Page 23 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“ F uck you, Ferrero scum!”

I winced. The Ferrero team had a live one on their hands, and this guy apparently thought he was tough.

Zach sauntered into the lounge like it was just another Wednesday night at the Club, ignoring the shouting and cursing from the prisoner.

“Let’s get this fucking over with,” he said to his companion as he switched on one of the lamps in the lounge. “I have class in the morning.”

“My poor nephew,” the guy crooned at him. “Forced to get a fancy degree at a place where everyone kisses his ass just so he can inherit his billions.”

“Fuck you, Frankie. I’m also running all over the goddamn City, cleaning up messes. I need to sleep sometimes, man.”

Frankie “Fingers” Ferrero. He was technically Zach’s uncle, but he was only, like, four years older than Zach was—the product of an illicit affair Zach’s grandfather had later in his life that produced a little bastard half-brother for Andrea to deal with.

And she had dealt with him by pretending for a long while that he didn’t exist—he’d apparently only been allowed to take the Ferrero name once he proved to be such an asset to the Family.

And he was an asset because he was fucking crazy. Our sources said he’d become the go-to guy for… convincing people to talk, and he was essentially running the Ferrero Enforcer team now at age twenty-three because everyone was scared shitless of him.

The nickname “Fingers” supposedly came from his favorite souvenir to take from those that found themselves subjected to his talents .

He’d come around the Ferrero penthouse some when we were kids, mostly when Zach’s dad had been alive and took pity on him, but he’d disappeared completely into the bowels of the Ferrero apparatus once he’d become a teenager.

He and Zach favored each other, though Frankie was quite a bit leaner than Zach was.

He wore an old T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the gaping armholes giving us a view of the myriad tattoos that decorated his lean muscled arms and torso.

His tight, holey jeans looked like they came from the bargain bin at the thrift shop, and his scuffed Converse sneakers were even rattier than the ones I owned.

His dark hair curled behind his ears in a little wave that almost made him look innocent, and the tiny barbells pierced through his eyebrow glinted in the low light of the room.

“You didn’t tell me Frankie Fingers was hot ,” Max whispered, and if I could have moved without shaking the scaffolding, I’d have kicked him.

“ Not the time ,” I mouthed, narrowing my eyes at him in the dark. I hadn’t seen Frankie since he was a skinny, angry fourteen-year-old anyway, so it wasn’t like I could have known.

“Don’t worry,” Frankie said to Zach as they wandered over to the torture side of the basement. “This one talks a big game, but I know a coward when I smell one. We’ll get this done in, like, ten.”

Zach chuckled. “Let’s make it nine, then.” He motioned to the two Enforcers standing silently by while their charge was still shouting curses at them and yanking on his chains. “You two, beat it. Send the cleanup crew in an hour.”

The Enforcers nodded and filed out wordlessly, probably relieved they didn’t have to watch Frankie work.

Frankie had meandered over to the wall and flipped on the lone light hanging from the ceiling nearby and was now blasting a spotlight right onto his victim. Then he began to peruse the selection of pointy, sharp objects that hung on the wall.

The guy had stopped struggling, the paling of his face visible even from all the way up here. If he knew what was good for him, he’d cave quickly to whatever they wanted and wish for a quick death .

While Frankie was sorting through his toys, caressing them lovingly and whistling a happy tune, Zach stepped in front of the guy, his face more murderous than I knew him capable of.

“Did you honestly think,” he said, his voice low and laced with venom, “that you could attempt a hit on one of the Heirs of the Four Families and live to tell the tale?”

I sucked in a breath. A hit? On one of the guys?

“That little blond shit killed my brother,” the guy spat at Zach. “He too much of a pussy to take care of me himself?”

Noah killed someone?

“You and your brother are the worst fucking hitmen I’ve ever heard of,” Zach scoffed, not moving a muscle. “And I hear you’re the pussy. Your brother’s dead because you used him as a human shield when Noah shot at you.”

Jesus.

“Now,” Zach went on, his smirk back in place, which loosened something in my chest. “You’re going to tell us who hired you, or else I’m going to let Frankie Fingers over there loose with no rules.”

“Fuck you!”

“Please don’t speak to my nephew like that,” Frankie admonished the guy like he was a kindergarten teacher telling a five-year-old not to put crayons in his mouth. “It’s not his fault you’re here, after all. You should take responsibility for your own actions.”

“I don’t fucking care what you do to me,” the guy barked through gritted teeth as he watched Frankie pull a large curved knife of some kind from the wall. “I’m a professional, and I don’t give up my clients.”

I did admire his tenacity, but I’d have been more inclined to believe him if he wasn’t shaking like a leaf right now.

“Are you picking any of this up?” I whispered softly to Dom.

“Not really,” he replied just as quietly. “But if he starts screaming anything important, I’ll try to record it.”

“Alright, my friend,” Frankie said to the guy as he made his way in front of him. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

For all his talk, the guy only made it through the removal of a couple of fingers, at least one toe, and something weird Frankie had done to his balls with the curved dagger thing before he started sobbing and babbling away .

“It wasn’t a hit!” he cried, sniffing and gagging. “We were supposed to kidnap the Hargraves Heir for ransom. I only tried to kill him after he shot my brother!”

Zach had stepped away from the splash zone to stand by the wall with his arms crossed and looking almost bored with this whole thing. He narrowed his eyes at that revelation. “And for whom were you kidnapping the Hargraves Heir?”

The guy heaved and vomited for like the third time.

Frankie shoved a tiny little scalpel in between the guy’s toes. “My nephew asked you a question.”

He screamed. “Fine, fine, okay, okay! It was Silverman! Raquel Silverman!”

Frankie stood up from where he’d been focused on the guy’s feet and gave him an indulgent look. “See, that was very good. You could’ve saved yourself all this trouble if you’d just told us that a little bit earlier.” He looked to Zach. “Is that all you needed?”

Zach nodded, his face hard. “Yep.”

“Raquel Silverman owns a massive pharmaceutical company in Florida,” Dom said in a low voice.

“Our file says her company tried to patent a revolutionary cancer drug last year, but it was blocked by Eagle, Peter’s company.

They then got the patent themselves and made millions instantly with an identical drug. ”

“So, she paid someone to kidnap Noah?” I asked in a hushed whisper.

“I assume she would’ve ransomed him back for the cost of what she thought she lost out on had they been the ones to come to market with the drug.”

“Fuck,” Max breathed. “These outsiders must not understand who they’re playing with.”

“I think there’s a Silverman at the Academy too,” I added.

I could hear Dom’s fingers flying across his keyboard. “Yeah. Robert Silverman. Junior at Holywell. He’s a nephew.”

“Shit.”

“Okay, then,” Frankie was saying as he cleaned his knives with a silky-looking cloth. “I’ll take care of this, and then we can get you back to school for your beauty rest.”

Zach shook his head and stepped in front of the hitman, who sagged in his chains, only barely clinging to life. Zach pulled a gun from under his jacket and aimed it straight at the guy’s head, growling, “No one fucks with my family.”

He pulled the trigger, putting a bullet right between the man’s eyes.

I lay there, shell-shocked by watching Zach kill a guy. I’d known that there was a strong possibility that my former best friends had been molded by the Families into something I wouldn’t recognize after all these years, but it was still a slap in the face to see it with my own eyes.

He called Noah his family .

Zach was on his phone now. “It’s done…. Yeah, it was Silverman—you were right. Have Bennett call in his courier for this one. I want what’s left of the guy’s head delivered to Boca Raton by tomorrow.”

He jammed his phone back into his pocket and motioned to Frankie. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, man. I hate the smell of piss and vomit.”

Frankie smirked. “Yes, let’s. I’m headed upstairs.” He waggled his pierced eyebrows.

Zach chuckled. “Who’s the lucky guy tonight?”

Frankie shrugged, caressing his knives once more before hanging them back on the wall. “I like to keep it fresh. We’ll see who catches my eye.” He hit the lights, then he followed Zach back through the lounge and up the stairs, slamming the door and clicking the lock back in place behind him.

Max and I lay there in silence for a long five minutes.

“Okay, Ferrero’s clear of the garage and Frankie Fingers has disappeared upstairs,” Dom said. “Get the fuck out of there now before the cleanup crew arrives.”

He didn’t have to tell us twice.

Max decided to accompany me back to school. We’d dropped our clothes and equipment off with Dom in his hotel room, changed into jeans and sweatshirts, and now we were both fighting to stay awake on the short train ride back to the Academy.

We scanned in through the front gates since neither of us had the energy to break into campus for the fun of it, and by the time we made it to my dorm room, I knew I was only going to get a few precious hours of sleep before I had to be up again for class—if I could fall asleep at all .

After we’d both showered, we sat on my bed in our PJs—Max kept shit in my room because why not—and we stared at Max’s phone where it lay between us.

“You don’t need to read it, Jojo,” he said gently. “I can just tell you that we got what we were looking for.”

“Just show me, Max.”

He picked up his phone and logged into our encrypted server before scrolling until he found what I’d asked for.

He handed me the phone, and I peered down at the screen, those numb feelings washing over me once again as I read the copied text messages.

Andrea : JS confirmed, we’re on for tonight 10 pm

Andrea : have the packages to HT 24 then

Unknown : understood

The texts had been sent at 3:00 pm on August 2, 2015—the night my parents were murdered, and my life changed forever.

I dropped the phone.

“There are also two outgoing calls to that same number from about a week earlier,” Max whispered. “And we have the camera footage to show that ‘HT 24’ is?—”

“Hargraves Tower, twenty-fourth floor,” I finished for him. “And JS would have to be James Spencer.”

He nodded. “Are you okay?”

I sighed. “I’m both always okay and never okay, Max. I listened as Andrea herself shot my mother in the head. None of this is news to me. It’s great we have more evidence to use against the Families now. But of course, there’s fucking nothing here about why .”

Why had they killed my parents? It sure as shit wasn’t just for the fun of it.

“I know, Jojo. We’ll find it.”

He tucked me into bed then before climbing in on the other side and switching off the lamp. To my relief, I fell asleep instantly, Max’s presence making it feel as though we were home in our bunks, tucked safely away from the festering rot of the City.

Zach’s happy, laughing twelve-year-old face was the last thing I saw before I slipped into the darkness.