Ryker steps behind the chair, his gloved hands snapping around the old man’s forehead, pulling it back until his neck cords strain to the breaking point. The silver mask reflects the wet, pink interior of the mouth Jex has pried open.
Jex reaches in. The forceps bite down.
A horrific, wet gurgle erupts from the old man’s throat as Jex yanks the muscle forward. It’s a slick, red organ, pulsing with the life he used to dictate my ruin. Jex doesn’t use a scalpel. He uses the shears.
Snip.
The sound is thick—the sound of wet leather being torn.
A fountain of hot, dark blood sprays across Jex’s face and drips onto my bare chest, sizzling against my skin. The old man’s body goes rigid, his muffled screamturning into a bubbling, drowning sound as his mouth fills with his own life.
Jex tosses the piece of meat onto the floorboards. It twitches once, a useless scrap of flesh that will never tell another lie.
“He’s choking, Jex,” I moan, the sight of the blood coating my brother’s jaw making my head swim. I reach out, my fingers trembling as I smear the red spray across Jex’s lips. “He’s going to die too fast.”
“He isn’t going anywhere,” Ryker says, his voice flat and chilling. He reaches for a cauterising iron, the tip glowing a dull, angry orange. “I’ve spent five years learning how to keep a body alive when the soul wants to leave. He’s going to feel every single cut.”
The sizzle of the iron against the raw stump of the old man’s tongue fills the sub with a sweet, cloying stench of burning hair and meat. The old man’s eyes roll back in his head, his chest heaving in a frantic, silent rhythm.
Jex turns to me, his eyes dark voids of predatory hunger. He’s covered in our father’s blood, his chest heaving, the adrenaline making him look like a god of theslaughter. He grabs the back of my head, pulling me into a kiss that tastes like blood and victory.
“You hear that, Hallow?” he rasps against my mouth, his thumb dragging through the blood on my breast. “That’s the sound of the world finally being right.”
I look over Jex’s shoulder at the man in the chair—the weeping, bleeding wreck of the man who sold us. He’s staring at us, trapped in the light, forced to bear witness to the two monsters he spent a lifetime perfecting.
“Next are the fingers,” I whisper into Jex’s mouth, my hips grinding against his tactical belt. “I want to watch him lose the ability to sign another check. I want to hear the bones snap.”
Jex pulls back just enough to look at me, his face a mural of our father’s blood. He looks down at the old man’s hands—the hands that used to pat my head after a “client” left, the hands that signed the checks that kept the clinic’s lights on while they opened me up.
“The fingers,” Jex repeats, a dark, low-frequency hum in his throat. “Good choice, Hallow. Let’s see if he can still grasp the concept of consequence.”
He reaches for the heavy-duty trauma shears, the thick metal blades designed to cut through leather and bone. He grabs the old man’s right hand, forcing it flat against the cold, steel armrest of the medical chair.
The man in the chair is making a sound now—a rhythmic, wet clicking deep in his throat where his tongue used to be. His eyes are blown wide, shimmering with a frantic, animal light as he watches Jex position the blades over his index finger.
“This one was for the campaign posters,” Jex says, his voice a jagged rasp.
CRACK.
The sound of the bone snapping is loud, sharp, and dry, followed by the sickening squelch of the blades shearing through the tendon. The finger hits the grated floor with a dull thud. The old man’s body arches so hard I hear his spine pop against the restraints, his muffled wails vibrating through the very hull of the submersible.
“This one was for the doll you bought her to shut her up,” Jex growls, moving to the middle finger.
CRACK-SHHH.
Blood sprays in a hot, rhythmic pulse, painting theblack tactical gear of Jex’s thighs. I’m leaning over them both, my hand tangled in the old man’s thinning hair, forcing his head back so he has to watch. I want him to see the precision. I want him to see the lack of mercy in his son’s eyes.
“And this one,” I whisper, my voice dropping into a terrifyingly sweet lilt as I lean down toward his ear, “this one is for every time you walked out of the room when I looked at you and begged you to stay.”
Jex doesn’t use the shears for the third one. He takes the heavy forceps and simply twists. The old man’s hand becomes a mangled wreck of white bone and purple-black bruising, the skin tearing slowly under the pressure. The cabin is filled with the smell of raw meat and the metallic heat of the blood pooling around our feet.
Ryker stands behind us, his silver mask reflecting the carnage like a funhouse mirror. He isn’t helping, but he’s not stopping us. He’s watching the way Jex and I move together—the way my moans of dark, twisted satisfaction are syncopated with the snapping of our father’s bones.
“He’s going into shock,” Ryker notes, his voice flat, almost bored. He reaches over and adjusts a dial on the IV drip hooked into the old man’s arm. “I’m upping the adrenaline. I won’t let him pass out. He needs to be present for the thumb. That’s the one that makes us human, isn’t it, Father?”
Jex drops the forceps and reaches for my hand, pulling my palm toward his face. He licks a stray drop of blood off my knuckle, his eyes never leaving mine. The hunger in him is a living thing, a predatory beast that’s finally been let off the leash.
“The thumb, Hallow,” Jex murmurs, his breath hotand smelling of copper. “You do it. Use the shears. Feel the weight of his legacy coming apart in your hands.”
