“I’ll tell you who told me where to find you,” he yells out.
Look at him finally all talky.
I throw him a wink. “Good boy.”
He swallows, coughs on blood, then exhales a broken breath. “His name is Sundown,” he rasps. “He’s an Unholy. I paid—”
I run up on him, fury liquid fire pumping through my veins. “Liar,” I roar.
The Unholy are many things, but we’re not traitors.
“I’m not,” he screams. “I swear to God, I’m telling the truth.” He’s panting, wriggling on the hook. “I paid him ten grand, and he told me where to find you. How else would I find you up here?”
The world tilts a bit on its axis as his words penetrate my brain. It’s not a secret that I come here. But for Sundown to sell me out? I don’t want to believe it, even as I know it makes sense. Sundown recently heard Jester teasing me about how only I can handle the Death Star’s isolation. But I can’t deal with this shit right now. Not now. Not when I need a level head to torture and kill George.
Besides, I can’t simply run up on an Unholy and murder him. There are protocols I need to follow. But trust that the fucking second my ass is Mayhem, I’m bringing this to Crow.
Sundown will be dealt with.
“Let’s say I believe you, George. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re gonna die down here, and it’ll be messy.” I slap the wrench against my gloved palm, the metal muffled against the black leather. “Now, where were we?”
George, wisely, whimpers. “No… Fuck.Fuck. Don’t.No.”
“No? You like that word, don’t you? Shame you didn’t use it when the order came in to kill Kerri. Would have saved you a world of agony.” I gesture at him with the wrench. “Now look at you. Hoping I’ll take mercy on you and kill you quick.” Without warning, I swing the wrench, slamming it into George’s right kneecap. The sound of metal hitting bone sounds so satisfying. George’s howl ricochets off the cinder block walls. When I crack the tool against his left kneecap, shattering the joint, George’s entire body jerks and vomit dribbles from his mouth.
I jump back to avoid getting hit with the half-digested contents of his stomach and return to the toolbox to grab the snips.
“Now you won’t be able to kick, you motherfucker,” I growl as I march back to him.
George screams and pleads for his life. I crouch down and slide the tool in place. His pathetic pleas fuel my anger because I know he’d have shot Kerri dead if I hadn’t found him when I’d walked the grounds. I’m not even taking into account the bullet he would have put in me. This here is all about what he would have done to her. That thought has me squeezing my hand around the handle. The metal blades of the snips cut his big toe clean off. The digit settles in the blood and vomit and piss puddling on the plastic, making one hell of a disgusting soup.
But, my God, he won’t shut the fuck up.
A solid punch to George’s face stops his bullshit screeching. The hit breaks his nose and knocks out his front tooth.
Beautiful.
Truly a work of art.
“Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?” I remark, then release a string of curses when I hear the basement door open.
Didn’t I distinctly instruct Kerri to keep her ass upstairs?
“Help me,” George mumbles through his ruined mouth.
A bitch slap across his face silences him. “Don’t make me warn you twice, George.” Then to Kerri, who comes traipsing down the stairs as if she’s not blatantly disobeying me, “You lost, Duchess?”
If she’s horrified by what she sees, she hides it well. After sweeping her dispassionate gaze over the mess I’ve made of George, she shifts her attention to me. “Did you find out what we needed to know?”
“Working on it,” I say with a snap of the snips.
Her booted feet land carefully onto the plastic so she doesn’t slip. She walks right up to George bold as you fucking please. “All this pain, and you still won’t give us answers. Why?”
Her voice is so quiet in the insulated stillness of the basement. And when George shakes his head, a single tear slips from his perfectly intact eye. “I don’t know who sent me.”
Kerri nods her head and releases a sad sigh. “But you did come to kill us.”
George drops his gaze to the floor. To his severed toe. “Yes.” Then he has the audacity to look her dead in the face. “But I swear it was only business.”
