“What do you want?” asked Tyler, chained to the table before them.
“You need to be nice,” smirked Finn. “See, we’re friends with NOPD. They’ll happily turn the cameras off while I beat you to a fucking pulp for even thinking about taking my fiancée.”
“Fiancée? Oh.” He stared at the three identical brothers, then the other men leaning against the wall. “I didn’t touch Willa.”
“Not for lack of trying, that’s for sure,” said River. “You know, for a middle-aged professor, you were moving pretty well out there.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” he frowned.
“You had help,” said Finn. “Someone was getting you through the crowds and down streets that were hard for us to get to. Who was it?”
“No one was helping me,” he said staring at the men defiantly.
“Someone was helping you. You’re not smart enough to have figured all this out by yourself. Plus, your mother said you liked having help.”
He stretched his hands against the chains, trying to reach across the table but Finn didn’t move, just staring at him.
“Don’t you speak of my mother,” he growled.
“Your mother? Oh, Esther. The lovely woman who was nearly beaten to death by her husband, stripped of her flesh on her back, and treated like an animal. That mother?”
Tyler leaned back in the chair, staring at the men. He knew that Helker was brutal. Unnaturally cruel but he silently prayed that his mother would be spared his cruelty. He wasn’t sure why he believed she would be.
She’d been his one constant as a young man. Always there, always helping his father. At the time, he wasn’t aware that she was his father’s second wife. She was just mother to him.
As a boy, Tyler often struggled with his father’s orders and it was his mother that would take the beatings for him. As a mother should.
“Where is she? What have you done with my mother?” he asked.
“We saved her and killed that bastard she was married to. She won’t have to go back there ever. Ever!” said Quinn.
“They’ll look for her. We don’t like losing our property.” He swallowed his emotions and sat up straighter. “That’s all she is. Property.”
“We’ll be sure to tell her that when we send her somewhere safe,” said Ham.
“Nowhere is safe. Not for her,” said Tyler.
“I’m losing patience with you, professor. One more shot or we turn off the cameras,” said Finn.
Tyler was trying to show bravado but he was failing miserably. The sweat on his forehead told them that he was faking it all. Kev reached across the table, gripping the man’s hand, crushing his fingers together with a vice-like grip.
“No! No, not my hands!” he cried out.
“Not your hands?” frowned Kev. “You won’t be using your hands if you have your way. You’ll convince some poor woman to become your slave and brutalize her just like Helker brutalized your mother.”
“Shut up!” he yelled crying and squirming, begging for release. Kev gave one more squeeze, hearing more cracking and released the man’s deformed hand.
“That looks like it hurts,” grinned River.
“You’re crazy! You’re all crazy! A man has the right to seek a wife that meets his expectations,” said Tyler.
“Meets your expectations? You treat your wives like dogs and according to your own mother, you’ve been killing women since you were a teenager,” said Finn.
“My mother isn’t right in the head,” he muttered.
“She’s as right as a woman who’s been through hell can be,” he frowned.
“He’s got another hand,” said Kev. “I don’t mind.”
