Chapter Thirty-Five
Ravi
It turns out one of the things I don’t like is blindfolds. At least not while moving. The time Liam tied me up and fucked me while I wore one was interesting. Riding in a car with one on?
Pass.
“Can I take this off now?”
“Hold your horses,” Liam grumbles. “One of these days, I swear I’m going to teach you patience.”
“That time when you tied me to the bed and fucked me and we tried to see who could hold out the longest, it was not me who came first, Daddy,” I remind him.
He mumbles something I can’t make out over the sound of rain beating on the building roof. “Do you want to keep complaining, kid, or are you ready for your birthday present? I have the feeling that once you see it, you’ll shut that bratty mouth.”
“I’m ready.” I give a little clap with my hands. “I hope it’s a gift card for the bookstore downtown. Or a gift card for Gil’s. Oh…I could use some new sketchbooks.”
My first day back on campus, I went and switched my major. From Biology to Art. Trust me, everyone’s happier.
His sigh makes him sound totally beaten, but I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Those are all things you can get for yourself.”
“But they’re more fun when someone gives them to you as a gift.”
“Right. Well.” Liam clears his throat. “The thing is, it occurred to me that I’ve done a pretty shit job with your birthdays since you moved here. That first year, there was nothing I could do to cheer you up, so I thought maybe not making a big deal out of it would be better.”
I reach around, grasping at thin air until he takes hold of my hand. “I understand why,” I assure him.
He’s right that I didn’t want to celebrate that first year. He’s also right that I’ve missed it more recently. Lately there’s been this need to replace that memory with something better.
“Well, I think this will make sure your birthday is memorable for a different reason from now on.” There’s a sound of creaking metal as he leads me through a door. “Watch your step, baby. There’s a metal strip going across the doorway.”
There’s a dripping sound nearby. And muffled noises, like grunting or something. I’m so confused. “Did you bring me to a live sex show?”
It doesn’t smell like sex, though. The air is filled with mildew and rust.
He laughs. “Something better, I hope.”
Liam pulls off the blindfold.
We’re in the warehouse, I realize. I recognize the pitted cement walls. The room where I saw him torture that guy with a very long knife. That’s when I find it, the source of the grunting sounds. It’s not people having sex, it’s a struggling man zip-tied to a chair.
Lightning flashes outside, brightening the room. The man’s face is drawn and pale, but I think I’ve seen him somewhere.
“Is that…?” He looks familiar. I know he does. Then Liam pulls the rag from the guy’s mouth.
“Man, what the fuck is going on here? Do you have any idea what my father will do to you when he finds out where I am?”
Now that I hear his voice, it all pops into place. “The guy from the pool. The one who grabbed me. You said you’d break every bone in his arm.” Thinking of it now, I’m a little breathless.
“If I touched him again.” The guy jerks from side to side. “You said if I touched him again. I didn’t, though. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t even know where he was. Y-you can’t do this.”
Honestly, he sounds a little desperate. I turn to Liam. “He’s right,” I say, almost weirdly disappointed. “He didn’t touch me again.”
I don’t like hurting anyone innocent. Still, I remember the look in this guy’s eye. The way he grabbed me. He’s at least a bad guy. Maybe even a worse guy.
“He touched a lot of people, baby. That’s his entire problem.” Liam circles around to the back of the chair. I hear a snap, and the guy in the chair screams a scream so loud it’s echoing off the walls.
It rings so loudly I’m tempted to cover my ears. “Are you sure nobody can hear that?”
Liam makes his way over to the wall, knocking gently.
“This building may look like it’s falling apart, but that’s intentional.
Unless you’re a teenager following someone you shouldn’t, nobody would think to look twice at this place.
We’ve got state-of-the-art soundproofing inside these walls, on top of a whole lot of dense concrete. ”
The guy in the chair looks awfully pale all of a sudden. Awfully worried.
“Okay. Good.” Looking from Liam to the guy and back again, I ask, “What did he do?”
“A better question is what didn’t he do?” Liam leans down again. There’s another snap and another scream. This time I do cover my ears.
“Too much, kid?” Liam steps back, looking concerned.
“Huh-uh. No.” I drop my hands from my ears and shake my head. “I can handle it. Tell me what he did.”
Whatever it is, I know this man is no good. For all the burden Liam places on himself, I know he takes what he does seriously. He wouldn’t bring someone here who didn’t deserve it.
Liam squeezes the guy’s nose shut until he’s forced to take a breath and then shoves the rag back in. “Sorry, man. My baby doesn’t like the screaming.”
Then he comes over to me, taking hold of my hand.
“This guy, aside from being an entitled, gropey douchebag, participated in parties hosted by that guy who tried to buy you before the auction. Parties where people were chained to a wall and forced to participate in hell only knows what kind of disgusting acts. Found out when we were trying to track down whoever Dylan Beck was working with. No news there yet, but we’ll keep digging. ”
He pauses, leaning in to press his lips against mine. I melt into him, almost forgetting where we are until he pulls away again.
“There’s also—was it two or three…?” He looks at the guy in the chair, who grunts and squirms again. “Right. It was four exes who filed assault charges and his daddy made it go away with his money. Then kiddo here harassed them continuously, even after NDAs were signed and promises were made.”
My fingers tighten into fists. “I don’t want you to call him kiddo,” I blurt.
Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but I don’t like it. I’m the only one he can call kid, or any variation of that. He definitely can’t say it about this sack of human trash.
Liam brushes his palm across my cheek. “Sorry, baby.” He clears his throat. “Moving on. There were also a few times in high school when fellow students lodged charges of sexual harassment or sexual assault.”
Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.
The guy’s thrashing so much he’s making the chair jump. He’s obviously trying to say something, but he’s still got the rag in his mouth.
Liam hooks his thumb. “Our friend here’s probably trying to say those charges back in high school were sealed because he was a juvenile. You know Bev, though. She can hack into all sorts of things.”
I can’t hold back my grin. “She’s good at that, yeah.”
“Not sure you want to hear the rest,” Liam adds quietly. “There were also a few things in the juvenile records about animal abuse.” His face softens. “Baby animals.”
My breath catches in my throat. My fingers clench and release. I’ve never been violent. But I can’t stop the furious tornado swirling inside me.
The force of air through my nose is the only thing I’m aware of before I pick up a hammer from Liam’s shiny table full of tools and start swinging.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Using people like that? Rape? Abusing baby animals? Do you have any idea what it must be like for a tiny helpless baby to be taken from its parents a-and hurt by some power-drunk asshole?” I’m shaking.
Shaking, but I can’t stop. “How would you like to have no idea what’s going on and no parent to protect you? You sick fucking—”
Liam’s hands come down on my shoulders. I don’t realize I’m crying until I step back, my breath sawing in and out so hard that it burns my chest. I haven’t cried like that since I lost my parents.
Since that bitch killed them.
Oh.
I really am angry, huh?
“Was this a bad idea, baby?” Liam’s arms come around me.
“No. No, it’s… I didn’t realize all of that was in there.”
The guy in the chair, honestly, his face looks a little messed up.
“Did I do that?”
The backs of Liam’s fingers stroke down my cheek. “You did that, kid.” He leans down, laughing quietly in my ear. “Awfully bloodthirsty for a vegan.”
Bloodthirsty. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I try to wipe the tears from my face. “I can’t stand it when people hurt someone who can’t fight back.”
The guy’s protesting, or he’s trying to. It’s impossible to understand him.
“I know, kid.” He picks up a knife from the table.
One I’ve seen him use before, with a long, curved blade.
“Your friend Simon was here recently. We’d picked up a member of that trafficking ring that he had some history with, and his boyfriend beat the shit out of him while he watched.
It seemed like a good gift. Better than a gift certificate, maybe. ”
Simon? I had no idea.
He slides a finger under my eye and wipes the rest of my tears away. “Always wondered when you’d finally let out some of that rage.”
My body is vibrating. I can’t believe this, but I think I liked it.
“It was a good present,” I whisper.
Liam’s right. Now my birthday will be a day when we stopped a bad guy from hurting others. That’s good.
I’m still shaking. I don’t realize how much until my legs give way under me. Luckily Liam is there to catch me before I fall.
He always catches me these days.
“You want me to finish this?” He uses the knife to gesture to the bad guy in the chair.
“I don’t want to punk out or anything, but I do feel like I should sit down.”
“This ain’t for the faint of heart, kid. I can finish.” He points to another metal chair over by the door. “You can wait over there if you want. I want you to see what I’m going to do to him for you, but you can wait outside if you’d rather. Brennan should be here soon.”
I perk up. “Brennan’s coming?”
“He’s coming to take care of the body. Said he has a place.
” Liam rolls his head from side to side and jiggles his arms a little, almost as if he’s limbering up before a workout rather than torturing a bad guy to death.
“The rest of my team is busy this week, and I figured it would be more romantic if it was only the two of us anyway.”
I find my footing, rising up on my toes to kiss him. “It’s romantic, Daddy.”
Maybe it shouldn’t be. It’s not as if either of us are into candles or flowers, though. And it means something, Liam sharing this with me.
The chair guy’s eyebrows shoot up. He coughs and sputters, managing to spit the rag out of his mouth. “You guys are fucking sick, you know that? You think I’m—”
Liam shoves the rag back into his mouth. “Spit it out again and I’ll make it hurt more.”
I guess it makes sense that the worse guy doesn’t think this is romantic. He doesn’t know us. And he isn’t going to.
My friends would probably be shocked. I don’t like suffering, and that’s what Liam is inflicting. When it’s a worse guy though, so I understand. “When’s Brennan coming?”
“Soon,” Liam confirms. “Apparently he feels like he owes me for sparing that Jacob kid who was following you around. So I called in his favor.”
The chair guy’s gone even more pale. His eyes are so wide; if this were a cartoon, his eyeballs would have popped out. Good. Let him be scared. He deserves it after everything he’s done.
“Brennan’s not so bad, you know. I’m happy to hear the two of you are getting along.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he grumbles. Then he leans down to kiss me. “Go and rest. I’ll break some more of this guy’s bones for you.”
“Say please.”
“Please, brat.”
“I love you, Daddy. Can we go for burritos after this?”
“I love you too, kid. Whatever you want.” Then he turns back to finish what he started.
And I settle in to watch.