“So you thought, what? Just because Andrea gave you my location, that I wouldn’t fuck you up if you actually showed your face here?” A sweat broke out across his forehead. To his benefit, he hadn’t started whimpering too much, despite his obviously crushed nose and bullet wound. He must have smashed his face against the window when the wheels were blown out, judging from the red smear on the inside. My hand snapped to the frontof his throat, and I hoisted Elio up to slam his back against the driver’s door. The hit knocked his breath from his lungs. “I’m gonna enjoy dragging out your death as long as feckin’ possible. We’re gonna go for the Guinness World Record of most resuscitations on a single body. Oh, maybe we’ll make it a little competition between you and Gabriele!”
Despite the glare Elio tried to maintain, a heavy shudder shook his body in my grasp. The toes of his expensive dress shoes barely scuffled against the ground as I lifted him higher. “You… can’t kill me,” he sputtered. His face was turning a deep shade of red from lack of air.
Every cell of my body was repulsed at being even this close to my former abuser. The urge to retch in his face was riding me hard. I managed to lean more of my weight on his throat hard enough to have him gasping for air and gripping my wrist with both hands in a sad attempt to break loose.
“Watch me, bitch.” And with my other hand still holding the Glock, I whipped the shit out of his temple with it. Elio Messina, a man who’d haunted my dreams the last ten years of my life, slumped in my grip with one measly hit, unconscious. I let his body drop heavily to the ground and stepped back. “Get him tied up and loaded in the trunk,” I barked at three Riot members nearby. One hurried off to the SUV Taylor requested, and the other two moved closer with their guns aimed at Elio’s limp body and loomed over him. “I’ll take care of the police and meet you at the warehouse. Someone bring Gabriele too. Knock his ass out first.”
They responded as one, “Yes, boss.”
It was barely dusk when I pulled into the warehouse compound with my small group of Riot guards. I had gone down to thestation to meet with the chief and sort out the details of Elio’s presence in Vegas. Generally speaking, the LVPD didn’t involve itself in matters related to the Red Riot or its subsidiaries. Considering the general crime rate had gone down since we’d settled in Vegas, it was an uneasy truce to leave us be when shit like this went down. But when we did have higher-than-usual activity, I had to check in and give information for the reports, so there was some semblance of justice being enforced. At the moment, they were more pissed about all the collisions and traffic jams caused by Gabriele chasing me down. Those were a little harder to explain away. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then, not just a day.
I also called Doc to check on Grant. He had slept for most of the day with no issues, which brought a relief I hadn’t realized I needed until I hung up the phone and breathed a sigh that loosened my shoulders. His bite mark had already healed, leaving a perfect impression of his teeth, right down to the crooked left canine I loved to stare at when he smiled. Blood still stained my skin around it.
Gabriele and Elio were tied to chairs set in the center of the massive warehouse, facing each other. Stacked boxes were pushed to the walls to leave plenty of space for a car to drive in for cleanup. Someone had placed a rolling cart beside them with my favorite tools of torture, along with a couple buckets of water on its lower shelf. One of them was half-filled with ice as well. I grabbed that bucket and, standing far enough away to avoid the backsplash, tossed the frigid water on Elio’s slumped body. He came to sputtering and gasping beneath the soaked bag on his head, pulling against his ties enough to realize he wasn’t going anywhere. His ankles were zip-tied to the chair’s legs, and his hands were wrenched behind him, strapped to the back so they weren’t touching. Gabriele was still slumped over, oblivious to the world with a matching black cloth sack covering his face.
“What the fuck! Where the fuck am I?” His eyes rolled like a scared cow as his nostrils flared wide. Then his gaze settled on me, and he started cursing. “Let me go,stupida puttana inutile!When your father finds out what you did, he’ll–”
My boot landed squarely between his legs, kicking his balls hard enough to send him sliding back a couple feet as his howls filled the space. “Really,” I scoffed. “That’swhat you’re going with? You’re going to tell my daddy? Fuck you, Elio! That man hasn’t been my father since the day he sold me off toyou!” I snatched a stiletto blade from the cart and twirled it around my fingers. Elio watched its path with something close to concern. “What I want to know is, how long have you and Andrea been jerking each other off? You must have offered up something pretty juicy to tempt him to try feckin' me over. Chicago isn’tthatfar away…”
Elio’s eyes narrowed, and he tilted his chin to a stubborn angle. “I’m not telling you shit, you–” He finally registered his son sitting across from him. “What the fuck? Who is that?” Italian streamed from his mouth, spittle flying with whatever he was desperately trying to communicate to an unconscious Gabriele. “You bitch! Is that Gabriele? What did you do to him?”
The rest of his vile insults were cut short when the blade in my hand ended up buried in his right eyeball. Watching it pop and ooze down his face as he screamed had to be one of the hottest things I’d ever seen, aside from anything associated with my mate. One hand wrapped around to grip Elio’s sweat-drenched hair as I slowly drew the blade back out with a wetshlepsound. The remnants of his eye dangled from the blade’s tip, and I flicked it to the ground. It hardly looked different from hocked mucus spat on the dirty concrete. The scream that tore itself from his throat was a balm on my blistering rage. Peace washed over me, seeing one of those lecherous eyes he dared to leer atme with now nothing more than a blob on the floor. That was a lifetime ago, and I was a woman resurrected out of pure spite.
“Wanna try that again?”
Elio's whimpers and sniffles mixed with the strained gasps sawing from his mouth. With the tip of the blade, I nudged him under the chin and tilted his head back up from where it hung so I could admire my handiwork. The torn hole where his eye used to be gaped wide as blood poured down his cheek, turning half his face into a bloody mess. Gradually, I sank the tip into the soft skin of his throat until more beads of his blood welled beneath it. He swallowed hard and I dug it in even deeper.
“What’s Andrea planning, hm?” I asked, my voice sickly sweet. Even with a knife at his throat, I could see his nose flare wide to take my scent in as I moved ever so slightly closer. This sick fuck never got over me, it seemed. A crazed obsession he couldn’t let go of. But mixed with that unhinged fixation was a hatred that still burned in his remaining eye, which brought back some vivid memories of when I was in his position, sitting in his lustrous penthouse while he tortured me for days on end.
That girl wasn’t alive anymore, though. The Lorelai that Elio was able to do such horrific things to threw herself off a balcony into a cold sea. And the merrow that had been reborn from that trauma had spent the last ten years gaining enough power to be in this reversed role now. And I just… wasn’t interested anymore. It was nice to see him writhe in agony like a worm on a hook, but the satisfaction I’d hoped for wasn’t in the room with me. I had built my whole identity around this moment, this chance to exact my revenge, and I couldn't muster more than mild disgust at the sniveling men that starred in so many of my nightmares. Men like Elio and Gabriele couldn't scare me now.
I wanted to go back to Grant. This was a waste of time I could have spent being with him. Maybe I just needed a swap out of tools. Instead of pulling the blade straight back out of his neck,I jerked the handle hard to the right and ripped a massive hole just below the edge of his jaw, barely missing his jugular vein. Elio whined behind gritted teeth at the fresh pain.
“You’re not built for this kind of life, Lorelai,” he snarled, his voice hoarse from all the screaming. “You’ve always been too soft, too cautious. You don’t have the balls to survive long inourworld! You will always be a little fucking girl!” Truly, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself to believe the delusions he spewed.
I scoffed, amused at his empty insults. “You’re as stupid as ever, Elio.” My fingers wrapped around the cool metal of my weapon of choice, the familiar weight of it soothing the slow boil of rage simmering low in my chest. I swung the tire iron around my wrist in a slow arc as I turned back to where Gabriele slumped, ripping the covering off of his head. Elio’s single eye flickered back and forth from my face to the iron, like he was confused why I had it. “As you said, I've built an empire even my piece-of-shit father would be proud of. No thanks to you, of course. And I’m not letting you have another opportunity to abuse another girl like you did me.”
Without giving any indication, I gripped the iron with both hands and brought it down across Gabriele’s right knee. It caved with a satisfyingcrack. He bent over as far as the ties holding him back would allow—which wasn’t very far, maybe a couple inches off the chair back—and a shrill scream burst forth from his lips as he came awake. Then the sniveling and screaming began, interspersed with rapid-fire Italian until the iron came down on his other knee. His splotchy face was streaked with tears, and spit dribbled from his mouth from the pain. Those legs were never going to walk again.
“Should I make you count?” I asked sweetly. “Maybe we can start with ten hits and go from there? I think my highest was seventy when you whipped me, was it not? Hmm,” myvoice hummed contentedly, almost drowned out by Gabriele’s whimpering. “I wonder how manyyoucan take? I’m sure you, of all people, know a good Dom has to sub at least once.” Not that he was even remotely close to being a Dominant when it came to sex. He was a sad little man who got his rocks off on making his partners suffer.
Elio’s shoulders heaved with his struggling breaths. His blond hair hung in greasy strands, far from the elegant coif he usually swept them into. But he lifted his head just enough to shoot me a hate-filled glare through that nasty curtain around his face. I was expecting him to be a little more torn up at watching his eldest son get beaten on. Once a piece of shit, always a piece of shit.
“Man, you’ve seen better days, huh?”
Taylor strolled in from the direction of the parking lot, hands shoved into the pockets of his gray slacks, and he gave a low whistle at the sight. The door he came through slammed shut with a solidthud,and one of the Riot members guarding it stepped back into place. His shoulder brushed against mine as he stepped up to my side with another Riot member trailing behind, eyeing the iron now resting across my nape with my wrists looped around both ends. His lips quirked a knowing smirk.
“I just got off the phone with Jerel. He’s working on a docket to send to the Assembly about what all went down thanks to this asshole.” Taylor’s nose wrinkled as he looked down at Elio’s bloodied face. “He thinks you will be in the clear as far as punishment goes. We can prove this attack was entirely unprovoked. The main Caruso family may be an issue on their own, but that's a bridge we can cross later.”
Elio let loose a low whine. Without looking down, I let the iron swing with one hand to bash against Elio’s right shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. Another wave of howling screams erupted from his mouth, his voice cracking pitifully. Elio thrashed asmuch as he could, but those ties held strong even against his shifter strength. He wasn’t going anywhere. Gabriele just sat there whimpering like a helpless little pussy. I’d seen sex workers deal with worse shit than this and come back swinging.
“Want a turn?”
Taylor scoffed. “Nah, I don’t think I’d stop if I started wailing on these assholes.” He spat a glob that landed right on Gabriele’s broken leg, just above the knee I was working on. “You weren’t answering your texts, so I thought I’d come in and let you know Grant was looking for you. He’s a little more coherent now.”
I’d wanted to fuck up Elio and his devil spawn some more before Grant woke up again. He didn’t want to take anything that knocked him out for a long time, according to my previous check-in with Doc about an hour before coming into the warehouse. Grant wanted to wait until I was back to fall asleep. I was torn between fulfilling a decade-long goal, and leaving to comfort the man who loved me despite the hatred that fueled me for so long.
A noisy breath left through my nose. Glaring at the men I’d once feared as monsters, tied to chairs and totally helpless, my answer was abundantly clear. I shoved the tire iron at Taylor’s chest and turned sharply for the door. One of my black-gloved hands landed heavily on his shoulder, and I looked up at his shocked face with my own expression of peace.
