Chapter 39 #2
“I am aware, Roman,” Vaughn snaps, “of every pain and injustice that was thrown at my brother!” He barks a cold, brittle laugh.
“You think I just forgot about him? No, Roman,” he hisses.
“I was aware of everything, and it fucking ripped me apart. But I also know the Syndicate would have destroyed him.” He shakes his head.
“He wouldn’t be anything like the man you’re so enamored with.
Wouldn’t have found who he is or discovered ballet.
None of it. The Val you love is who he is because he grew up in the lesser of two godawful evils!
I made a choice,” he snarls. “I’d make the same choice again today if I had to. ”
Yeah, we're done here.
“Well, this has been fun, Vaughn,” I grunt. “But I’m going home.”
I’m only a few steps away when my phone buzzes. I pull it out, looking curiously at the "unknown number" on the screen.
“Roman?” a young woman says when I answer. “It’s Freya.”
My pulse skips.
It was a month ago now that Val shared the darkest part of his past with me: Connor, the piece of shit motherfucker who abused and raped him when Val was only thirteen.
It broke me apart, hearing about the hell that he was dragged through as a fucking kid. And obviously, there isn’t a reality where I hear about that and don’t do something about it.
Something violent.
At first, Connor proved to be much harder to track than I expected. I had his back story—expulsion from two different high schools for sexual assault. A brief stint in the Army before he got kicked out for alleged sexual assault. That's how he wound up back at home, living with his mom.
Preying on the foster kids she took in.
The mom—one Maggie Leary—died a few years back. Connor sold the house, moved to Virginia, and got work as a middle school janitor. Then, when he got put on probation for “allegedly” putting hidden cameras in bathrooms and locker rooms, he disappeared.
That’s where the trail ran cold—until I remembered Brooklyn telling me about Kir’s daughter, Freya.
Freya lives in Tokyo with her husband Mal, where they both work for the Mori-kai Yakuza family run by Mal’s cousin, Kenzo. She’s an expert hacker, and a freakishly good people finder. So I reached out to Kir, and he put me in touch with her a few weeks ago.
“Do you…” My mouth goes dry, and I struggle to swallow. “Did you—”
“Yup. Found him,” she says quietly.
She and Kir don’t know the details, just that the man I’m looking for is a piece of shit child molester and that I’m hunting him so I can hurt him.
Badly.
“You’re in luck,” she continues. “He’s in New York, up in the Hudson valley just north of the city.”
I’m shaking a little as I nod my head silently.
“He’s going by the name Ken Leary now. Texting you the address.”
“Thank you,” I croak.
She’s silent for a second before she clears her throat. “My dad told me what kind of monster the fucker is. Do me a favor. When you hurt him—I assume you are going to hurt him?”
“I am.”
“Good,” she hisses. “Do something real fucking gnarly for me, too, 'kay?”
I smile grimly. “Consider it done. Thank you, Freya.”
The text with the address comes through right after I hang up. I swallow, fishing around my pocket for my car keys before I suddenly pause.
“Vaughn!”
I catch up with him two blocks away, about to step into the back of a black Bentley. The three guards with him turn, their hands moving to their obvious sidearms before Vaughn waves them off, quietly shaking his head. He straightens his jacket and rolls his neck as he walks over to meet me.
“I knew we were having too much fun to simply—”
“What are you doing right now.”
His brow furrows. “Why.”
“Because there’s something I need to go do.” My jaw tightens. “And I think it might be something you need to do, too.”
Connor Leary—AKA Ken—sobs and gurgles, spit and blood oozing from his mouth and dripping all over his bare chest as he shakes on his knees at the edge of the cliff.
“I believe he’s trying to say something, Roman,” Vaughn says thoughtfully, his eyes glinting with a quiet madness I fully understand. A bloodied blade twirls in his fingers as we look down at the sniveling, writhing piece of garbage at our feet with his hands tied behind his back.
“You know, I think he is,” I growl.
My fist slams into the side of Connor’s head, wrenching it to the side and sending him tumbling face-first into the dirt. I snarl as I grab a fistful of his greasy hair, yanking him back up to his knees.
“What was that, Connor?!” I roar in his face. “Spit it out!!”
Vaughn snickers next to me. “It might be lodged a bit too far down his throat for that.”
“Hmm, I think you might be right.”
We’re not talking about whatever the fuck he’s trying to say. What’s lodged in the back of his throat isn't words.
It’s his severed dick.
I punch Connor in the face again, sending him screaming around the flesh in his mouth as he goes crashing to the side, face-first into the dirt.
“Well, I bet he’s glad we took his teeth,” Vaughn says dryly. “He might’ve just bitten something that he doesn’t want bitten.”
People respond to pain, hatred, and vengeance in different ways. Nero, for example, lets his not-so-hidden psycho out to run wild. Vaughn, apparently, reacts with gallows humor and that icy smile.
But me?
I just see black and blood, and I want fucking more.
I turn and let my gaze drop to the hunting knife in Vaughn's hand.
“Be my guest,” he murmurs, handing it to me.
Connor sobs, trembling and spasming as I yank him by the hair to his knees.
I drag him across the ground to a nearby rock and toss him face-down across it.
I slam my knee into the small of his bare back, grabbing him by the nape of the neck and keeping him pinned to the stone as the knife glints in my hand.
Vaughn doesn’t blink or look away once, not even when the screaming turns wet and gurgled, or when I hit some artery or vein which violently sprays a geyser of blood across my face and over my shoulder.
I take my fucking time with each letter. Each word. Each part of what I carve into his back.
Rapist.
I fuck kids.
My name is Connor Leary, and I earned every bit of this.
“Stay the fuck with me, asshole,” I grunt, yanking him up by the hair again and punching him in the nose to snap him out of whatever dulled shock he looks to be fading into. “You don’t get to tune this out. You don’t get to escape.”
I drag him off the rock and then pull him up, angling his head back with his face to the sky as I loom over him and hand the gory knife to Vaughn.
“We’re not done yet.”
I let him scream as Vaughn carves another “rapist” into his forehead.
I take his eyes.
Vaughn relieves him of his nose and ears.
Then we both tie Connor’s feet to the waiting cinderblock at the edge of the cliff above the Hudson River.
Vaughn clears his throat delicately. “Pro tip—if you don’t puncture his abdomen, the body will eventually fill with gas and float.”
“M-hmm.” I tug the knots tight and toss the blade away.
Vaughn looks at me. “He’ll be found, Roman.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I squat down and punch Connor in the face again. “You're going to be famous, motherfucker,” I hiss.
Vaughn and I nod at each other. Then, without any fanfare, we use our feet to kick Connor to the edge and over it.
A gurgled choke.
A splash.
Then—silence.
“Before we part ways.”
Back in the city, Vaughn pauses as he starts to open the passenger door of my car. Then he turns to level his gaze at me.
“I told you I had proof that I had no part in the bombing at your father’s safe house.”
He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a little plastic bag with “NYPD EVIDENCE” stamped on the side of it.
He hands it to me, and I frown at the rubberized, neon orange box inside with what looks like Chinese lettering on it, about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
It’s blackened and scorched, with the display screen cracked.
“What am I looking at?”
“It’s a timer for a bomb.” He nods his chin at it.
“Specifically, the timer of that bomb, at your father’s safe house.
Chinese military tech, probably stolen or sold on the black market.
” He clears his throat. “This isn’t easy to get your hands on, for the record.
It’s rare to see it used outside of military use, and even rarer to see it used in the U.S. ”
When I look up at him with a puzzled expression, Vaughan smiles darkly. “If I were trying to bomb your father and Nikolai Antonov, surely I’d simply use a remote detonator.” He points to the bag in my hand. “That is for setting an explosive charge to go off at a predetermined time.”
I frown deeply. “And?”
“And, even if I knew about your father’s secret safe house, and had gained access to it without anyone knowing, how would I know when he’d be there?”
Fuck.
I never thought of that.
Vaughn shrugs as he opens the door and steps out.
“Oh, and Roman?” He ducks his head back in.
“Yes?”
He smirks. “If I'd wanted to blow up your father, I wouldn’t have missed.”
He pats the roof of the car with his hand.
“Val’s lucky to have you, you know.”