An arm reached over his shoulder and pushed the keyboard away, using the same gloved hand. This time, he felt something drop over his head and snake around his neck. He gasped as the noose pulled tight.
“Wait. Wait. You have to listen to me.” He leapt out of his chair, knocking it backward. “I can pay you. Blom will just use you up and then discard you. At the end of it all, what do you have? A little pension? You can name your price. I’ll pay you whatever you like.”
The noose tightened even more, cutting off his air. Looking up, he could see a rope suspended over one of the many thick open beams he’d admired so much. They were white oak and sanded and oiled to perfection. Now, the huge beams seemed ominous and sinister. He knew he’d never be able to look at them again without remembering this frightening moment. He caught at the rope and tried to yank it down. The rope tightened just enough that he was fighting to breathe. Part of that, he acknowledged to himself, was panic.
“You might want to step up onto your chair there and relieve some of the pressure. I wouldn’t move around too much because the chair rolls.” The bodyguard, Zale had been his name, spoke matter-of-factly.
The pressure of the noose didn’t let up at all. Wallin caught at the arms of his office chair in desperation. Shoving the back of the chair against the desk to stabilize it, he carefully stepped onto the seat. No one helped him. They just watched dispassionately as he put one knee in the chair and tried to pull himself up. All the while the noose grew tighter, cutting off his air.
“I’m trying.” He practically sobbed it. His voice came out a hoarse whisper. The rope hurt. Stung his skin. “You don’t have to do this. We can make a deal.”
“The noose will keep tightening unless you stand up, Wallin.” Zale’s voice was implacable.
“Why are you doing this?” Wallin demanded, trying to take some control back. “Don’t you know who I am? The kind of money I have?” His legs shook terribly and felt like rubber. He actually feared he would embarrass himself by wetting his ten-thousand-dollar suit.
The two men remained silent, just watching him with their cold, merciless eyes. The noose seemed to have a mind of its own, pulling tighter—or maybe he was imagining it. He forced himself to struggle into a standing position, balancing precariously on the seat. The chair wobbled, but it held against his desk. Although the noose constricted his air, it had stopped cinching tighter.
“Vienna belongs to me,” Zale said softly. “I would have been here just for the agents you had killed. They were friends of mine. Friends of Rainier’s. But then you decided it wasn’t enough for you. You got greedy and went after Vienna.”
“You killed my only son, Axel. And you killed Larsen,” Wallin retaliated. He just needed to look at this as a business deal. Use his voice. He could persuade anyone with his voice. Normally, he would have been able to get their rhythm and twist their thinking into doing his bidding, but these men with their cold-blooded demeanors had thrown him.
“Actually, Vienna killed Axel,” Zale clarified. “I did kill Larsen. He was very persistent about carrying out your orders.”
“We’re even. I’ll rescind the order to have her killed. I can call off my cousins, the Bottaro family. They would never let this go, but I can dissuade them.” Daniel threw out the name of his relatives. Few knew he was related to the notorious family, but now was a good time to point out they would have relentless enemies.
Zale’s dark eyes moved over his face. He looked for all the world like the grim reaper. “They’ve been dissuaded. Vienna’s part of Sam Rossi’s family. You must have heard of the Rossi family out of New York. They’re powerful and very well connected.”
Daniel’s heart dropped. His connection to the Bottaro family had always been his last resort and one he thought guaranteed to keep him safe.
Rainier was the one to inform him. “Sam’s father was at the wedding when Bottaro’s men showed up. We were waiting for just such a move. Personally, I wanted to kill them all. We had them surrounded and could have picked them off easily, but Marco Rossi had other ideas. He called Fredrick Bottaro and they had quite a little chat. Apparently, Fredrick wanted a truce with the Rossi family more than he wanted to exact revenge for Axel.”
That would be like Fredrick. He was nothing like his father. And he’d never liked Axel or Daniel in spite of all the money that poured in from the Northern Lights.
Okay, he had to put a stop to this before it was entirely out of hand. Grasping at the rope with the tips of his fingers in an effort to loosen it, he pitched his voice low, attempting to use the hypnotic, mesmerizing tones he knew could crawl into a man’s mind and turn them to his bidding.
“You want to release me and take the jobs I’ve offered you. The money sounds good to you.”
Rainier shook his head and slid off the edge of his desk. “He’s trying that heebie-jeebie garbage Vienna told us about with his voice. I can hear it trying to get into my head.”
“Same here,” Zale said. “Good thing we listened to her. We’re wearing ear distortion plugs to keep your voice from affecting us in any way. So, no, we’re not taking your jobs and we don’t want your money. We’re not going to shoot each other either.”
He shoved the chair with his foot as Rainier used the mechanical pulley to raise the rope higher into the air, leaving Daniel Wallin dangling. His legs kicked uselessly and his hands tore at the rope that had tightened so that he was dizzy and seeing black spots. It happened so fast there was nothing he could do to combat it.
“So sad that you became so despondent that you committed suicide rather than face the charges of murder that you knew were going to be coming your way once the law firm brought everything out into the open,” Zale said.
Daniel tried to tell them he’d never take his own life. He didn’t believe in that.
“We’ll leave the remote in your hand, Wallin, so you can lower the rope when we’re gone,” Rainier said. He reached up with an outstretched gloved hand. “Elliot sends his regards.”
Daniel did his best to take the remote from him. He felt it in his hand and he tried to find the button that would lower the rope. He moved his fingers everywhere over the surface of the thing, but his strength was failing and the remote slipped to the floor. He heard it, but he couldn’t see. His lungs burned for air.
There was no way to scream his defiance. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be happening. Not to him. It couldn’t be. Not Daniel Wallin. No one had ever caught him no matter how many lives he’d ended. He wouldn’t accept this even as his brain refused to function any longer.