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KLAUS

T he New York gangster was released from prison only six months ago. Apparently, he learned nothing in his incarcerated time because he’s doing worse shit than he was before.

He’s sitting in a metal chair now with his wrists shackled behind him.

I sit across from him, sharpening my knife.

I haven’t said a single word, but he’s already shitting bricks.

It’s one of the intimidation techniques I learned in the military. During an interrogation, the aim isn’t to get answers from a person. It’s to break them down until they become your puppet.

“What do you want from me?” he says, disrupting the silence.

I don’t even make eye contact with him.

“Who are you, man?” he asks, shifting in his seat.

I look at Alaric. He’s leaning against the wall with a box of Junior Mints in his hand. He doesn’t interfere with my techniques, but I can tell from the bored look on his face that he was expecting to be entertained more.

“I swear I don’t know anything,” the criminal says. “Just let me go.”

I cut my gaze to him.

He’s still a kid, probably in his mid-twenties. It’s obvious he’s scared shitless, but I know about the things he’s done. I know what he’s responsible for.

He’s trembling from head to toe. I don’t know if it’s from fear or a drug habit. Probably both.

Something becomes very obvious to me in this moment.

This kid may be a gang member, but he’s not the brains behind the operation.

“I heard that you’re dabbling in a new hobby.” I stand. “Do you care to tell us about it?”

He flinches as I move closer toward him.

“Please, just let me go,” he begs. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“You might not know me, but I know you,” I say. “I know what you’re involved in.”

I press the tip of the knife against his Adam’s apple. He tilts his head up all the way to keep the knife from slicing his throat open.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

“I don’t know anything,” he says. “I really don’t.”

“Who are you protecting?” I ask, trailing the knife down his body. I circle his nipple with the sharp end. “Don’t make me ask the same question twice.”

“Nobody,” he says.

With a flick of my wrist, I slice his nipple from his body. He howls in pain. I grab the cauterizing gun and graze it against the bleeding tissue. His scream rises in pitch as the smell of burning flesh prickles my nostrils.

“I can’t have you making a mess all over these floors,” I say. “That’s why I’m going to have to burn every wound I give you.”

“If you want to kill me, just get it over with.”

“Do the other nipple now,” Alaric says helpfully.

I move the knife toward the other nipple. The kid swallows, bracing himself for the pain. He doesn’t beg me to stop, which tells me another thing about him.

He’s even more afraid of whoever he’s protecting.

He’s not going to speak now. So I change tactics and move south instead.

Every man is tough until something sharp is pressed against his balls.

True panic forms in his eyes now. He tries to get away from me, but it’s no use. He’s secured to the chair and unable to move.

“There’s something you should know about me, Kevin,” I tell the kid. “I pride myself on follow-through. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. Don’t think for a second that I’m going to hesitate cutting off your balls and then cauterizing the bleeding flesh.”

He searches my eyes. He knows that he won’t be getting out of this alive.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks.

“You know why.”

“I’m innocent,” he says.

“I know you’re not,” I reply.

“Please just kill me,” he says. “And do it fast.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Tears stream down his cheeks now.

I raise my knife, prepared to carve him up like a pumpkin when he speaks up.

“I’ll tell you,” he gasps. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Ah, fuck,” Alaric says.

I glance at my friend and find him shaking hiscandy box.

“I just ran out of chocolate,” he says. “And we were just getting to the good part.”

I turn my attention back to the kid.

“Speak,” I say.

“It started as a temporary thing,” he says. “We were just looking for a way to make some extra cash. That’s when we met Lazlo. He’s the one you should be looking for, not us. I don’t have anything to do with the operation.”

“Explain why we saw your face in themotel’s camera footage.”

“I was just in charge of security,” he says. “At first, I didn’t know what was going on inside those rooms. And by the time I found out, it was already too late to back out.”

“Bullshit,” I say.

“Who’s Lazlo?” Alaric asks.

The kid swallows.

“He’s the one who’s in charge of the ring,” Kevin says. “If you want to find him, he hangs out at this strip club called Bottoms Up. He drinks there every night. He’s your guy, not me.”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe your hands are clean?” I ask him.

“I swear I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he says.

“Of course,” I say. “You were just enabling them.”

Rage builds inside me, seeking release. I throw my knife on the ground. It clatters against the cold floor of the warehouse. Kevin breathes a sigh of relief, but his relief doesn’t last for long.

My fist lands on his cheekbone, breaking his jaw with the very first punch. I batter him with my fists, turning him into a mosaic of red and black and blue.

I unleash every ounce of rage inside me and direct it at him.

Power thrums through my veins. The blood on my hands feeds the monster inside me.

I don’t stop until I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“That’s enough,” Alaric says. “You’re going to kill him if you keep going.”

“He deserves to die,” I pant.

“I agree, but he’s no use to us dead, Klaus,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

I ball my fists and storm away from the mostly unconscious criminal.

Alaric follows me.

“What’s going on?” Alaric asks. “You were supposed to scare him, not almost take his life.”

“Why do we need him alive, anyway?” I ask.

“Because he’s going to lead us straight to his boss,” Alaric says.

“We already know who his boss is,” I say.

“Do we?” Alaric cocks an eyebrow.

“The Lazlo guy?” I say.

“It never fails to amaze me how you’re so intelligent in some matters, yet completely clueless in other ways,” he says. “Did you really believe everything that punk told you?”

“You think he was lying?” I stop to consider that possibility for the first time.

“One hundred percent,” he says.

“That little shithead,” I growl. “I’m going to finish what I started.”

Alaric steps in my way before I can storm back inside.

“Look, he’s obviously afraid of someone,” Alaric says. “You could torture him all you want, but he’s not going to give you anything tangible.”

“That only means that I should rough him up a little more,” I say. “Every man breaks eventually.”

“You could cut off his balls and make him eat it, but he’s not going to give us names. That’s why our only option is to keep tabs on him and hope that he leads us to the big fish.”

“You better be right,” I mutter.

“I’m always right about these things,” Alaric says. “And here, place this on him before you let him go.”

He hands me a little sticker. It’s transparent, but it has a built-in GPS that will let me track the kid for as long as he’s wearing it.

When I step back into the warehouse, Kevin looks up at me. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and there are bruises all over his skin. A steady stream of blood drips down his nose.

It’s not enough.

He deserves a much worse fate than this.

But if Alaric’s right, this guy’s still keeping his cards close. He’s not about to spill his secrets just because I’m putting him through hell.

I glance at Alaric. He gives me a discreet nod.

If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have listened to their council. But Alaric is a wizard at reading people. There’s a reason he’s excellent at poker and business negotiations. He knows how to read his opponent.

I pick up my knife and walk toward Kevin.

“Please just get it over with,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut when he feels the cold metal against his skin.

I cut the zip ties binding his wrists together. At the same time, I place the skin patch tracker at the base of his neck. It’s made of a highly adhesive material, and he shouldn’t be able to spot it.

“We’re done here. Leave.”

“What?” He brings his wrists close to his chest and looks up at me with suspicion. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Get lost before I change my mind.”

He stands on unsteady feet. His eyes are wild as they swing between Alaric and me. I compose my features to look nonchalant even though I feel anything but. The kid makes a run for it, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

He needs medical attention, but he’ll be fine.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now, we wait,” Alaric says. “I know some people in the city. We could go out for drinks in the evening?—”

“You know how I feel about social gatherings, Alaric,” I say.

“I know, I know. You’re allergic to anything that’s even remotely fun,” he grumbles.

“Shouldn’t we be looking into the Lazlo guy?” I ask.

“I already informed the intelligence team,” Alaric says. “They’ll take care of it.”

“When did you talk to them?”

“While you were in Viking mode,” he says. “We should hear back from the team soon, but until then, they asked us to stay in the city.”

We clean up the warehouse and step out into the morning light.

It’s a beautiful day. As we walk toward our car, it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

“Jesus,” Alaric mutters under his breath.

“What?”

“You have a spring in your step,” he says. “You have no idea how concerning that is.”

“If you had let me kill him, I’d be skipping right now,” I say.

“Don’t you think I know that?” he says.

I smile at the ground. He’s joking, but there’s a truth behind his words.

Ever since the war, violence has become a part of me. It’s who I am now—someonewho can only breathe in the darkness.

“Brunch?” I ask.

His eyes light up. “I know just the place.”

We drive to a rooftop restaurant that serves brunch. We spent the whole night at the warehouse, so we’re famished.

“Did it work?” Alaric asks, reaching for the waffles.

“Did what work?”

“The distraction.”

“It helped.”

But who am I kidding? As soon as this is over, I will go back to obsessively thinking about her again.I will go back to watching her through the cameras and counting every breath she takes.

This is an affliction of the mind. A disease of the body. A haunting of my soul.

“Man, you have it so bad,” Alaric says, drowning his French toast in maple syrup. “Do you think she’s into you too?”

Visions of her assault me—the desire in her eyes when she looks at me, the way she arches into my touch without even realizing it, the way she seems to trust me implicitly.

“I think she is,” I reply, taking a sip of the freshly pressed orange juice.

“Then you know what you need to do.”

“I don’t have the faintest clue, actually.”

“You should get her out of your system.” When I continue staring at him, he adds, “Have sex with her.”

“I’ve already considered that a million times. And something tells me it won’t work like that. Not with Emma.”

“She’s not the only girl in the world, man,” he says.

It really feels like she is, though.

I put miles between us. I kept myself busy. I did everything I could to keep myself from thinking about her.

But she still plays in my mind as if on a loop.

I’m tormented, but also, I never felt more alive.