Page 57 of Blood & Heartache

“Three.”

Sensing he needed a little prodding, I stuck my finger into the middle of the two slices until it ran into the muscle. That was going to be the next layer I needed to cut through to get to his organs.

“Four.”

“Gunner was my eyes and ears in the inner circle. Mazi was starting to keep things from us, and I needed someone who could keep me in the loop of what he was doing,” Piggy blurted. “I tried to get only my people to become your lieutenants, but your father already had his eye on certain people moving them into more prominent positions so he could justify choosing them for the job. None of the people I picked were men he knew well except for Gunner.”

That would have been useful information, but Gunner already figured it out himself and told Ryker about it. So I didn’t need to hear about it from a lying pig grasping at straws of what to share that wouldn’t fuck up future plans.

“Five.”

Using the knife, I sliced the skin from his stomach, exposing the stomach muscle. As I stated, I wasn’t a master at this, and I didn’t have a scalpel for precision, so I needed to give myself a clear field of vision.

“Ahhh,” Piggy bellowed as tears started to spill from his eyes. The pain was becoming too much, and his body didn’t have another way to release the stress. “You fucking whore, how can you do this to your family?”

I clucked my tongue at him. “You aren’t remembering all that well, Piggy. I’m not the one who betrayed his brother and got him killed. That was all you and the others you’ve given your loyalty to. By doing that, you’re no longer part of this Family. You said so yourself when you gave the oath all those years ago.”

“How could you know anything about family? You never had one.”

My anger flared, and I punched him as hard as I could in the gut. He bellowed in pain, his hands grabbing at air trying to do anything to get to me.

“Whose fault is it I didn’t have a family, hmm?” I asked as I sliced off more of his skin, needing to make him understand the pain I experienced.

“The founding families are the ones who killed my mother. Did you know that? Daddy found proof and hid it all away in a place you’d never be able to find. Seems they were supposed to kill me as well that night, but Mother gave up her life to make sure I had mine. Yet that sacrifice was made in vain because it wasn’t where the story ended now, is it? They used any means they could to find me after Daddy hid me away, vowing that I’d one day take over. They went so far as to get him to marry your bitch, Flora, giving them another inside person who just so happened to be sent to live with me. How long did it take the cunt to convert you?” I snarled as I slowly cut into the muscle. “What did it take to turn you against a man who didn’t have to accept a bastard-born brother like you, but he did? So after he gave you everything, this is how you repay him, destroying what he loved most for pussy and power. How damn pathetic.”

Using the same cross pattern, I exposed this innermost self to the world. It didn’t look like much, but it was fitting.

“Astin…” he moaned, his breath coming in quick pants, “… don’t do this. Don’t allow what they’ve done to you to hold such power. I know you can stop this if you want. You’re strong. Fight against this evil.”

Tossing my head back, I cackled. This idiot thought he could talk me out of killing him by appealing to his niece. “Joke’s on you, motherfucker. She asked me to come out and play,” I shared as I yanked off my jacket and shoved up the sleeves of my dress. “In fact, she requested not to be completely locked away like normal so she could see your expression as you died by our hands. What you don’t realize, having been trapped in here, is your brother took it upon himself to deal with Gunner. He had some of your people slip Gunner bath salts in his food, making him go crazy to the point he felt the only way to atone for his sin was to blow out his brains. If you know anything about Astin, you’ll understand why she won’t save you from taking what she considered hers.”

“It’s sad that he’s dead, an unfortunate loss where one wasn’t needed, but Astin wouldn’t have been able to save him. He was dead no matter what,” Piggy reasoned.

“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “He was ours, and by that right, we control how his death happened. There are many merciful ways to kill people, but instead, he was locked away, given a drug that fucked with his head causing him to panic, and in the end, pushed him to take his own life. That’s a death reserved for fucking swine like you, so I needed to find a different way to kill you that would be just as horrific as his. Gunner was manipulated from the beginning and never stood a chance with you whispering in his ear, but he was my responsibility to deal with. All I can say is… at least he won’t have to see the war that’s about to happen he helped cause. Now he will forever be protected from that scar on his conscience.”

“So the monster has a heart,” he said with a hoarse laugh.

Shoving my hand inside him, I gripped the first thing I could grasp and pulled. “No, this monster is just possessive of her things. I don’t like it when people touch what’s mine, but after today, no one will dare do it again.”

Chapter 25

Piggy started to convulse as I worked at removing his guts, careful not to damage them. I didn’t want to speed up the process of his death if I could help it. His breathing became more erratic, and he didn’t scream anymore, but I was getting the feeling that Flora might be smarter than I gave her credit for. There was a chance she truly didn’t let her fuck toy know the real stakes of the game. So I decided to change gears and deal with something I could get out of him.

Grasping a section of his intestines, I shifted up toward his head, dragging it with me. Kneeling near his shoulder, I grabbed his jaw with one hand and shook him violently until he opened his eyes to look at me. The haze of pain made them rather unfocused, but a few sharp slaps to his cheek helped to focus him.

“I realize your usefulness is slowly slipping away as your brain is trying to keep you alive and not damage your mental capacity with this much trauma. However, I’m going to need you to tell me who your people are in the Family,” I explained.

“I’d… rather… die,” he muttered.

“Hold your horses there, Piggy. We’ll get to that, I promise,” I assured him. “Understanding you’re not gonna want to tell me this information, I need to up the ante to something you might find worse than death.”

“What could possibly be worse than this?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” I said in an overly cheerful voice. “You know that saying, I’ll cut out your heart and feed it to you? I’m thinking it will be more like I’ll cut up your intestines and feed them to you. Personally, I think that would be worse than death, and doing this won’t kill you any faster, to be completely honest.”

The abject horror on his face and the way his hands flapped told me I might just be getting through to him.

“If, on the off chance you want to avoid that disgusting fate, all you have to do is tell me who your people are. Fuck it! I’ll even settle for knowing how many you believe are on your side. I’m really just looking for how much cleanup we’re gonna have to do when this is all over. The cops are already sniffing around, and the last thing we need is for them to find a stack of bodies in the backyard because we weren’t prepared,” I explained.