But I knew this wasn’t healthy. I needed to let him go. But this wouldn’t end with him walking out of there alive. First of all his ass couldn’t walk. Those legs he used to run game on women no longer worked. Even with surgery, he would likely never gain mobility again.
Besides, Zahara would never walk again either. At this point I’ve dealt him a worse fate than my sister received. He fucked with the wrong one. But the time was coming to an end. It was time to kill him and get it over with.
The warehouse smelled rank and disgusting. When I finally killed him, I’d have to thoroughly clean it out and leave the door open to let it breathe.
I parked around back, checked my mirrors twice, and went in through the side entrance with my gun in one hand and a bag of food in the other.
There he was on the floor, curled on his side with his back to me. His legs hadn’t worked right since I destroyed his knees, andthe muscle in his arms had wasted down to almost nothing from six months of not using them. His hair was matted, his beard had grown wild, and he smelled like a man who had given up on everything except hate.
I set the bag on the floor outside the cage. Turkey sandwich, water bottle, an apple. I wasn’t trying to give him a five-star meal, but I wasn’t trying to starve him to death either. That would be too easy for him and too merciful for me.
“Eat,” I said.
He didn’t move for a few seconds. Then he rolled over slowly and looked at me with those eyes that used to make me feel beautiful and now made me feel nothing at all. He’d lost weight everywhere except his face—his cheeks were hollow but his eyes were still the same. Still sharp, still calculating, still looking for the angle even from inside a dog cage with shattered knees.
“You know what I think about every day?” His voice was hoarse and dry. He hadn’t spoken to anyone but me in six months and it showed. “I think about the day I get out of this cage. And the first thing I’m gonna do is find you. And I’m gonna slit your throat so slow you’ll feel every inch of the blade. Then I’m gonna stand over you and watch you bleed out the same way you stood over me when you bashed my knees.”
I crouched down to his level. Looked him right in the face through the bars. “You can’t even stand up, Thad. You’re not slitting anybody’s anything.”
“I’ll crawl to you if I have to.”
“With what arms? You can barely lift that sandwich.” I pushed the bag through the slot at the bottom of the cage. “Eat your food.”
He knocked the bag sideways with his elbow, spilling the sandwich onto the floor of the cage. The water bottle rolled to the far corner. The apple sat there between us like a dare.
“I’m not eating shit from you,” he said.
“Then starve.”
I stood up and walked to the wall where the hose was coiled on a hook. I turned the spigot and the water came out ice cold. I dragged the hose to the cage and aimed it through the bars.
“Wait—wait, Mehar, don’t?—”
I opened the nozzle. The water hit him full force and he screamed—a sound that was half rage and half shock—and tried to shield his face with his arms but his arms were too weak to hold up for long. The water soaked through his clothes and pooled on the concrete floor of the cage and he curled into a ball with his back to me, shaking, gasping, cursing my name between coughs.
I held the hose on him for about thirty seconds. Long enough to clean him. Long enough to remind him who was in charge. Then I turned it off and coiled the hose back on the hook.
“You stink,” I said. “Now eat the sandwich or don’t. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
He didn’t say anything. Just lay there on his side in a puddle of cold water, shivering, with his eyes closed and his fists clenched. Six months ago he was a man who drove an Audi and wore Versace and had two women. Now he was a wet animal in a cage who couldn’t feed himself without my permission.
I should’ve felt something. Guilt or satisfaction or pity or triumph. But I felt the same thing I always felt when I left the warehouse—empty. The same hollowness that followed me out of the dungeon after a client left. The same nothing that Janelle kept trying to help me fill with something other than control.
I locked the warehouse, got in my car, and sat there for a minute with my hands on the steering wheel. My phone buzzed.
Serenity:Heyyyy girl. I miss you. Dinner tonight? My treat.
I hadn’t seen her in almost three weeks. We used to live together, used to talk every day, used to be so close that you didn’t need to make plans because you were always in eachother’s space. But ever since she moved in with Mega, the distance had grown. Not because we stopped caring about each other but because her life had shifted into an orbit that didn’t include me the way it used to.
Me:Yeah I’m down. Where?
Serenity:Founding Farmers? 7?
Me:See you there.
I went home, showered off the warehouse, changed into jeans and a fitted top, and drove to Founding Farmers on Pennsylvania Ave. The restaurant was crowded for a weeknight, but Serenity had already gotten us a booth near the back. I spotted her before she spotted me and the first thing I clocked was her eyes.
Her pupils were too wide. Her movements were a little too loose, a little too animated. She was talking with her hands more than usual and her laugh was pitched higher than normal. I’d seen this version of Serenity enough times to know what it meant. She was high.
