I made a point of not reacting as I watched Trent and Johnson watch me. I didn’t see any reason to respond to them since anything and everything I said wouldn’t just be used against me in a court of law but here in this room right now.
“Must have used a condom,” Trent said with a smirk. “We didn’t find any cum on him. I’d heard you were an ass man. I guess that’s true, huh?”
Johnson snickered again as Trent wriggled his eyebrows at me. I tensed my fingers on the arms of the chair but kept my silence.
“I bet your mob buddies would get a kick out of all this, wouldn’t they? Finding out you fucked one of your kills, and a dude at that. What’s that, Arden? I can’t hear ya.”
Johnson snorted and shook his head a bit. He never made eye contact with me, though. He kept all his attention on Trent, awaiting his instructions. However, Trent seemed much more interested in harassing me instead of addressing his partner. He leaned back in the chair until the front two legs came up off the floor.
“So here’s the deal,” Trent said. “With this evidence, I own your sniper-happy ass. That means I call the shots, and when you get out of here, you’re going to go right back to Rinaldo Moretti’s business, and you’re going to help me bring him in.”
I couldn’t hold back any longer—I laughed out loud.
“Did you really think that after being in a hole for eighteen months you could threaten me with prison?” I laughed again. “Fuck you. Fuck you, your DNA evidence, and whatever other shit you think you have on me. None of it makes a fucking difference.”
“Well, all right, you got me there.” Trent dropped the chair back down on the ground with a thump. “I admit I figured you weren’t too scared of the idea of being in chains again. I mean, you get used to it, don’t you? You probably learned to love it.”
I looked away from him and took a deep breath.
“I watched that vid from the other day,” Trent said. “That’s a hot little piece of ass you’ve acquired. Lia Antonio, I believe?”
I turned to him with a glare, trying to threaten him as much as I could with my eyes alone.
“Does she know?” Trent’s voice dropped down low. “Does she know all about your escapades? I bet she’d like to know.”
I continued to glare at him, but inside, my mind was racing. I couldn’t let her find out about me—not like that. Even beyond everything else, I couldn’t let her watch me go to prison with rumors flying that I had fucked the guy I killed.
“I understand her fiancé has put out a missing persons report on her,” Johnson said. His mouth turned up into a bit of a smile.
“Oh, that’s right!” Trent snapped his fingers. “Maybe we’ll just give him a call and let him know where she is.”
“Leave her alone,” I said with deadly calm.
“Don’t think so,” Trent replied. “Frankly, I’m getting tired of playing with you. You don’t want to cooperate, so maybe I’ll go question her and see what she knows.”
“She doesn’t know anything.”
Trent stood up and slammed his briefcase shut.
“I’ll just have to find that out for myself.” He turned to head to the door.
Once again, I knew exactly what he was doing. However, this time it didn’t make any difference. He had me, and we both knew it.
“Wait.” I made eye contact with him as he turned around and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Don’t waste my time,” Trent said.
“There has to be something else I can give you,” I said.
“The offer is as it stands,” Trent replied. “You give me Moretti, and I give you your freedom to go fuck up your life some more. I’ll still be riding your ass for the fun of it because I doubt it will last. You’d have a bit of time to shove your cock in Miss Antonio for a while longer, though.”
“No,” I replied, ignoring his crude remarks. “Another way.”
“I’m not having a fucking debate with you, Arden.”
“Not Moretti.” My mind raced. There had to be an alternative—something else I could do to satisfy Trent that didn’t include bringing down the one person who held my undying loyalty—the one I couldn’t betray. “It…it wouldn’t work. They’d know if I was…doing something different. Out of the ordinary.”
It was a line of bullshit. The people who worked closely with me were used to me doing the unexpected, and anything out of the ordinary would be consider yet another one of my idiosyncrasies.
“Then I’m going to go have a visit with your little lady friend and see just what all she knows about your activities.”
I took a couple of slow, deep breaths to focus myself. I had to think—what else would a man like Trent want? Nothing but a big takedown would work for him, and Moretti was it around here. Maybe if we were in New York and I knew more about the people there, I could offer to infiltrate and bring down an organization larger than Moretti’s but not around here.
But there were other organizations, other families…
“I’ll give you Gavino Greco,” I stated. My eyes met with his. “Not just him, but the Severinovs, his Russian associates. You’d get them all—two families for the price of one.”
Trent eyed me carefully, and I could practically see the little wheels in his head spinning. He didn’t care about Moretti specifically—he was probably just looking for the next big promotion, and any major crime lord bust would work for him.
“How are you going to do that?” he asked.
“That’s my problem, isn’t it?”
“If I don’t believe you can do it, it’s my problem, too.”
“I can do it,” I promised. “Greco will jump at the chance to have me on his side. He has so many enemies, his kill roll has to look like Santa’s shopping list. I can get his trust as far as I would need to.”
“You’ve taken out a few of his people.”
I wasn’t going to respond to such a direct accusation. Even though he had me, and the cameras weren’t rolling, I wasn’t going to make all this shit easy for him. In the back of my head, I was hoping to just bide enough time to figure out what I could do to get both myself and Lia out of this completely.
“He’ll buy it,” I said. “I know he will.”
He leaned over and tapped the tabletop with his finger.
“You think you can do that? Deliver them both to me?”
“Dead or alive?” I asked.
“Alive, asshole. I need a bust, not a body.”
“I can do it,” I said with conviction. “But you stay away from Lia Antonio.”
“I suppose I could agree to that.” Trent nodded. “You get me Greco and Severinov, and I’ll have that DNA evidence removed from the database.”
His nasty little smile came back. I wasn’t stupid enough to trust the asshole, but I had to ask.
“How do I know you won’t just use all that shit against me later?”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Trent said. “You really don’t. That’s not one of my problems, though. You’ll just have to go with how trustworthy I look and hope for the best. You don’t have much of a choice here.”
“You going to let me take care of two families and then continue to suck me dry?”
“If that’s what you’re into,” Trent said with a nod. “I guess we could always go back and look for more evidence farther back in Ashton’s throat. I’ll be in touch, Mister Arden.”
He and Johnson stood together and walked out the door. A minute later, I was taken back to my cell. No one asked me about my busted lip; I was just led quietly back to my cell and tossed inside to come up with what the fuck I was going to do to get out of all of this.