, I’m not. They’ve taken me miles outside of the city to some cabin he says was owned by Luca Adams, and yes,” I sliced in, knowing what she was going to ask, “it’s one ofthosecabins.

“I could ask this mewling bitch how many of the enemy are in there waiting for me, but I won’t know if he’s telling the truth until I bust inside—alone.”

“Don’t go in alone! Wait for us!”

“I don’t have that kind of time,” I replied evenly—patiently. In the nearing distance, Abraham’s minions shouted for him, drawn in by his bellowing cries. “I’m not running away and abandoning my Cardinals now that I’ve finally found them.” I gazed at the cabin peaking over the treetops. “But something tells me getting out of that place is going to be ten times harder than getting in.

“This is the bat signal, Kenzie. Find us and get us out, before I have to do it myself.”

“Gen—”

I flung the phone as hard as I could, sending it soaring through the bush.

“Boss?” a too-close voice called. “Boss?!”

“Over here!” Abraham flipped onto his stomach, struggling to crawl toward help. “I’m here! Hurry up and kill this bitch—”

I stomped on the back of his neck, forcing his face into the mud. “I have no idea why everyone in your little clique is so scared of you. You were laughably easy to beat.”

“I’ll kill you!” he roared, growling and snarling into the dirt like a wild animal. “I’ll flay the skin off your worthless bones! You’ll die for what your family did to mine! You’ll all DIE!”

I sighed. “Fuck’s sake, dude. Wake the hell up. Your mama was a lying leech feeding off the money teat of a child-selling pedophilic pimp, but if you still don’t believe me, you can ask them all about it in hell.”