His throat bobs. His breath shudders.
“You know what happens to little voyeurs who don’t ask permission?”
He sobs. I slam his head against the wall again. The crack echoes down the stairwell, a sharp, final sound. Blood drips from his nose, hot and bright against the grey concrete. He crumples to his knees, gasping, coughing, shaking like a leaf in a storm.
I squat in front of him, tilting his chin up with the barrel of the gun.
“You watched her.” His breath stutters. “You watched her beg for me.” His jaw trembles. “You think that makes you part of us?”
“N-No—please—I won’t—I won’t?—”
I jam the gun between his teeth. His sob cuts off into a metallic rattle. His eyes go wide with panic, the whites showing all the way around. His hands claw at the barrel, shaking his head, but I push deeper until I hear his lips split.
“Tell me,” I murmur, low, steady. “Did you like watching her cum for me?”
He gags. Chokes. The scent of his fear is filling the stairwell now, sour and thick. I cock the gun. The sharp, mechanical click makes him jolt so hard his teeth clatter against the steel.
“Because I didn’t give you permission to cum,” I whisper.
His tears spill fast now, hot tracks through the dust on his face. I drag the gun out of his mouth, slow and deliberate, wiping the spit and blood across his hoodie.
“You think you’re going to leave here?” I ask, my voice soft, almost intimate. “You think you’re going to walk away?”
He sobs, crawling backward on his haunches, pressing himself against the cold stairwell wall as if he could disappear into it.
I aim at his knee. Fire.
The shot cracks the silence like a whip. His scream slices through the air, raw and agonising. I watch him writhe, his hands clenching around his shattered knee, his body folding over the pain.
I lower the gun. I don’t need it anymore.
I drag him by the collar, slamming him face-first into the ground. His sobs choke out of him, wet and broken. I press my boot into the back of his head, feeling the tremor of his skull against my sole.
“You know what happens to little thieves who touch what’s mine?”
His answer is a muffled, panicked sound. I grind my boot harder.
“You don’t get to leave fingerprints.” I lean into the pressure until he sobs harder. “You don’t get to breathe my air.” I press until I feel the edge of the bone shift. “You don’t get to walk where she walks.” His body convulses under me. “You get erased.”
I pull my blade from my belt. The steel reflects the dim light, a silver promise of silence. I make sure he sees it. I make sure he knows.
The cut is clean. Deep. Perfect.
He screams when the tip of the blade drags over his palm, opening the skin to the bone. I slice the skin again. And again. And again.
No more fingerprints. No more touch. No more trace.
“You think you were playing his game,” I whisper, crouching low beside him, dragging the blade across his sleeve to clean the worst of the gore. “But you were just a pawn. Just bait.”
I slam his hand against the ground. The wet slap of it makes him sob louder.
“You were disposable.”
He gasps. Spits blood. Begs. But I’ve already erased him.
And when I’m satisfied, when his voice is gone, when the floor is slick with his panic, I stand. I clean the blade on his hoodie. I holster my gun.
I don’t look back. Because he wasn’t the one I needed. He was just a message. A warning. And I’m going to make the man who sent him choke on that mistake.
