Dalliance - Z.M. (An Exquisites Original Story)

68; Why'z It So Hard

Chapter 68

"Baby, you got too much to offer.
That's probably why they want you in a coffin."

(Raine's POV)

I set my sniper down beside me on the desk to bring a fresh cigarette up to my mouth. Valencia is sat beside me as both of us watch the scene unfold in front of us. She lights my cigarette before doing the same with hers, laughing wickedly under her breath.

"Tell us what you know!" Dario shouts in the face of the poor bastard we found when we raided this facility. As soon as we infiltrated the base, the majority of the staff working in Moon's informational base fled as fast as they could. By the time we passed the gates, there were only a handful of people who weren't quick enough hiding in one of the empty closets. Dario and Kai had tied their hands behind their backs and forced them on their knees to interrogate them. It has been nearly half an hour of Dario's incessant questioning and neither one of them has spoken.

"You two mind?" Andrés asks Val and I who are sitting on the desk that he is trying to work on. His laptop is pressed against Valencia's back but she seems unfazed, merely smirking at the disruption we're causing.

"Sorry," I toss my head back to smile at him, passing my cigarette over to him. "Wanna smoke?"

He doesn't look necessarily pleased that we aren't taking him seriously, but there's a small part of him that also knows that this task is a joke so he takes the bud. We've been in this base for the better part of an hour and we have found nothing. Not one file, code, or hint that could possibly give us any leads as to where Ana is hiding. Just like I predicted, this half-assed raid was a dead end.

"How long we gonna be here?" Valencia asks Dario as she spins her pistol around the tip of her finger like it's a basketball. As soon as we had walked into the building with ease, Valencia got bored. When there are no shots actively firing against her, she doesn't get the thrill she so clearly survives on.

"When one of these motherfuckers starts talking," Dario barks as Kai throws a punch at the bloody man who has yet to say a single word. Two of his colleagues are clearly following his lead because they haven't said anything either, though the fear in their eyes tells me they will cave if just the right amount of pain is inflicted on them.

Andrés passes me back my cigarette. "I don't think that's happening any time soon."

"Where are Zayn and Apollo? Shouldn't they be in here, making them talk," Valencia interrogates.

"Who the hell knows?" Kai pants, rubbing his bloody knuckles on his tee shirt. At this point, torturing these silent assholes is taking more out of him than it is them. At this, I prop my cigarette in the corner of my lips and grab my sniper. My boots clank against the wooden floor in a menacing rhythm and all the hostages turn their heads to look at me. I smile.

One of the hostages sits taller when they glance at my face up close and realize I look exactly like their boss. He opens his mouth to say something but the stubborn man elbows him and shakes his head once. Lifting my sniper, I press it against the forehead of the one that seems to be calling all the shots. His eyes are stone hard as he glares at me as if he is holding all the cards. If he weren't met with the ice in me, I might have shivered.

"Raine," Kai warns. We are under strict orders by Zayn not to kill anyone until he has a chance to talk to them, but as of this afternoon, he is no longer the only one calling the shots. Apollo and Zayn had both reinstated me as one of the heads of this operation which means I don't need permission from anyone to do what I think is right.