Page 91 of The Wicked

“What does Manuel Conti want with that painting?”

I leveled him with a glare. “I don’t know, and even if I do know, I sure as fuck won’t tell you.”

His fingers trailed down to the swell of my breast, and I jerked weakly away from his touch. “I swear to fucking God,” I said, “I will chop your fingers off one by one if you don’t keep them to yourself.”

He laughed. “Making threats when you’re tied to my ceiling.” Then he looked at the other guy, who had a crooked smile on his face.“Crazy woman.”

“Try me,” I said, and both of them stopped laughing, attention back on me.

Buzzcut looked like he was seconds away from snapping my neck. “Millions of gold bars are not enough for Manuel Conti to send people out for the painting. You know something. Not justManuel, my boss suspects other families are on the hunt for it. What we don’t know is why. Surely it can’t be gold; these people are richer than sin. What else aside from gold connects with the painting?”

I frowned, dissecting his words, as a separate kind of suspicion arose in my mind. I tucked it aside for later, leveling Buzzcut with a glare.

“As I said, stay the fuck out of Manuel’s business because if he doesn’t hunt you for meddling, I will.”

He smirked, and I watched his hand travel down my cleavage, but before he could wander further down, a loud clash from outside got their attention. There were shouts and grunts of pain and loud, unending, piercing gunshots.

Buzzcut and the other man exchanged a look at the chaos that seemed to have erupted outside.

My joints curled tightly in alert when the shooting lessened.

“Go check,” Buzzcut said to the other man, his voice strained while the other guy left his position.

The shooting stopped completely.

I briefly wondered what the hell was happening, but I stopped wondering when the door to the small shed barreled open, a baseball bat swinging right into the face of the other guy who had been approaching it to go check.

The guy went down immediately, disoriented, as Elio swiftly twirled the bat, holding the handle and jamming its end into the man’s face. He went out like a light.

And then Elio looked up, face stained with violent sprinkles of blood that I knew weren’t his own, red splatters dotting from face to neck—he was wearing a button-up, which meant he had left me to change his shirt. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing dots of blood on his forearms and the hand that held the baseball bat.

Elio’s gaze swept up and down my body, completely expressionless, while he stood there, looking like a fucking psychopath who had just survived the zombie apocalypse, before he settledhis gaze on Buzzcut, who looked like he had seen a ghost. He knew who stood before him. I could spot the moment fear took over his form; he quickly grabbed the clamps again, increasing the voltage to the highest setting as he aimed it at me.

“Don’t come any closer, you—you come close, I fry her,” he said.

Elio’s gaze fell to me again before looking at the buzzing clamps and then back to Buzzcut.

“Okay.” His voice rang through as he pressed the barrel of the baseball bat to the ground between his legs, both hands holding the knob as he spoke. “Go ahead.”

“You think I’m bluffing?” Buzzcut said, inching the clamps close to my ribs, eyes sharp. “I will fucking do it.”

Elio’s expression didn’t give anything away. “Was there a stutter to my previous statement?”

Buzzcut swallowed but didn’t make a move to do anything.

“Are you going to do it, or should I approach?”

My insides tied knots around themselves. If Elio had really wanted me dead, he wouldn’t be here, but why the fuck was he urging this fucker to fry me?

A few beats passed, with Elio staring intently at Buzzcut. When nothing was done, he nodded, lifting the bat, and started stepping forward, but the moment he did, Buzzcut found his senses again, about to press the clamps to my body. I was one second away from being electrocuted to death, but it seemed as if that one second was enough for Elio to reach behind him, whip out a gun, and aim it right at Buzzcut’s head, pulling the trigger.

Buzzcut’s blood splattered on me, and the clamps clattered with him as he fell to the ground.

He just… killed someone.

Elio dropped the bat, gun still in hand as he approached. He didn’t look at me. Not once. He just went straight to the machine supplying currents to the clamps and turned it off. The silence grew between us, and it stretched even further when he raised his gaze, locking it with mine.

My breathing was loud, while his, as always, was controlled.