Chapter 8 Malice
MALICE
Distantly, I know Willow is saying something, but her words barely even register through the haze of red that fills my mind. I’m like a beast in this moment, a demon made of pure fury. A fucking grim reaper with only one purpose on this earth.
To end the man in front of me.
After what he did to Willow, he deserves it. He deserves to die in the most painful way I can fucking think of, to feel every ounce of pain he probably caused her.
My finger wants to keep curling against the trigger. To pull it and splatter this fucker’s brains all over the wall of the prison he kept Willow in.
But I hear her say I can’t kill him, and when she repeats it, her voice taking on a more urgent tone, I jerk my head to the side to look at her, breathing hard. The gun doesn’t move from Troy’s mouth.
I shake my head, practically vibrating with fury. When I speak, my voice is a strained rasp, and the words come out more growled than spoken.
“You can’t stop me from killing him,” I tell her. “You can’t ask me to do that.”
What he did to Willow… that shit hits close to home. I know how it feels to be powerless, to be used. I know how it fucks with your head and tries to break your spirit.
“Malice—”
“No,” I growl. “He touched you. He hurt you. I’m gonna kill him for it.”
Willow shakes her head. “I know. Malice, I know. But just… wait. Please.”
I drag in a deep breath and then another. The monster in me is saying fuck it. Telling me to pull the trigger. To end this man’s miserable life now and give him what he deserves.
But Willow looks at me with those luminous brown eyes, and she says ‘please,’ and I have to listen.
Every part of me resists it though. It’s a slow, torturous thing as I drag the gun from Troy’s mouth, my muscles hardly wanting to cooperate.
Willow swallows hard and moves forward on wobbly legs. Vic and Ransom are right there, supporting her, helping her come closer and making sure she doesn’t fall.
She takes a few steps toward me and Troy, her eyes hard.
Troy starts to struggle more as she nears him, but it’s weak.
It’s the struggle of someone who has no fight left, like a wounded animal that knows it’s going to be killed as soon as the trap closes around its leg.
He doesn’t have the strength to break free, and he’s clearly realized by now that we took care of his bodyguards on the way in.
It was messier than I would’ve liked, with too many close calls where either my brothers or I almost got shot.
But we didn’t have time to make it a cleaner operation.
Vic did as much recon as he could, but we made the choice to go in partially blind—and it’s a good fucking thing we did.
If we’d gotten here any later, I’m not sure I would’ve ever forgiven myself.
Willow comes to a stop just a few feet away from Troy.
Even though she has to still be in shock, she looks so strong now. Although my brothers are still flanking her, she’s standing on her own now, the shaking in her legs subsiding a little, her head held high.
Pride flares inside me.
No matter what this fucker did to her, he didn’t break her. He didn’t destroy her strength or her spirt. She’s facing down her tormentor, her nightmare, standing up to him without flinching, and I love her more intensely in this moment than I ever have before.
She draws in a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling as she gathers herself. When she speaks, her voice is low but audible.
“Do you remember what I said to you when you brought me to that room to marry you?” she asks him.
Troy blinks at her, not saying anything.
I shake him a little, narrowing my eyes. “She asked you a fucking question.”
He rasps something unintelligible, but it doesn’t matter, because Willow answers for him.
“I asked that you and Olivia just make the deal without me,” she whispers.
“That you leave me out of it. I begged you both to just not make me do this. But you said no. You said you can’t get something for nothing, and you insisted on making me your wife.
You wanted to be married to me. So now… I’m going to take what’s owed to me as your wife. ”
Her voice twists on that last word, and it’s almost enough to make me shove the gun back in his mouth and empty the entire clip.
But I don’t, because I’m starting to understand what Willow is getting at.
Admiration floods me all over again for this beautiful, indomitable woman—so soft and delicate, but with a core of steel that runs all the way through her.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Willow presses, taking a step closer to him.
“You forced a ring onto my finger. You bound my life to yours. You said it was your job to take care of me. So now you’re going to make sure that your precious little ‘wifey’ is taken care of.
You’re going to sign everything you own—your fancy houses, your shares of your family’s company, all of it—over to me. ”
Troy scoffs, some of his smug asshole nature coming back to the surface now. I’d be impressed that he can manage such a holier-than-thou look while impaled to a wall if I didn’t want to blow his head off.
“No,” he bites out. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
I grin at him, and I can tell from the fear that floods back into his face that the look on mine is just as feral and vicious as it feels.
“I’m so fucking happy you said that,” I murmur quietly, moving in closer to him.
Troy’s face goes white. “W-why?”
“Because now I get to make you say yes.”
To give him a little taste of what I mean, I grab one of the knives from Troy’s hand, yanking it roughly out of the wall and out of his palm in one vicious tug. He screams in pain, and the sound is music to my fucking ears—but it’s still not good enough. It might never be enough.
Vic slides into place once Troy’s hand is free and grabs his wrist, keeping him pinned to the wall.
I glance over my shoulder to where Ransom is still standing with Willow. “Ger her out of here.”
“No.” Willow lifts her chin, shaking her head. “I want to stay.”
I blink in surprise, clenching my jaw as I meet her gaze. “It’s gonna be bad, Solnyshka,” I warn. “You don’t have to watch this.”
But she just straightens her shoulders, her brown eyes flashing. “I want to.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, and I consider arguing with her.
After all the shit she’s been through, this isn’t what she should be seeing.
The last fucking thing she needs is more violence.
But I take in the set of her mouth, the way she’s holding herself, and all I see is her strength.
She might look fragile, but she’s not, and I can’t deny her a chance to see what happens to the man who hurt her so badly.
So I nod.
When I turn back to Troy, all I know is purpose. Somehow, Willow being here to watch just makes it even more intense. I want her to see what happens, what I’ll do to anyone who tries to hurt her, as if somehow that might make her feel safer after all of this.
I flip the knife in my hand, catching it by the handle over and over again. Troy’s hazy eyes follow the movement, and I smirk at him, rage and vengeance overtaking everything else.
“You’re gonna wish you’d taken her offer the first time,” I tell him honestly.
And then I move.
With a quick flick of my wrist, I use the knife to cut through the waistbands of his pants and boxers, leaving them with no support so that they fall down around his ankles.
He gasps in shock and anger, and I bring the knife right up to his dick, letting him feel the sharp edge on his most sensitive bits.
That makes whatever indignant shit he was going to say die right in his throat, and he whimpers.
“Yeah,” I tell him, my throat so tight with anger that the words are hardly more than a rasp. “I know what you’ve been doing with this, you piece of shit. You’ve been sticking it where it doesn’t fucking belong, haven’t you? And maybe if you don’t know how to use it right, you shouldn’t have it.”
Troy chokes out a wordless noise of fear, but I ignore it. I wrap my fist around his dick, squeezing hard enough to hurt, and then slash the knife downward, severing it with one clean cut.
He screams in pain, his eyes rolling back and his entire body bucking against the wall, as if he’s trying to somehow escape the confines of his own skin.
Too bad for him, that’s not possible. The noise he’s making is too fucking loud though.
I feel confident that we’ve taken care of all of his bodyguards, and this place is so remote that there’s almost no chance anyone will hear us.
But still, his increasingly high-pitched scream grates on my nerves, so I shut him up by shoving his bloody severed dick into his mouth. He almost chokes on it as I stuff it between his lips, shaking his head and groaning, but I don’t stop until it’s finally muffled some of his sounds.
It’s quiet enough now that I can hear Willow’s small intake of breath behind me, but even though I’m acutely aware of her, I keep my focus on Troy.
Beside me, Vic’s eyes are glittering with their own kind of anger and determination. He has another knife in his hand, and he stares at Troy with that cool, calculating look he gets sometimes.
“I think I owe you a little something,” he says. “You wanted to leave me for dead, didn’t you?”
Troy starts to shake his head, but before he can try to say anything around the dick gag, Vic stabs the knife into his side, mimicking the wound my twin is still favoring from getting shot.
From there, we take turns, each of us getting our pound of flesh for all the pain and torment this asshole has put Willow through. Vic stabs him in different places, twisting the knife in deep, and blood stains Troy’s clothes, dripping down to the floor.