Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

pale skin, and jet black hair falling in locks over his forehead, and full lips, and a strong jaw. He took good care of himself. Despite looking early twenties, he was probably closer to thirty, if not older.

But there were a couple of noticeable differences. A year ago, Gavin had sported the straightened posture and calm confidence of someone used to getting their way. Now, he was slouched, broken, defeated. The confidence was still there, but the foundations had been shattered. He could still get his way, but he’d given up on the fairytale the rest of his life was supposed to have been.

Slater knew why.

‘Hey, kid,’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen you in a while.’

His voice ice, Gavin said, ‘Glad you’re here.’

‘I’m sorry about the way things ended last time.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ Gavin said. ‘Shame you didn’t come to me with your little apology sooner.’

‘Must have been the wake-up call of all wake-up calls, right?’ Slater said. ‘You think you’re the man, you think you’re unstoppable, and then I break your ribs and slap the shit out of you and leave you in a pool of your own blood. I seem to remember kicking you in the balls, too. Did I rupture one of them? I’d always wondered.’

‘Talk,’ Gavin said. ‘Talk as much as you want. You won’t get me angry, and you won’t get me to stop this. It’s pointless.’

‘You can’t stop it,’ Slater said. ‘The people who work for you can. All I need is for you to point us in their direction. You’re useless to us otherwise. Always have been.’

That made the kid bristle.

He didn’t react, and he brought himself back under control in an instant.

But at least Slater cracked the exterior.

Gavin said, ‘We can stand here all night if you’d like.’

‘We’re not going anywhere. Rick’s dead. Everyone downstairs is dead. You don’t have much left, kid. It’s impressive what you managed to achieve. Let’s call it a day.’

Gavin laughed, hollow, empty, drawn-out, until it finally tapered down to silence.

Then he said, ‘Oh… you actually thought that speech was going to work? After you killed my grandfather and drove my father and uncle to suicide?’

Slater bristled.

Beside him, so did King.

Slater thought, Did we know that?

It was one piece of a psychological puzzle they hadn’t even begun to decipher. Rick had given them the barebones explanation, and then he’d died.

‘I had everything,’ Gavin said. ‘I had the whole rest of my life ahead of me. And then you two had to go and kill Tommy.’

‘You’re a smart kid,’ Slater said. ‘You could have done anything. Your thug family wasn’t the be all and end all.’

‘What could I do? Start a small business? Start my own organisation just to see it torn down the moment someone like you caught wind of it?’

So that’s it, Slater realised.

That’s what had broken Gavin.

The fact that Slater and King had toppled the Whelan empire so effortlessly. It hadn’t even been their goal, but the law of unintended consequences sometimes fell in their favour. The family had disintegrated, the power had vanished, and depression and suicide had swept through the mafiosos in a wave. And that had ruined Gavin Whelan’s confidence, as it probably would for the rest of his life. He’d figured that as soon as he tried to achieve anything for himself, if it was in any way illegitimate, someone with the skillset that Slater or King possessed would storm in and crush him. For a third-generation mobster with a silver spoon in his mouth, that sort of hopelessness was unacceptable.

For Gavin, there would be no point trying to scrape together a normal life.

The failure, and the depression, had driven him to extremes.

Slater looked around, soaking in the darkness.

Sometimes, this was what extremes led to.

66

Gavin said, ‘You see? Finally I did something worthwhile. Finally I built something on my own. And now it’s going to bring down the city that chewed me up and spat me out.’

King said, ‘Where are the rest of your men?’

‘You’d love to know that.’

‘I can hear the elevator moving behind us.’

Gavin went quiet.

King said, ‘Which makes me wonder what that guy’s doing behind you.’

The oldest goddamn trick in the book.

Gavin didn’t look. He wasn’t that stupid. But he did tense up involuntarily, anticipating that someone he wasn’t familiar with might crack something over his head, or make a lunge for his weapon. That didn’t happen, but his aim drifted an inch to the left.

The kid probably didn’t even notice.

King did.

He pulled the trigger of his MP7 and sent three rounds into Gavin’s thigh, destroying his quadricep, tearing muscle, shattering the femur. The kid collapsed with an ungodly howl and Slater sprinted over and punted the AK47 away, sending it skittering down one of the office hallways. Gavin screamed as he lay there on his side, bleeding profusely, breathing fast, almost hyperventilating. King watched Slater shed his jacket and wrap it tight around the leg. Rudimentary pressure.

Slater stood up, and King raised an eyebrow.

Slater said, ‘I need him alive. I need to know how he did it. And why.’

‘He told you why.’

‘That’s not a real explanation. I want to know exactly why.’

‘You think he’ll talk to you?’

‘Yes,’ Slater said. ‘I think he will. But first…’

He hauled Gavin to his feet, pressed the MP7 barrel to his head, and held him out in front as a human shield. King got the message, and jogged over to their position, a couple of dozen feet away from the elevator behind them. Together they turned to face it, and King stepped in behind Slater and rested his own MP7 on Gavin’s collar bone, using the man as a gun rest.

Gavin whimpered in pain.

Slater said, ‘You haven’t felt anything like that before, have you? I hit you and kicked you, but you’ve never taken a bullet. It’s a whole new level of pain.’

Despite everything, Gavin smiled. ‘You’re fucked now. I was just stalling. You know who’s coming?’

‘No. I assume you do.’

‘Put two and two together,’ Gavin said. ‘Who was I most