My eyes flash with rage, my lips curling.
“You’re fucking high if you think I’d ever give you a goddamn thing on my family.”
“Even if it keeps you out of prison?”
“Like I said,” I smile coldly. “Fucking. High.”
She shakes her head sadly. “Like I said, you’re in a rough spot, Kratos. I think you need to face facts. Maybe it’s not your family I want. Maybe it’s the Irish you’re so chummy with.”
“No idea what you’re talking about…cunt.”
Amaya laughs mirthlessly. “Well, I guess we’re going to be changing gears, then.” She takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t care if I threaten you.”
I smile, shrugging. “Not at all.”
“So, here’s what’s going to happen, Kratos. You are going to rat for me. You’re going to get me information on whoever the fuck I want, whenever I want it.”
“Whatever you’re smoking, I’d suggest laying off it a little—”
“If you don’t,” Amaya barrels on, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a stack of manilla file folders. “Then I start going after the people you care about.”
She slaps the first one on the table between us, and my jaw tightens.
Ares’ name is typed across the front of it.
“Wire fraud, witness intimidation, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, weapons charges, racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking—”
“If any of this was anything more than conjecture, my brother would already be behind bars.”
She shrugs, dropping another file on the table. This one has Hades’ name on it.
“More trafficking, more murder, more gun charges, grand theft, grand theft auto, impersonating a federal officer, indecent exposure in a moving vehicle…” She smiles. “Shall I go on?”
“Like I said, if you had anything—”
A third folder drops on the table. My jaw clenches when I see Callie’s name.
“You know what all this is, Kratos?” Amaya smiles. “This is a case under the RICO Act. You know, the shit we use to go after mobsters like you and your family. What it means is, we can connect all of you to a criminal conspiracy and charge you all with everything.”
My pulse starts hammering.
“I don’t have the hard evidence yet, you’re right,” Amaya hisses. “But I will soon. And when I do, if you don’t do what I ask, I’ll put your entire family—your brothers, your sister, even your dear old grandmother—in prison for the rest of their lives. Just think: poor little Elias, growing up without his mommy and daddy, because they’re behind bars.”
Rage explodes behind my eyes. My lips curl into a dangerous snarl as I glare death at this witch of a woman.
“The walls are closing in, Kratos. So: get me something big. I don’t care where you start, or who you throw under the bus. But get me something good, a bigger fish, or I go after the biggest one I have right now, which is you and your family.” Her lips draw to a cold smile. “Do we understand each other?”
She makes for the door.
“Do they know what you are?”
Her head turns back to me. “Who?”
“The CIA,” I growl. “Do they know you’re a fucking predator?”
Amaya holds my gaze with hers. “Really? Is that how you think of me?”
“I don’t think about you at all, you miserable cunt. I was thirteen,” I hiss coldly. “I was a fucking child.”
She rolls her eyes. “As if you didn’t enjoy yourself.”
She turns to leave again.
“What I think you are, Amaya,” I snarl, “is a fucking monster.”
“Takes one to know one, Kratos,” she shoots back. Then she grins. “And I guess that means you do still think of me.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Seeing anyone?”
My hands curl to fists. “Go to hell.”
She snickers quietly as she walks to the door. Right before she opens it, she turns to me again.
“To answer your question, Kratos, they don’t give a shit what I am, so long as I put people like you and your family behind bars. Remember that and do what you’re told like a good boy.” She smirks as she opens the door. “You always were good at that.”
10
