And Daniel… he has his own debt to pay. If she wants to tell him how she feels, then he will hear it. She will get the pieces of him until the day she remembers that once, she felt nothing for him at all.
Two days have passed since I saw her, and there is a good reason for that. My hands have been full of her dead fiancé, Daniel Grant. The man who is not as dead as everyone believes.
I walk into the basement, and the smell of rotting flesh and rusted metal hits my nostrils. Daniel hangs from the chains, his body swinging, every movement dragging another broken whimper out of him. He has been hanging here for threemonths. By now I thought he would have died. Somehow, he is still breathing.
Victor sits in the corner, watching him. When he notices me, his eyes slide over. He has been by my side for years. I thought this would be where he drew the line, but the bastard enjoys it. He once told me he used to do“stuff like this for money.”
I took it as a green flag and offered him good pay to beat the living hell out of Daniel Grant.
And every time he was done with him. I had my own share of punishment. The closet in the corner was brought here just for him. The same closet he used to lock Aurelia in. Now his little reminder he won’t do it ever again.
If it were up to me, I would leave him there to rot. But no. She still needs to confess her feelings for this asshole, so he has to stay alive until she does.
“What do you think? How long will he last?” Victor asks, pointing at him.
“We will see how long it takes his fiancée to remember how great he was,” I say as I walk to the table of tools. I pick up the pliers and turn back toward them.
Victor shakes his head. “He has no more teeth left to pull.” He nods toward the bucket.
I glance inside. Bloody teeth stare back at me.
“How about nails?” I ask.
Daniel whimpers.
I roll my shoulders back and crack my neck. My jaw tightens as I reach for the axe and rest it on my shoulder.
“Why don’t I take the whole hand?” I smile. “I bet Aurelia will appreciate getting your bones instead of rotten flesh.”
His head jerks from side to side in a weak attempt to protest.
“Aww.” I press my palm to my cheek and blink at him. “Aren’t you adorable, shaking like that?”
I lift the axe and bring it down across his wrist.
The blade cuts through with a snap, his severed hand dropping down on the ground. His body jerks, the chains rattling as the force makes him swing.
I bend and pick it up.
Blood pours from the stump, spraying across his chest and splattering the basement walls.
I step toward him with the severed hand, but his head falls forward, passing out while the blood keeps dripping, spreading the pod of the blood at the floor.
“Can we boil it?” I ask Victor. “I just need the bones. You can keep the flesh.”
Victor nods, he stopped asking questions a long time ago.
He slips the hand into a plastic bag and walks out of the basement.
Daniel twitches against the chains. Slowly, he begins to wake up.
I walk over to the wall where the chain is and unhook it, letting his body drop to the floor.
He groans as consciousness crawls back into him. One of his eyes is swollen shut, the skin stretched purple and black. The other stares up at me, bloodshot red.
“Why?” he rasps, spitting blood onto the floor as he struggles to push himself up. “Why are you doing this?”
“Did you lose your memory too,” I say as I crouch down in front of him, “or are you just playing dumb?”
