The flame flickers, hungry.
"Option two. You stay. You keep being the sick fuck you've always been. And we come back. But next time, we won't be so gentle."
I bring the lighter closer to the box of photos. The corner of one catches fire immediately, the flame spreading across Sophia's face from where he took a picture from her closet.
"Your choice, Adam. What's it going to be?"
I drop the burning box into the marble fireplace. The photos burn beautifully. All that obsession transforming into ash and smoke.
Adam is sobbing now, tears and snot streaming down his face. "Please," he whispers. "I'll leave. I'll go tonight. I swear, I'll never?—"
Jinx springs off his lap with a grimace. "Ew! This little bitch just pissed himself."
No surprise there.
Jinx decks him harder than he looks like he should be capable of, and Adam's head snaps back so hard I'm surprised it doesn't break his neck. Jinx's rings leave nasty cuts along his lip, but they're already covered in blood and snot from Adam's sniveling, so maybe the cuts are from his fucking teeth punching through.
"What do you think, Tank?" I ask, looking over at my brother. "You think we're letting this asshole off too easy?"
It's a classic routine. Good cop, bad cop. Unfortunately for Adam here, not one of us is good.
Tank nods.
I grin.
"See, Adam, the thing about promises is that they're just words. And words are cheap. We need something more concrete."
I signal to Tank, who produces a pair of zip ties from his jacket.
Jinx holds up an old school digital camera, grinning even wider. "Say cheese, motherfucker."
We slice Adam's clothes off, leaving him shivering and pathetic in his expensive chair and his own piss. Jinx produces a ball gag from somewhere—I've learned not to ask where he gets this shit—and shoves it into Adam's mouth.
Something tells me this is exactly the kind of thing that would get Daddy to write him out of his will.
The camera flashes as Jinx documents everything. Adam in his underwear, tied up and gagged in his own apartment. Adam sobbing, looking exactly like what he is—a broken, pathetic man who preys on women who can't fight back.
"Unlike the pictures Cyrus is scrubbing, these ones are going to live forever," Jinx explains, still snapping photos. "Digital copies, physical copies, copies hidden in places you'll never find. If you ever come back to this city, if you ever contact Sophia or anyone she's so much as poured a fucking latte for, if you ever evenlookat another woman the wrong way... these pictures are going to end up everywhere. Your country club. Your mother's bridge group. The front page of every newspaper in the state. And trust me, we'll fucking find out."
Click. Flash. Click. Flash.
"The psycho twink's not lying," I purr, leaning in. "Imagine trying to explain to your trust-fund buddies why you're trending on social media with the hashtagStalkingLoser."
Adam's muffled sobs are the only sound in the room besides the camera.
We leave Adam tied up in his chair, gagged and humiliated with a butter knife on the side table. By the time he manages to free himself, we'll be long gone. And by the time he thinks aboutcalling the police, he'll remember the pictures and decide that maybe disappearing is the better option after all.
The three of us slip out of the building like we were never there. Cyrus brings the security system back online from his hidden perch, erasing any trace of our presence. The cameras will show nothing but empty hallways and normal building operations.
Back in the car, Tank starts the engine while I light a cigarette. My hands are steady, but the scar on my arm is still burning. It always does after jobs like this. Like it's reminding me why we do this work.
"Another satisfied customer," Jinx says from the backseat, still high on adrenaline. "Think he'll actually leave town?"
"He'll leave," I reply, taking a long drag. "They always leave when you give them a choice between humiliation and death."
"And if he doesn't?"
I flick ash out the window, watching it disappear into the night. "Then we make good on our promise. But we'll take turns watching his place for a few days to make sure he gets the memo."
