Page 122 of Revere

Gideon clamps his mouth shut, which gets my attention because he isn’t protective of anyone.

“Clamp.” I hold my hand out, and Declan grins, walking to the table at the side of the room.

He grabs the clamp and hands it over.

“I’m tired of your lies, Gideon. If you have nothing worth hearing, we’ll all just sit here and listen to you scream.” I tighten the clamp on one of Gideon’s fingers, and he starts to sweat.

“I’m telling the truth. Molly was a traitor, and I dealt with her. Why do you even care? You let another man knock her up.”

I twist the clamp, and Gideon screams as his finger rotates. I continue until the bone snaps, then shatters. Until his finger is facing the wrong direction.

He nearly passes out when Maddox steps forward and injects Gideon with something new.

“Wake up.” Maddox slaps his face, grinning, and Gideon immediately snaps too. “There you are.”

Gideon’s eyes are wide as he screams with pain. “I did it for the House. She was looking into us.”

“Says your unknown source?” I laugh. “You hear how it sounds, right?”

He doesn’t answer, but something flares in his eyes. Enough to spark a hint of doubt. Not that it will save him. But if he’s right, and he was fed that information, someone else was involved.

Someone else wanted her dead.

“Enough.” I undo the clamp and attach it to another finger. “I’m done discussing the past. That’s not what we’re here for.”

This time, Gideon stays wide awake while I twist and break his finger. The drugs Maddox shot into his arm have him present to feel every second of it.

Gideon breathes hard when I release the clamp. “Don’t tell me this is about Patience.”

I grab his jaw, forcing his mouth open to smash the butt of my knife against his front tooth, shattering it. “What did I say about my wife?”

Gideon spits out the shattered tooth, and when he speaks again, his words are slurred. “The great Interrogator finally has a weakness? They’ll use it against you.”

“They’ll try. And then they’ll end up like you.” I glance down at him, sitting in a mess of blood and piss.

Gideon smiles, his head waving side to side. “You think you can protect her, but you can’t. Trust me, I tried.”

“By controlling her? By abusing her?” I grab his hair and tip his head back. “I saw the scars. Was that you protecting her?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I release his hair and notice he looks over at Alex, who refuses to meet his gaze.

But I’m done talking. All I want now is for Gideon to feel pain.

For the next hour, I move from the clamp to the pliers. Trading off with Alex until Gideon is nothing but a drooling mess of broken bone and spirit. Only then do I stop and decide to finally end it.

“Any last words?” I stand in front of him.

“Fuck you.” It’s mumbled through his battered teeth.

I chuckle. “Take from the House, we take from you, Gideon.”

“Judgment day finds us all, Ezra.” His head lolls to the side. “Right when you think you’ve made the right call, it might be the one that sends you six feet under. You think you’re untouchable, but none of us are. Not really. The higher you rise, the farther the devil has to drag you back home.”

Smirking, I pull out my gun and hold it to his head. “Until then, I suppose I’ll just have to keep myself busy with your daughter.”

With a final wink, I pull the trigger.