My fist connects with his jaw before he can finish the sentence.
His head whips to the side, blood spraying from his nose and mouth. He lets out a wet, choking sound, coughing on it.
I step back, flexing my fingers, letting the sting in my knuckles settle me.
“I imagine,” I say, my voice cold, “that what she asked for was for you to stop, stronzo.”
He whimpers, a pathetic sound, and I allow myself a single breath of satisfaction.
He doesn’t get an easy death.
None of them do.
Survivors live with the memory for a lifetime, the least a man like him deserves is a fraction of that suffering before he leaves this world.
My eyes shift downward.
The tools are set out on a metal table. A coil of wire, a few blades, and to the side, a syringe filled with adrenaline. Everything is arranged. Adriano didn’t miss a single step.
I glance over at him, arching a brow. “All my favourites laid out, mm?”
A knowing smirk tugs at his mouth. “Everything for you, milady,” he replies.
I roll my eyes. “Call me that again and I swear I’ll punch you too.”
He laughs under his breath. Adriano is handsome—the kind of man who could dismantle a woman with a single look, tall, all muscle, ink along his forearms, a trimmed beard, a suit tailored to his shoulders, and a gun always somewhere on him.
But as I’ve said, he has never been my type, though that has never stopped us pretending to be a couple when the situation required it.
I love him as I would family, and I know the feeling is mutual.
I turn back to the man in the chair.
His breath breaks in frantic bursts, panic rising the moment his eyes land on the table and the tools waiting there.
“Please—please—no… no, have mercy—”
“But did you?”
When he stays silent, I narrow my eyes. “Exactly.”
My gaze drifts over the table.
“What shall I use on you first?” I murmur, picking up the thin blade. “This one? Or something slower?”
His entire body trembles. “Please… no.”
I step closer. The blade barely grazes his cheek, yet he jolts as if scorched.
“Did you stop,” I ask, my voice low, “when she asked you the exact same thing?”
He crumples, a broken sound ripping out of him, sobs shaking through his whole pathetic frame.
I breath out, bitter.
“Pathetic,” I murmur. “All you macho men strutting around as if the world should bow for you… yet the second you’re faced with someone who pushes back, you fold. You prey on the weak, but piss yourselves when you meet an opponent.”
I lean in, my eyes cold. “As I said, pathetic.”
