I slice the blade into his arm, not enough to rip open the vein yet, just enough to bite. Tears squeeze from the corners of his eyes, and he thrashes his head, the moans coming from him unnatural and inhuman. Fucking music to my ears. “Nettle sap in an open wound burns like hell, right?”
He makes another garbled sound. I slice another cut. And another. “This is what you get for touching her, Alec.” I dragthe tip of my knife over his abs before cutting through the fabric of his boxers. Every move I make accompanied by the melodic sounds of his pain, like my own personal symphony.
I coat the blade with fresh sap, and then I hold up his flaccid cock. “Were you there when they operated on her? When they stole her chance of ever having a child?”
Every woman sold at auction is sterilized to prevent any unwanted pregnancies. Not that the Brotherhood care about the women having to go through that, but a pregnancy might get in the way. The women are bought only to be used and abused until there’s nothing left of them, not even their soul.
“Did you ever get hard looking at her? Thinking about what you’d like to do to her?”
He shakes his head.
“Liar!” I slice him from balls to tip, and to ensure he knows what pain really feels like, I stuff some of the crushed nettles in the open wound. His eyes roll back and just when he’s about to pass out from the pain, I slap his face hard, bringing him back. “Not yet, buddy. We’re not done yet.”
I stare at my face in the mirror above his sink, my cheeks spattered with thick welts of his blood and my clothes and gloves covered in him. I clean myself as best I can before wiping down his bathroom. I’m a ghost who doesn’t exist. No fingerprints or DNA of mine will show up in any kind of system, and I don’t intend to leave any behind today. The person I was is dead and buried and I intend for him to stay that way, which is why I’m usually much more careful than this.
This is the messiest kill I’ve carried out in a very long time, and there’s no way to pass this one off as accidental, but it had to be this way. There’s only so much rage I can carry inside me before I have to let a little of it out. And hetouchedher. He touchedmy fucking girl. Alec is the kind of man who has enough enemies so his murder won’t come as a surprise. The brutal nature of it might though, and I can’t help wondering if I’ve just alerted the Brotherhood to a threat they were previously unaware of. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it will flush some more of the evil scum out into the open.
And I’ll go on picking them off until I find the one I’m looking for, the one they call the King. When I do eventually find him, he’ll beg for mercy like the pathetic stain on humanity he truly is. And I will take even greater pleasure in exacting my revenge on him, for every single day of her life that he kept her from me. Every single second of pain she has ever endured, he will suffer one hundredfold. The Brotherhood will wish they had never heard the name Imogen DeMotta.
Chapter 9
Lincoln
It’s past midnight by the time I get home, but Pierre is waiting for me like he always is. I find him in my basement, or mysecret lair. The bank of computer screens illuminates the familiar features of his face in the otherwise dark room.
“You are late,” he accuses.
I resist the urge to remind him that I’m a grown man and I never asked him to wait up for me. He’s still pissed at me for leaving unexpectedly, and on top of that he always worries when I leave. And now, with Imogen here too, if something were to happen to me, then he would be left with the burden of protecting her. And my oldest friend doesn’t deserve to carry the weight of that. He shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. “I had to stop off and change.” I drop the bag at his feet.
“Change your clothes?”
“Yes. They got a little... messy.”
He makes a soft humming noise. “That is very unlike you.”
“This was a special case.” I fall into the chair beside him and scan the monitors, glancing over the coding programs as they continue to run in an endless loop and the security cameras and heat sensors that cover the perimeter of my property. After a moment, I satisfy myself that everything is as it should be.
“Did Edgar assist you?” Pierre asks.
“No, there was no time to involve him.”
Edgar North is my link with the outside world. A man with infinite connections in the criminal underworld, and one who has reason to hate, and to hunt, the Brotherhood as much as I do. In an alternate universe, one where my sister didn’t die, I guess he’d be my brother-in-law, maybe a doting father to my nieces and nephews by now. As it is, he’s a man just like me. Living like a ghost and hell-bent on revenge.
“It was someone from the auction you paid a visit to, then?” Pierre asks, perceptive to a fault.
“Yes.”
I feel his disapproval radiating from him in waves.
“What, Pierre?”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I said nothing.”
“I can hear you judging me.”
“Merde!You have spent eighteen years taking every precaution necessary, and now you go and...” He mutters some more French curse words.
“Now I what?”
