Ryan's hand tightened on the pliers, his knuckles going white.
"Someone above you?" His voice was dangerously quiet. "You think I didn't know that? Tell me exactly what I want to know before I snap your leg next."
Jasper's head lolled forward, blood dripping from his split lip onto his chest. "Twenty years," he gasped. "Twenty years I've been following his orders, building the empire, running the operations, all of it... all of it was him."
Matt stepped closer, his expression sharp with focus. "Who?"
"He's..." Jasper coughed, spitting blood. "He's so cunning, so fucking cunning that he even faked his own death to go after his own family."
The words hung in the air like a bomb waiting to detonate.
Ryan felt something cold settle in his chest. Faked his own death, someone who'd been pulling strings for twenty years, hiding behind Jasper while building an empire on the bones of the Slade organization.
