Page 88 of King of Cruelty

I took a deep breath, shaking out my limbs. I was nervous, jittery, and sweaty like a criminal in an interrogation room with the key evidence in her back pocket. I had a very tight window to escape unscathed before it all blew up in my face.

Debra’s phone rang.

I allowed it to ring a minute, prepping myself for the performance of my life.

“—where the flash drive is, Alexander.” Wilson’s snarl bled through the speakers. “Or she’ll regret it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Bane was chiller than ice-cold soda. “We don’t have some little digital black book. My family learned their lesson about hanging on to ledgers a long time ago.”

“Is that so?” Wilson’s voice got louder. I assumed he was holding the phone closer to his mouth. “Debra?”

I took a deep breath, and screamed. “Ahhh! Ahhhhh! No, stop! Please! Ahhh!”

“Who is that? Kenzie? Kenzie, is that you!” The calm tone was gone.

“Ahhh! Ahhhhh!” I screamed my lungs out, ripping my throat to shreds. “Help me, Bane! Help!”

“Stop! Stop it!” Bane roared. “Leave her alone!” Grunts and the sound of struggling came through the speakers. “Get your fucking hands off her!”

“Ahhh!”

“Where’s the flash drive!” Wilson bellowed. “Give it up, and your girl gets to keep most of her fingers!”

“Arggh!” My chest caved in hearing the agony in Bane’s voice. “This isn’t her fight! She has nothing to do with this! Stop!”

I just kept screaming.

“Flash drive!” Wilson sounded strangled, like he was fighting to peel a strong and determined grip off his neck. “Give it up!”

“Let her go!”Thud!“Let her go, and I’ll give you whatever you—”

“Debra, gouge out one of her fucking eyes! Maybe that will loosen Lover Boy’s tongue!”

My screams ratcheted higher.

“Nooo! It’s in Liam’s apartment,” Bane burst out. “In his bathroom! It looks like a regular stick of Chapstick, but the bottom twists off and the USB is hidden inside. No one would ever look at it twice.”

Wilson laughed. “Thank you very much for that information, Alexander.

“Deb, did you get all of that?”

“Ahhh—eugh!” I cut my scream off at the knees, falling eerily, deathly silent.

I held the phone away from my mouth, and covered it for good measure—disguising it to match Debra’s raspy, smoker’s voice. “Got it, Wilson. On my way now.”

“Kenzie? Kenzie! Answer me! Say something, baby, please,” Bane roared. “Oh gods, what did you do?! What the fuck did you do?!”

I hung up, unable to hear the despair in his voice for another second.

I hated that. I hated every single fucking second of it, but I had no choice. The Brotherhood had two of the three things they needed to destroy almost everything and everyone I loved. They had the Merchants, and they had the bombs. The only thing left for them to get their hands on was the flash drive, and once they did, they’d have zero reason to keep any of us alive.

I had to get to it first.

Sprinting away from the servants’ elevator, I ran across the hall to the main one, and fell on the button—jabbing the hell out of the thing.

Wilson, Natalya, and their group were all closer to Liam’s apartment than I was. All it would take is one of them popping down a floor or two, and checking out Liam’s bathroom for themselves, and everything I did would’ve been for nothing.

There was also the little matter of the Brotherhood moving in, and Debra being loose—and pissed—in the building. The minute she met up with Wilson and her crew, the game was up.