25. The Shadow
THE SHADOW
I slapped Liath’s abuser awake with the flat of my knife, the metal landing against his cheek with a dull smack.
I’d tied him up in the basement of my mansion, in a stress position restraint or as I liked to call it, a hog-tied hangman.
His wrists and ankles were tied behind his back but with a rope extending to a loop around his neck. The more he struggled, the tighter the noose got.
It was brutal and effective.
“Wake up,” I muttered, every word laced with cold rage.
It had been laughably easy to catch him off guard. Men like him—entitled, bloated with privilege and self-assurance—never entertained the notion that they could be anyone’s target.
They moved through life shielded by wealth, cushioned by arrogance, unaware of the raw, open wound their existence inflicted on those they considered beneath them.
Even after his involvement in Liath’s disappearance, he had gone about his daily routine like a man cloaked in invisibility, safe in the certainty that no one would ever dare approach him.
But he’d been wrong. He hadn’t seen me coming.
And at the moment I struck, I saw the dawning horror on his face—the realization that, for the first time, he had become prey.
The irony of drugging and kidnapping him didn’t escape me. Using his own weapons against him—binding, silencing, trapping him—brought a grim satisfaction I couldn’t deny.
The difference, of course, was purpose.
His cruelty was born of pure domination, a sick exercise in control.
But mine was a means to an end—a desperation fueled by each day that passed without a trace of her. I could almost taste the urgency, sharp and unrelenting, gnawing away at me.
I needed information, needed answers on Ava’s whereabouts now .
And this bastard was going to give it to me—or I would cut it out of him piece by piece.
Fachnan Byrne—Liath’s father—woke up with a gasp, his head jerking to the side. For a heartbeat, his weathered face remained slack, disoriented, before terror flooded his features as he took in the dark, damp basement walls.
He began to struggle, but the ropes around his wrists and ankles tugged, pulling taut against his neck. Panic seized his eyes as he felt the pressure clamp around his throat, cutting his breath short, and he jerked again—only for the noose to tighten further .
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said, stepping forward out of the shadows and watching the realization wash over him, the terror in his eyes shifting to something deeper, more primal.
“Struggle and you’ll cut off your own oxygen. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? Not yet.” I let the corner of my mouth tug up in a smile, watching as he froze, breathing shallowly.
“Help! Somebody—help!” His voice, a desperate croak, echoed around the basement walls.
I let out a sigh. Why did they always scream?
I held up my sharpened cleaver—one I named Babe—the large flat metal side gleaming in the dim light.
I’d learned from my torture session with Dr. Vale. Knives were not ergonomic when it came to dismembering fingers. And I expected that I’d have to take a few to get what I wanted out of him.
Couldn’t risk getting RDI… Repetitive dismembering injury.
“Save your breath, Byrne.” I waved the cleaver at him, catching his wide, terrified eyes with my own steady gaze.
“This place?” I scraped the edge of Babe against the thick stone walls. “Soundproof.”
A flicker of hopelessness crossed his face as he realized he was completely trapped.
Byrne’s bloodshot eyes found mine and he began stammering, groveling, begging for mercy I had no intention of giving him.
“Please,” he gasped. “Please, I don’t know what you want— ”
“Where is Ava?” I gripped Babe’s handle tighter, my own voice a low growl. “Where did the Sochai take her?”
His face twisted, panicked, his wrinkled chin wobbling. “I-I don’t know who—”
I grabbed his ear and cleaved it off.
Byrne let out a howl as blood began to run from the side of his head.
“Let’s not do this whole, ‘I don’t know who the Sochai are’ shite,” I said, waving Babe around, flicking blood back onto his face. “Because you only have one ear left.”
“I s-swear, they don’t have her,” he stammered, his voice cracking. “Please, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Liar,” I spat, pressing the cleaver edge under his chin, just enough to make him feel the bite of it, just enough to draw blood. “Try again.”
“Please, I swear, I’m telling the truth! The Sochai—” He coughed as the ropes binding him cut into his throat as he tried to inch back away from me. “They didn’t take her.”
“Just like they didn’t take Liath?”
His eyes widened in genuine fear. “I s-swear, I didn’t want to hurt Liath.”
“Stop lying ,” I yelled, cutting him off, my patience hanging by a thread.
Desperation clawed at me. Every lead I’d followed to find Ava had turned up empty, every path leading nowhere. Byrne was my last hope, my final shot at getting any answers.
I grabbed his hair in my fist and yanked his head back, holding the cleaver like I was about to scalp him. “Where is she? ”
Byrne began to cry, loud pathetic sobs. “P-please, I don’t know. I swear.”
My grip on Babe slipped slightly, my hands trembling as the words caught in my throat. “Tell me where Ava is.”
“I don’t know.”
“ Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” he screamed, his voice cracking as he fought against the restraints. “I swear to you—”
“Where. Is. Ava?” I shook him by his hair.
Byrne howled as hair popped from his scalp. “Please, stop. Have m-mercy…”
“WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?”
Before I knew it, my anger had taken control. Red bled across my vision and in a blind, unthinking moment, my cleaver swept across his neck, severing his head from his shoulders.
His eyes went blank, his mouth opening as blood spurted out of his raw exposed neck.
His body slumped to the concrete floor, or at least as slumped as it could still being hog-tied.
I was left with his head in my hand, dangling like a dead fish from the roots, blood dripping from the stump.
The reality of what I’d done sinking in, a mix of satisfaction and dread tangled inside me.
Damn it. He was supposed to talk. He was supposed to lead me to Ava.
But I knew, somewhere in the hollow ache of my gut, that he wasn’t lying about not knowing where Ava was. He truly didn’t have a clue.
Yet his denial of the Society’s involvement? That was bullshit. These secret societies moved in layers, cloaking their dirtiest secrets at the highest levels, where only a select few were in the know.
Someone in that inner circle had her. Someone powerful enough to keep her hidden from their underlings, men like Byrne.
The Society had Ava; that much I knew with a bitter certainty. It was just a matter of who —and where .
I forced myself to take a breath, to shake the red haze from my vision.
I stood and dropped Byrne’s head. It bounced before rolling aside and staring off to the wall.
I glanced down at my trusty cleaver, Babe, dripping blood onto the floor.
“That’ll do, pig,” I whispered. “That’ll do.”
It was done now. Nothing would bring Byrne back.
At least Liath got justice; her abuser had paid with his life. And the whole world would know the truth—that she hadn’t just run away.
On the TV screen installed on the wall, the news story ran of how Michael Byrne, a prominent politician and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was implicated in the abuse of his adopted daughter, Liath Byrne. The news reporter called for another investigation into Liath Byrne’s disappearance.
I’d sent the ‘insurance’ tape to every single news outlet in Ireland myself, even the smaller local ones, making sure it would get out. I even sent it to some foreign news outlets, especially the ones that the former Foreign Affairs Minister was heavily involved with like the UK and Germany.
I made sure that the evidence was disseminated so widely that the Society couldn’t bury everything.
Liath’s story would finally be heard .
And Byrne? He wouldn’t be missed.
Not even by the Society. No doubt they would have made him disappear to avoid the scandal from leaking on to them. Really, it was a mercy that I had killed him instead.
When I snatched him, I’d made sure to take a few pieces from his bedroom—a suitcase, several pairs of clothes, and cash from his safe. Ironic, huh?
I’d also left a letter in Byrne’s study, a ‘goodbye’ note scrawled in his own shaky handwriting that he was leaving Ireland, begging his wife to forgive him, to take his fortune as penance, to leave his memory in the past and move on.
It wouldn’t take much convincing for her to accept that he’d fled the country in the wake of his sins coming to light.
Mrs. Byrne would get over it. She’d be fine.
But me? My fists clenched as I looked down at his lifeless body. If I lost Ava, there’d be no getting over this for me.
I changed the channel on the TV to a recording.
I stood over Byrne’s lifeless body, his blood leaking around my boots as a recording of Ava showed on the screen of her sleeping in just a thin t-shirt and panties.
My fingers ached to brush her dark hair back from her face, to trace her parted lips, the hollow of her neck. I could almost feel the ghost of her warmth in my hands. Almost.
These images were all I had left of her now.
No, I couldn’t think like that. I had to keep the faith that she was still alive. I’d know if she were dead. I’d feel it. I was tied to her, in life and in death.
On-screen my hand reached out and tugged on her t-shirt, giving her nipples some friction. They hardened deliciously and Ava let out a soft moan in her sleep, a sound that haunted me.
Fuck . I missed her.
My throat tightened, a well of grief rising that I couldn’t control even as my dick began to swell at the sight of her curvy body laid out for me.
Memories flashed through my head—of her straining against my ropes even as her pussy wept for me, of the first time I thrust my cock inside her sweet cunt as I pinned her against the library shelves, and of the last time I saw her, glancing back at me over her shoulder, her dark hair curtaining half her face in the doorway of Dr. Vale’s office.
If only I hadn’t let her leave on her own.
I dropped the cleaver and freed my cock from my pants, the blood on my hand making everything slippery as I stroked myself.
The metallic scent of Byrne’s blood mingled with the musty air of the dimly lit room as I stared at Ava’s sleeping form on the screen, her chest rising and falling gently.
My hand moved faster, rougher, as the camera focused on that spot between her legs. To those maddening white panties with a little silk bow in the small of her back.
To the damp cotton cupping her pussy, the pussy I ached to be inside right now.
I let out a groan as pleasure swam through my body, mixing with hopelessness.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Not here, not now.
I should be out there, kicking down the doors of Mr. Byrne’s friends and interrogating them, leaving behind a bloody mess in my wake, as I followed the trail right to Ava.
But the sight of her soft skin, even if it was just on the screen, the curve of her hip barely covered by thin cotton, ignited a primal need I couldn’t ignore.
My dark queen liked it when I got a little bloody. When I got a little psycho.
When I was torturing Dr. Vale, I could see the way her nipples poked through her shirt and how she pressed her thighs together and squirmed in her seat.
If she were here…
My breath came in ragged gasps, echoing off the stone walls, as I imagined her dropping to her knees, sticky with Byrne’s blood, her hot, wet mouth around my cock.
Tears streaming down her cheeks as I fisted her hair and made her gag, her eyes filling with hatred for me, but also her hand rubbing frantically between her legs because she loved to hate me.
Release came and I choked on a sob as hot strands of cum shot out from my cock and sprayed over Byrne’s decapitated body.
I stumbled against the wall, sagging against it, trying to catch my breath, the TV screen where my sleeping Ava lay casting an eerie blue glow over Byrne’s pale dismembered face, his unseeing eyes accusing me even in death.
I knew I should feel remorse, horror at what I’d done. Instead, all I felt was an aching emptiness that only Ava could fill.
Ava was gone.
And I wasn’t sure I would ever get her back.