Page 8 of Prohibited

Alex smiled back, a thrill of anticipation moving through him.

“You can go,” Alex said to Joey and Hiloha, reaching into his pocket and drawing out a thick wad of bills. He split itin half and handed each of them a wedge of money. “Lock the door on your way out.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Hiloha said.

Alex looked at Ryan and tilted his head toward the corridor.

“This way.” He led Ryan to the painting of the duchess and pulled the candlestick next to it, causing the wall to open inward, feeling the same thrill he always did at the marvel of engineering. They stepped into the dark concrete corridor lit by two flaming torches. Several doors lined the hallway and Alex walked to the first one.

It was a storage room that held boxes of their backstock of hooch. The boxes had all been rearranged to make a clearing in the center of the room. In the center of that clearing, a man sat in a chair. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut, sticky blood oozing from a split eyebrow. A dirty linen tied tightly around his head gagged him, muffling the words he was trying so desperately to shove out of his mouth.

Rope bound him to the chair around his torso, his thighs, and his ankles. His hands were bound behind him with handcuffs.

Sandy Barnes, the fucking traitor.

Just looking at him made Alex smile.

Ryan to look at Alex, amazement lighting his face. “You found him.”

“A birthday present,” Alex repeated. Not taking his eyes off of Ryan’s face, he reached into pocket. Fingers wrapped around his switchblade and brought it out slowly.It was his favorite tool, an extension of himself, and he had never let anyone else touch it. He sent the blade out with a familiar, satisfying click, and extended it to Ryan.

The man in the chair started to struggle like a worm on a hook, his fear hitting the air like a palpable stink. A thrill of anticipation went through Alex.

“I think he has some things he’d like to tell us,” Alex said.

Ryan only hesitated a moment, looking at the blade in Alex’s hand. Then, something shifted in his expression. A door closed behind his eyes when he raised them to meet Alex’s. He took the knife with a steady hand.

“You know, Alex,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice that went straight to Alex’s cock. “I think you might be right.”

Chapter four

Ryan

The water ran pink inside the white porcelain basin as Ryan scrubbed the blood from his hands. He stared at himself in the mirror while he did, not recognizing the face that gazed back at him. The flat, cold look on his face. The way his eyes burned. Blood flecked his face, his throat, his bare chest.

He felt strange, separated from himself. But there was rest and comfort in the certainty that he had only just begun to set things right for Tommy. Sandy Barnes was only one piece of the puzzle.

He’d held out surprisingly long for such a pathetic, double crossing piece of shit. Obviously, he was more afraid of Walter Stanley than he was of a man standing in front of him with a switchblade, ready to take him apart piece by piece until he got the answers he wanted.

That said plenty about the kind of man Walter Stanley was. Ryan had heard things about him, about what a ruthless bastard he was. He was from St. Louis, a small-time scumbag who’d dragged his rotten carcass down to Tulsaafter Ryan and Tommy had started up their bootlegging scheme and wasted no time carving into their territory one business at a time. Stanley had been become a fucking hive of bees in his bonnet.

He wasn’t remotely surprised that he was behind this.

This. Tommy’s death.

A cramp of agony seized his heart so hard that it took his breath away. Somewhere in the frenzy of violence that had overtaken him, he’d managed to somehow forget that Tommy was dead.

Dead.

He froze for a moment, hot water running over his hands while he tried to take in a breath, tried to steel himself against the tsunami that crashed into him.

Tommy was dead and he was alive and that was an equation that did not add up to reality.

Rage boiled in the center of him, black as tar and just as foul. Sandy Barnes had fucking sold him out. Well, he’d cut Sandy Barnes’ fucking ears off while he screamed like a rabbit. He should have taken his eyes too.

But no amount of suffering he inflicted on Sandy could undo what had been done. And it also could not recant the name that he’d given up just after Walter Stanley’s: Evelyn Colter. The words had come tumbling out of Sandy’s mouth in a panicked squeal. And Ryan made him repeat himself twice.

The name battered into him, taking the breath from his lungs every time he thought about her. Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn.