Page 23 of Sin City Obsession (De Salvo Empire #1)

Lou made a strained, groaning kind of sound. As if he were still trying to play the tough guy while she literally rested the majority of her healthy, five-foot, six-inch weight on his poor, unguarded ankle.

Gwathney’s eyes were glued to her knife like he thought he could repel it as long as he didn’t blink.

Alessa pressed it very carefully, serrated edge out, onto the duct-tape beside his mouth.

“Roll your lips away from the tape,” she instructed, “but do not turn your head. Not unless you want to bleed.” Could she peel the tape off?

Absolutely. Would it hurt like a son of a bitch, but be less psychologically terrifying?

All yes. The latter being why she preferred this method.

Men, no matter their own size and no matter their own blatant, immediate disadvantages, tended to underestimate a woman in her position.

Women in the mafia were to be the homemakers, the housecleaners, the baby-machines.

They were not, ever, the muscle. They did not get bruised, bloody, and vicious.

So if Alessa wanted her targets to view her the way they viewed any mafia man who might have tied them up and demanded answers from them, she needed to put the fear of fucking God into them first.

It was unfair. But life was unfair. So she’d learned to compensate.

Alessa pressed harder with the knife and felt Gwathney flinch, but to his credit, the movement didn’t carry to his head.

He held his head perfectly still while his torso trembled like a tiny leaf in the wind.

From the indentations on the tape, she saw when he did his probable best to retract his lips.

If he’d been smart, he would have done something similar when the tape was applied and given himself a minute amount of space to work with.

She didn’t take him as smart, so she pressed the blade tip carefully into the tape until she found the natural seam of his lips.

As she often did, she had the split-second temptation to rip the knife across in a quick, sweeping motion that would undoubtedly slice into his mouth. The Joker Effect, she’d dubbed it in her mind.

She resisted. She needed this one talking.

Careful always took a few seconds longer, but as always, she carved her niche into the tape.

Most of the tape remained attached to Gwathney’s face, a bit of it frayed and flapping over his mouth, and some of it cut completely away.

The overall effect was visually quirky, but the physical sensation would be a constant reminder for him that even his ability to speak—to draw larger, easier breaths—was under her control.

That it was her mercy which had granted it.

Once that was done, she moved back and stepped off Lou’s ankle.

Lou was louder that time, and she was almost sure she’d heard the word bitch under his tape. Lou had probably thought to pull his lips away when the tape was slapped on.

Alessa flashed him a smile. “Oh, I’m sorry, were you inconvenienced by my foot on your ankle?” She paused, let her gaze drop to his now twisted ankle. “And here I thought you were the strong one.”

“Wh-what … what do you want with us?” Gwathney asked.

He found his voice faster than I expected.

Maybe he had some internal moxie she hadn’t given him credit for.

Alessa propped her hands on her hips, letting the steak knife hang in the curve of her fingers.

“You, Gwathney. What I want is with you. Your friend here is what you might call collateral damage.” She shrugged.

“Consider him motivation. Or I maybe I’ll use him as an example. You’ll get to decide that.”

Gwathney’s chest rose with a ragged breath. “I swear I don’t know you,” he said. His gaze darted past her, just for a second. “I’m careful. I don’t take Cavallo money, and I never send my guys to collect from anyone I think is connected to them.”

“That’s great,” Alessa said. “I’m sure Rocco feels very reassured with that information.

” She began gesturing with the hand still holding the knife.

“Let’s not play dumb. You can hear it in my voice—Big Louie there made sure to point that out—I’m not from around here.

I’m from Newark, New Jersey. And I’m here because you sent a real peach of a man into my city. ”

Gwathney cut his eyes to Lou for a lingering second, but Lou was busy glaring at her.

“R-Ralph, that’s right,” he said. “You mentioned Ralph. He … he was supposed to be on assignment. Collecting money from a pain-in-the-ass who’s been dodging my calls.

A man, twice your age at least, um, Wes-Wesley. Wesley Richardson!”

Alessa rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. But you didn’t really send George after Wesley Richardson, did you? ”

Silence fell over the room and Gwathney’s eyes slowly widened. “I may have mentioned using his daughter … for motivation,” he finally whispered.

Alessa stepped closer and dropped into a crouch, straddling Gwathney’s still bound legs and dangling the knife between her knees.

She never broke eye-contact. “Let’s just clarify the conversation here,” she said, speaking quietly before raising her voice abrasively loud.

“You sent a known rapist, known abuser, clear across the country on his own, and not only did you not demand quick and efficient results, you instructed him to target your deadbeat client’s single, twenty-something daughter. Do I have that right?”

“No!”

Alessa raised a brow. “What part do I have wrong?”

Gwathney opened his mouth. Sweat rolled down the side of his face. “I didn’t tell him to touch her,” he said, the words weak.

Alessa slashed the steak knife over his knee, deep enough to draw blood but not deep enough to even render him permanently crippled.

Gwathney cried out anyway.

She held her position, not flinching from the shriek or the trickling of blood. “Well, he did,” she said when her voice would carry. She moved her knife to balance over the other knee. “Would you like to know why that matters to me?”

Gwathney sucked in hard breaths and bobbed his head.

“Because she’s not single,” Alessa said.

“She is, in fact, engaged to one of my employers. And my employers are not the kind of men you want to piss off, Erik.” She pressed the tip of her knife into his knee, letting the fabric indent so she knew he felt the pressure.

“Any guesses as to the number one thing on their ‘fuck no’ list?”

Gwathney whimpered.

Alessa glanced toward Lou, finding him staring intently at her knife.

When neither man made an actual attempt to respond, she supplied the answer. “Laying hands on their family.” She plunged the knife down until the hilt was kissing the ripped, reddening fabric of Gwathney’s pants.

This time, Gwathney screamed outright, his entire body spasming as if she’d set his nerves on fire.

Alessa stood and stepped far enough back that his twitching legs wouldn’t trip her up.

She left the knife where it was, turned, and made her way back to her new set of toys.

After a small internal debate, she selected the wire strippers and another steak knife.

The wire strippers went into her back pocket as she made her way back up to the pair trapped on the pole.

This time, she angled for Lou.

His glare snapped to her and he shouted something behind his duct tape that was probably a surly plea to stay away.

Of course, she ignored that and meandered right up to his side.

“You know the drill, right?” She raised the steak knife and tilted it toward his face.

“If you want to be able to speak, you better hold real still.”

His eyes told her to go right to Hell. But his body stiffened.

Alessa took her time finding the ridge of his lips in the tape, pushing through, and fighting the urge to Joker-ify him. She didn’t really need him talking. She just worried indulging once might be the kind of line that got harder to uncross in the future.

Lou wasted no time spitting directly on her face. “You fuckin’ psycho bitch! I don’t give a fuck who you work for—”

Alessa actually startled when a muscular arm reached around her, the hand attached curled around Lou’s neck, and Lou himself was hauled up.

Completely up. Until the bad angle on his arms had been reversed, pulling them down instead of up, and his broken ankle was forced to dangle as his toes stretched for purchase.

Rocco growled. “You think you can talk to my woman that way, in front of me, and get away with it, you shit-eating bastard?”

Alessa sighed. Probably she should have known this would be a learning curve for him, if not both of them. Wait. Why does this have to be a learning curve? Learning curves implied continuation of experiences.

Her heart clenched and her eyes darted past whatever Rocco was saying to Lou, who probably couldn’t breathe, over to Gwathney.

Gwathney had finally stopped shrieking like a frightened girl and was staring at his impaled knee in visible shock. Blood continued seeping from the wound, hindered of course by the knife she’d left there. And he seemed to have peed himself.

She crinkled her nose. Gross.

But they were past the point of no return on this.

In probably an hour or less, both these men would be dead.

She didn’t have to stick around for whatever was done to disappear their bodies.

That was the Cavallos’ job. She would call the final report in, and unless for some reason she was instructed otherwise, she would catch the next flight back to Jersey.

Something slid down her cheek, and for a frightening moment, she thought it might be a tear. Until it pooled over her jaw before beginning to dangle and she realized with a roll of her stomach that it was far too slimy to be a tear. It was the spit.

Frustrated and emotionally conflicted, Alessa shoved to her feet and turned from all three of them. She marched up to the offerings, and Emanuele, and set the used steak knife aside. “I need a napkin, or a rag, or—”

Emanuele held out an almost full pack of pocket tissues.

Alessa blinked at it for a half-second, then took them and tugged two free. “I don’t even want to know.”

He grinned. “What? I have emotions.”

She wiped at her face, lifted it to him for inspection, then wiped one more time with another tissue just for peace of mind. The used tissues were added to the pile of garbage and she returned the pack to its owner. “For your emotional moments, then.”

He inclined his head. “Pretty sure your man’s having one.”

“My what?” But she knew what he meant, so she lingered only long enough to snatch another knife from the block—paring this time—before moving back toward the group. “Rocco, sweetheart, you promised.”

Rocco released Lou, who fell to the floor with a gurgled grunt, immediately followed by a choked outcry when his ankle bent almost completely the wrong way. Rocco turned, putting the scene behind him, and ducked his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I lost my temper. ”

She raked her eyes over him. He was splattered in red and his throat was doing that flexing thing she’d seen many an angry alpha male do.

Yet he’d stopped. She carefully tucked the paring knife into her waistband and moved up to him, cupping his jaw in her hands and drawing his gaze.

“Probably I should have anticipated that and not cut his tape open. I’m used to doing all this solo, not thinking about how anyone else might react to the scene. So, I’m sorry, too.”

His brow furrowed. “You shouldn’t—” He cut himself off and locked his jaw. Instead of finishing the thought, he leaned in and kissed her forehead.

Shouldn’t what? What had he been going to say?

Did he not want her doing this type of work?

Did he not want her doing it on her own?

Or did he just not want her doing it where he had to see?