“I’ll take that as a no, George.” I make a shallow puncture in his flesh with the tip of the blade. “Let me tell you about the villain, Mick. See, Mick, he’s a sick fuck who likes to do a procedure he calls Head on a Stick. It involves severing the spine right about here.” I wiggle the blade. “Renders the body useless while the brain remains fully functional.” I lean in and whisper in his ear, “Head. On. A. Stick.”
I eye the knife. Smile at the honed edge. “See, the thing is, we do movie nights, my friends and I. We watched this one a few weeks ago. Got me all excited to try this technique. Fun for me.” I dig the blade in deeper. Twist it and savor his hiss of pain. “Maybe not so much fun for you.”
“You’re insane,” he breathes, clearly—and rightly—horrified.
I pull out the knife and walk back around to face him. Hover the bloody blade inches from his face. “And you’re oddly tight-lipped about who hired you for someone who still has two perfectly good eyeballs.”
“Oh, fuck.” George recoils as much as he’s able. It’s not much. His bare toes, sans nails, scrape against the floor, sliding through the urine puddle as he tries to step back. He fails miserably at trying to avoid me. But he does a fantastic ballerina imitation, swinging forward with a groan. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”
“Nah, I don’t believe you.” I run the blade over his left cheek. Leave a nice slice in the knife’s wake. His cry of pain is music throughout the chaotropic torture room. “Let’s try this again, George. Who.” I jab the tip of the knife into his right armpit. “Sent.” I punctuate this word with a shallow stab to his left thigh. “You.”
George gives a frantic shake of his head. Sweat and blood soak his brown hair. “I told you already,” he rasps. “All I got was this location and the people I had to…” He sucks in a rattled breath. Heaves it out on a wheeze. “The person I had to kill. I swear to God, I don’t know who hired me. I found the job on the dark web and won the bid for it. That’s all.”
As he’s said. Four times.
Impressive.
Liar, liar, I’ll set him on fire.
No one is this loyal to an anonymously posted hit-for-hire. No matter how this plays out, this ends with George dead. He came here intending to murder a woman. For that alone, I’d kill him. His shitty luck is that he came for thewrongwoman.
My woman.
For that, I need to hurt him extra special.
“How do those toes feel?” I nod at the gory digits. Point at them with the knife. “They must sting something terrible right about now.”
Especially after I doused them with the table salt. Yeah, that didn’t tickle. “Bet if I trimmed a little off the tops of them, they’d feelsomuch better.”
The color drains from George’s face. “Don’t.”
I take a menacing step toward him. “Think I will.”
“Fuck. Oh, fuck.” He struggles so violently against his binds I’m shocked his arms don’t snap. “Don’t, please.”
I suck my teeth and step back. Examine my handiwork. “Do you want me to cut the tip off of something else?” I wink pointedly at his crotch. His face contorts into a mask of horror. Makes me wish I had a photographic memory because I want to capture his expression with crystal clarity.
I stroll the short distance to the rolling toolbox. It’s where we keep a small collection of fun little toys to disfigure a body.
As I slap the knife on top of the metal box, the clang reverberates throughout the room. Think I’ll go with my metal snips. Stalk back to George. “Are you going to be a baby about this?”
“Just fucking kill me, man.”
“Why the hell would I do that?” I slap him upside the head. “Killing you will end the fun.”
“I don’t know who wants the girl dead.”
Outwardly, I feign indifference. Inwardly, I’m a powder keg about ready to explode over this sonofabitch’s audacity to come tomyfucking sanctuary to assassinate my motherfucking duchess.
This idiot got the rules skewed in his stupid brain.
The Unholy do the killing.
Anyone foolish enough to go against us does the dying.
“See, here’s the thing, George.” I try to get in close with the snips, but he kicks out at me, putting the strain of his body weight on his cuffed wrists. “Even if Ididbelieve you, you still came here to kill a woman. A woman, George. I don’t even sink that low, and trust me, I’ve done some fucked up shit in my life.”
Extra courage points to George for putting up a good fight to keep his toes out of the tool. Unfortunately for him, I’m fresh out of patience. I take the snips back to the rolling toolbox and fish out a nice, big wrench. The metal is long, cold, and heavy in my fist. I stroll back and take a practice swing like a baseball player getting ready to bat.
