Page 22 of Dangerous Men

“I think… I think someone is testing the waters,” I say, willing myself to believe it. “They’re trying to see if we’re as strong as everyone says we are. Trying to see if we can be scared away. A first strike. They’ll be looking for any blind spots and how to exploit them next.”

“Well,” Alec says, coming to his feet. The head on his desk stares up at him blindly. “Let’s make sure they don’t find any, shall we?”

10

VIPER

The manin our wet lab today is a bleeder.

I set my knife down and consider some of my other instruments, laid out on the table before me like a feast. Bleeders don’t last long if you don’t use them right. I click my tongue, frowning down at the collection I had originally picked out for tonight. No. No, these won’t do at all.

My cell phone rings, Schubert’s Ave Maria filling the room, soulful notes hitting the tile walls and echoing back at me.

“Just a second,” I say to the man strapped to the table. His sobs are wet and loud and discordant with the music, two disparate songs layered over one another. “I have to take this.”

For once, I’m glad Sebastian isn’t down here with me. I reach for the phone, and my fingers smear blood all over the glass when I swipe the screen to answer. That prick always makes me wear gloves.

And isn’t it so much better when you can get your hands dirty?

“Morning, boss,” I say into the speaker. I have to speakloudly, over the bleeder’s crying. I lean against the table, smiling down at the phone even though he can’t see me.

“It’s seven at night, Viper,” Alec informs me.

Eh. Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. Time means nothing down here in the lab. The real world and its rules don’t exist here.

I pluck a ball hammer from the table and consider it, twisting it in the light. The man strapped to the table whimpers.

Nah.

“Found out anything yet?” Alec asks.

“Nope,” I say, popping thePand setting the hammer down. Besides being our wet lab’s current occupant, the man on my table is also co-owner of a brothel just south of Empire City, in a shitty little city called Seneca. And back in the day, this fucker used to be nice and cozy with our old boss, Dante.

Cozy enough he might know exactly who’s impersonating him. Who’s stupid enough to use that fucker’s name to scare us.

And if that’s true, and this little bleeder knows who might be behind the curtain? I’ll find out, one way or another tonight. And if it’s not? Well… at least I have something to keep me entertained for a few hours, right?

The best things in life are free and bloody, after all.

“Nothing yet,” I say. “But I’ll keep looking. You checking up on me?”

Alec snorts a laugh.

“Hardly,” he says. “Just calling to remind you that we’ll be out tonight. All of us.”

Oh, right. Thefancything. The reason Doc isn’t down here with me, rolling his eyes and reminding me to put on a pair of gloves. The reason we aren’t getting our hands dirty together.

“But I want you to call if you have any updates for me. Understand?”

“You got it, boss,” I sing into the phone, though I’m ninety percent sure he’s already hung up. I pick up the phone from the table and slide it into my pocket, ignoring the blood still smeared on the screen.

Sighing, I run my fingers over the instruments on my table, waiting for the right one to speak to me. When my hand hovers over the ice pick, I feel that familiar tug.

Bingo.

Picking it up, I turn back to my guest and grin.

“Sorry for the interruption. Now…where were we?”