EPILOGUE
LANDON
I’ve waited three months to find him. Three months of meticulous planning while Sadie slept beside me, unaware of my mission. Thomas Mercer thought he’d escaped consequences all those years ago, but monsters recognize other monsters. And unlike him, I never hide what I am.
The warehouse I’ve chosen is soundproofed. Industrial. Anonymous. Perfect for what comes next.
Mercer stirs in the chair I’ve bolted to the floor, the zip ties cutting into his wrists as he regains consciousness.
“What the fuck?” His eyes dart wildly around the space before landing on me. “Who are you?”
I smile, arranging my tools on the steel table beside him. Scalpels. Pliers. A blowtorch. Things I’ve used before, but never with such personal investment.
“You don’t know me,” I say, selecting a scalpel. “But I know everything about you, Thomas.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Sadie Reynolds,” I interrupt. “Remember her?”
The slight widening of his eyes tells me everything. He remembers. Of course he does. Predators never forget their prey.
“That was years ago,” he stammers. “A misunderstanding—”
The first cut silences him. Just a shallow line across his cheek. A warning.
“The police report says you held her down. That she said no. Repeatedly.” I make another incision, parallel to the first. “There’s no misunderstanding, Thomas. I’m going to help you remember that.”
His screams when I apply the blowtorch to the fresh cuts are satisfying, but only the beginning. I’ve planned this meticulously. Every cut. Every burn. Every broken bone will mirror the internal pain he caused her.
“Please,” he begs. ”I’ll do anything—”
“Anything?” I lean closer. “Did you stop when she said the same thing?”
I use the scalpel to slice through the zip ties holding his wrists behind his back and then pick up the pliers next, admiring how they catch the overhead light.
“Let me show you what happens to men who hurt people important to me.”
I run my thumb over the textured grip of the pliers, savoring Mercer’s terror.
“You know what’s fascinating about hands?” I ask, circling behind him. “They’re instruments of both creation and destruction. Yours harmed something precious.”
I grab his right hand, splaying his fingers against the arm of the chair. His pinky finger looks so fragile, so breakable. I position the pliers at the base of the digit.
“When you touched her, you took a piece of her. Now I’ll take everything from you.”
I clamp the pliers around his finger, not at the joint but midway between knuckles, and squeeze. The crunch of bone is satisfying, like stepping on autumn leaves. His scream echoes through the warehouse, bouncing back to create a symphony of agony.
“That’s one,” I say, releasing the crushed finger only to reposition the pliers on his ring finger. “Four more on this hand.”
The second snap is louder and somehow wetter. Blood bubbles around the metal as bone fragments pierce skin. Mercer’s body shakes violently against his restraints, head thrown back in a wordless howl.
“Did you stop when she begged?” I taunt. “No? Then why should I?”
The middle finger requires more pressure. I squeeze harder, feeling the resistance of bone against metal before it finally gives. Fragments pierce through skin, creating a grotesque origami of flesh and bone.
“Three,” I count, moving to his index finger.
His pleading has dissolved into incoherent sobbing. Sweat and tears create rivulets down his face, mixing with the blood from the cuts on his cheek. I position the pliers and apply steady pressure until this finger, too, collapses under the force.
“Last one on this hand,” I murmur, shifting the pliers to his thumb. “Then we start on the left.”
The thumb makes a satisfying crack as it collapses. Mercer’s screams have grown hoarse, his voice failing as his pain threshold stretches beyond human limits.
I don’t feel guilt or righteousness as I work. This isn’t about justice or making the world better. I’m not deluded enough to think I’m some avenging angel. This is simply what happens when someone hurts someone I care for.
“You know, Thomas,” I say conversationally as I move to his left hand, “I’m not doing this because I think you deserve punishment. Morality is a construct that’s never interested me.”
I position the pliers on his pinky finger.
“I’m doing this because you touched Sadie. Because you hurt her. And she belongs to me now.”
Another snap. Another scream.
“The difference between us isn’t that I’m better than you. It’s that I’m honest about what I am.”
I set down the pliers and pick up my phone, taking several photos of Mercer’s bloody, tear-streaked face. I’ll need these later.
“She still has nightmares about you,” I tell him, selecting a particularly graphic image. “Even with me beside her, sometimes she wakes up terrified. That ends tonight.”
I walk to my laptop, sending the images to a secure server.
Once I’ve finished with Mercer, I’ll create a special encrypted file that only Sadie can access.
She’ll find it when she runs her weekly security scans.
Nothing too explicit—just enough for her to understand that Thomas Mercer no longer exists.
“She’ll never know exactly what happened to you,” I explain, returning to my tools. “But she’ll know you’re gone. That’s my gift to her. Now, shall we continue? We still have four more fingers to go, and then we will move to other parts of your body.”
Hours pass like minutes when I’m absorbed in my work. Thomas Mercer has proven to be a surprisingly resilient canvas. His screams faded to whimpers long ago, replaced by the wet, gurgling sounds of a man whose body understands death is coming before his mind accepts it.
I’ve worked methodically, transitioning from fingers to toes, from superficial cuts to deeper incisions. The warehouse floor is slick with bodily fluids—blood, urine, vomit. The smell would bother most people. I find it unremarkable.
“You know what’s interesting about pain?” I ask, wiping blood from my scalpel. Mercer’s eyes roll in their sockets, struggling to focus. “It’s the body’s most honest language. Right now, yours is telling quite a story.”
I’ve carved patterns into his chest—nothing artistic, just systematic lines that expose the muscle beneath the skin.
“Your kidneys are failing,” I observe, noting the yellowish tint to his skin. “Shock is setting in. The human body is remarkably resilient until suddenly it isn’t.”
His lips move, forming words without sound. I lean closer, curious.
“...sorry...” he manages to whisper.
“Apologies are social constructs,” I reply, selecting a larger knife from my table. “They’re meaningless to me.”
I stand directly in front of him, studying his face. His features have become almost unrecognizable after hours of my attention. I feel nothing looking at him—no satisfaction, no disgust, no pity. Just the calm certainty that I’m completing a necessary task.
“It’s time,” I tell him.
The knife slides across his throat in one smooth motion. The carotid artery opens beautifully, spraying crimson across my face and chest. The warmth of it is pleasant against my skin.
Mercer’s eyes widen one final time as his life pumps out in rhythmic spurts. I step back, watching the arterial spray pattern form across the concrete floor. It’s mathematically predictable, the way blood pressure decreases with each heartbeat until the flow weakens to a trickle.
I simply observe as the light leaves his eyes.
I watch the last of Mercer’s blood pool beneath his chair, my breathing steady and calm. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken a life, but it’s the first time I’ve done it for someone else.
For Sadie.
She doesn’t know I tracked down the man who haunts her nightmares, who violated her and left scars deeper than the ones I carved into her skin. She’d never ask this of me—her moral compass, though bent, still points truer than mine.
But I’ve seen how she’d sometimes wake in the middle of the night, her body rigid with fear, eyes searching the darkness for a threat that wasn’t there. I’d hold her until the trembling stopped, until her breathing synchronized with mine. And in those moments, I’d make silent promises.
This is me keeping that promise.
Some might call this love. I wouldn’t know—the emotion is still foreign to me, a language I’m learning through Sadie. But I recognize the fierce protectiveness that burns through my veins. The cold certainty that anyone who hurts her deserves exactly what I’ve done to Mercer ten times over.
She’ll never know the details of what happened here. Only that the shadow that’s haunted her is gone.
I begin cleaning up methodically. The body will disappear. The warehouse will burn. Nothing will remain to connect me to this.
This is my gift to her. Not flowers or jewelry or empty words.
Peace. Security. Vengeance, she never had to ask for.