“You good?” Seth said, trying to catch his eye line.
“So good,” Bryson said. “You?”
The three of them laughed.
“What are we doing, Bryce? How much longer can you hold on?” Kaydon asked him.
Pleading.
Bryson shook his head. It was a slight shake, so small he hoped Kaydon was the only one who noticed it. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that this room didn’t have cameras or microphones. Regan was a control freak.
A next-level control freak.
Ever since the altercation in his cell, Bryson hadn’t laid eyes on Sabin. Sometimes he wondered what happened to him. But then he remembered he didn’t give a shit.
Kaydon got the message, although he looked like he wanted to argue.
Bryson said, “Do you remember Mavric?”
Kaydon shot Seth a look, and they both frowned their brows in unison. Bryson just stared at them, willing them to put it together.
“I remember him,” Seth said.
Good boy.
“What about him?” Kaydon said, hesitantly.
Bryson leaned his head against the bars, looking at the iron-lined ceiling. “He was such a hard fucker to get into a room with.”
After Bryson’s father had orchestrated the sanctioned attack on his sister because she was pregnant, Bryson and Kaydon had gone to meticulous lengths to ensure each of the five men in that room met their maker.
Killing them would have been easy, but they had the added complication of needing it to look like an accident. Mugging. Hooker gets revenge. Insulin overdose. Car accident.
It took five years, but they got it done. All except Mavric.
Mavric was one of his father’s favorites. And for some reason, they never could get him.
At first, Bryson thought he was on to them. But in the end, it was more simple than that. Mavric was just a homebody. He never left. He didn’t party, he didn’t date, and he never needed anything that the manor didn’t provide.
It took Bryson months of watching him to learn his one weakness.
Bryson.
“But you two never got a chance to get close,” Kaydon said, leaning into the bars, hands clinging to the metal.
Two dates and Mavric invited Bryson back to his place.
The audacity.
The man who had raped and attacked his sister thought that he would bring Bryson home for a romantic encounter. Bryson didn’t feel the least bit bad when he wrapped the belt around Mavric’s throat and tied it to the bar in his closet.
He had knelt down in front of the man. Watched his breathing slow and his eyes bulge. Bryson enjoyed the few moments of clarity that hit Mavric right before his eyes dimmed and he slowly ran out of air.
It wasn’t as painful as Bryson would have liked. He had to drug Mavric in order to make him pliable enough, but it was still satisfying to see a monster like that take his last shuddering breath.
Erotic asphyxiation gone wrong.
“It never would have worked anyway,” Bryson said, looking at Kaydon.
