Chapter 21 – Ava Jade #3
Corvus slapped Billy hard enough to start to draw him out of his stupor. “Hey. Pay attention.”
Rook licked his lips.
Corvus slapped him again, and Billy slowly came around, his watery eyes widening in surprise like he was waking from a dream to find a nightmare waiting for him in real life.
“Pieces of shit like you aren’t welcome in our town,” Corvus said. “We see everything .”
Well, not everything, I preened internally. They didn’t see me barely fifteen feet away from them. Watching. Recording.
Billy’s lower lip trembled.
“This is strike two,” Grey added. “I think you know what happens if you get to strike three.”
They let the threat hang in the air for a moment before Grey backed away from Billy to lean against the right wall of the cooler where I couldn’t see him. Corvus backed up, too, leaning casually against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. Blocking most of my view of Billy.
“What happened to you?” Corvus asked Billy.
“...w-what?”
“I said what happened to you ?”
“I...I had an accident. I fell onto a hook.”
“That’s right.” Rook answered him, and I could hear his smile even if I couldn’t see it behind his mask. “You also might’ve broken some bones. Maybe smashed your face into a table, too. Guess you should stop drinking at work.”
“ Wait—”
“Let’s get this over with,” Corvus said simply.
“No!” Billy screamed a second before a sickening pop and crunch tunneled into my ears. I knew what it was without having to see it. Rook had broken his arm, just like Billy had broken his daughter’s. It’s what I would’ve wanted to do, too.
An eye for an eye.
When the second break came and there was no end in sight, I carefully removed my phone from the shelf and stopped recording, gripping it tightly in my hand.
It would be almost useless. They were wearing masks. They didn’t say each other’s names. They would have been smart enough to take a vehicle not registered to them and even then, they would have carved a wide path outside of view of any surveillance cameras.
All I’d done here tonight was witness something I wished I fucking hadn’t. I didn’t want to feel this...connection.
And honestly? I wasn’t sure what I’d do with the footage even if it had been usable. God fucking dammit.
I didn’t flinch as Rook snapped more bones and Billy screamed and cried until Rook eventually knocked him unconscious. I listened, hating how much I wished I could hurt him, too. How the sounds of his agony had almost no effect on me.
A five and nine-year-old? They were too young. Too innocent to be subjected to that sort of abuse from someone who was supposed to love them.
I’d have just killed him , the thought came viciously to my mind and a sour taste coated my tongue, making me grimace and clench my fists.
People made mistakes. Hell, I’d made plenty, but I learned from them.
This fuckwad would continue to make mistakes. I could see it in his face. Hear it in his voice. Who was to say that he wouldn’t kill one of his little girls the next time he was angry? Then it would be too late. Then strike three would only be vengeance instead of prevention.
I pressed my head between my knees as the Crows took a limp Billy down from the hook and left him on the floor in a pool of his own blood. My breaths came heavier. My pulse throbbed in my temples. Fingers twitching.
I worked hard to fight it, trying to stay calm. Stay quiet. Not let the darkness grab hold. Flashes of the man at the train tracks scorched into the back of my eyelids, and I forced my eyes open to erase them, sweat beading at my hairline.
A loud metallic chink rang out through the shop. Grey had snapped off the lever inside of the cooler and wiped it down for prints before tossing it to the floor. It scraped over the linoleum tiles and came to a clattering stop near my feet.
“What are you doing?” Corvus asked.
“Seeing how he likes being locked up,” Grey replied stoically and closed the cooler door as he shouldered past Corvus.
“And if no one finds him?” Corvus asked, and I got the distinct sense that he was waiting to judge Grey’s answer. That this was a test, and Corvus wanted to see if Grey would pass it.
“Then no one finds him,” Grey replied and left, pushing through the back door of the shop to vanish into the night.
Corvus nodded quietly to himself. He passed.
“You hungry?” Rook asked. “I could really go for some McDicks right now.”
“Seriously?”
Rook shrugged and Corvus snorted at him before the pair left to follow Grey out into the dark.
I couldn’t be sure how long I stayed there, leaning against the metal, just breathing. Taking in everything I’d seen and heard.
A thousand questions swirled in the adrenal wasteland of my brain. What they were doing...did it make them any better than Billy?
They were murderers.
Fucking psychopaths.
None of them so much as balked as Rook broke Billy apart.
Neither did you, the darkest part of my mind whispered, and I swallowed hard, forcing my legs to push me back to standing. My back ached from crouching there for so long, and I took a minute to stretch it out.
A thud sounded, echoing in the butcher shop.
Then another.
“H-hello?” A weak voice called, muffled by thick steel and insulation. “Is anybody there?”
I judged whether I’d touched anything in the shop and did one last wipe of the front door to be safe. It was time to get the fuck out of here.
Another thud as Billy pounded a fist against the door. “Help!” he shouted. “Someone please!”
I groaned to myself, stopping near the door to the cooler. The handle was right there. I could just pop it open and vanish. I could free him.
But why in the absolute fuck would I do that?
Heat licked up my spine, and I took two steps toward the back door to leave before something made me stop. Invisible hands wrapped around my ankles like ghosts demanding proper justice.
I didn’t even know what they looked like, his little girls, but I knew that they’d be better off without him. But was that enough?
What was I really considering here?
No one had seen me. I’d been careful. I’d triple check for prints.
What am I doing?
“P-please! I’ve been attacked! Please, someone open the door!”
“ Fuck ,” I gritted out through my teeth, the flood of new adrenaline vaulting up through me in an eruption of rage.
I stalked back to the walk-in cooler and wrenched the door open. Billy poured out, falling onto the floor with a wet slap.
He twisted, fear in his swelling eyes as he took me in. A relieved gush of air passed his lips, and I wrinkled my nose at the acrid smell of beer and blood mingling in the air.
“Thank you,” he sobbed, reaching his bloodied hand, the one that wasn’t broken, toward my shoes. I stepped back. “ Thank you. ”
I bent, the dull side of my blade sliding along my fingers as I drew it from the strap.
He lifted his head and his eyes met mine.
Something registered there after a second. The relief smoothing the lines of his weathered face vanished. He stopped breathing.
“Who—”
A hard and quick arc of my blade.
A clean slice.
I left him there to die, dancing away from the spray of crimson as it rushed to leave his severed carotid. I was gone before Billy Parker even finished choking on his own blood.
And I felt... incredible.