Epilogue 1
Army
Harrison—since he’s been stripped of his patches, everyone refuses to use his road name—is restrained in a chair in the large room of the Cell.
Every brother who feels the need to come for their pound of flesh for his wrongs against the MC or them has been allowed to carve a small chunk out of him.
As part of the psychological warfare and torture, along with the physical, Tats has a bucket of his magic solution that dissolves flesh and bone sitting beside Harrison.
Each chunk of his body is dropped into the bucket for him to witness himself disappearing piece by piece.
It’s poetic justice, if you ask me.
I’ve waited for my turn. Mine will be the finale. I promised Leeva this would be painful but quick.
And as much as I originally wanted to keep him alive for as long as his body withstood the torture I wanted to inflict on him, I’m okay with this quick and merciless death. We’ve been at it for twelve hours, and it’s time that I cut this cancer out for both Leeva and myself.
I pull up a chair and sit across from him. I study the man who is my blood-brother, but who has been my adversary since I can remember, wondering why he became my enemy.
Before I get to those questions, I ask about Anais to decide on her fate.
“Why Anais?” I ask.
At first, I don’t think he’ll answer me, or maybe he’s unable to, but then he lifts his head. His face is anguished, covered in blood and snot, but he smirks through his pain.
“When I approached her, I didn’t know you actually owned Hedon; I just wanted to fuck with you because you always went to that sex club. After Razor discovered the truth, though, she helped us hatch the plan.”
“So, she’s been part of this even before Leeva returned.”
He grunts. “The kinky red-headed bitch didn’t know who owned Hedon; I just promised her she’d get you, and she was in like a bitch in heat.”
I thumb a quick text to Bane to deliver the order to take the bitch out, then slip my phone back inside my cut and focus back on my brother.
“Why, Harrison? Why did you hate me so goddamn much?”
His hair is sweaty and sticks to his forehead. He’s in pain, and he glances at the bucket beside him with the chunks of his body dissolving inside. He visibly shakes before looking back at me. “You have to ask?”
“Clearly, I do.”
He hated me since we were little kids, way before Leeva came into the picture, so I know she isn’t the cause of it.
“Everything came so easy to you,” he spits.
I worked hard for everything I achieved, but I remain silent, letting him spill his vitriol.
“Everyone fawned over Hayes fucking Cartwright. Our mother before she left, our father before he died. And don’t fucking start me on Zeus.”
There’s so much hate emanating from him when he glares at me.
“So this really does just come down to an inferiority complex,” I muse, regarding Zeus’ assessment back when Harrison and I were kids. I shake my head. “What a fucking waste.”
“Nothing I did worked, though.” He grins through his hellish pain, and drool runs down his chin. “Until my little lamb. Goddamn, that was poetic to steal her from you. So easy.”
I stiffen in my chair but try to keep my expression schooled and unreadable.
“You were such a fucking idiot.” He laughs. “I knew you loved her; she was your world, yet you refused to tell her how you felt. And it was clear she thought you hung the moon. Taking her from you was the best thing I ever did.”
I’m viciously reminded that he almost took her from me again after fucking stabbing her in the chest. I haven’t told him how close he came to succeeding; I refuse to give him any sort of satisfaction.
“She never loved you, Harrison. You were a substitute when she thought she’d never have me.” It feels like swallowing glass saying those words.
“Yet she bounced all over my dick, little brother.”
My fists clench in my lap. I'm very much over sharing the same air as this bastard. But I know what he’s doing.
He’s trying to take one last shot at me, just like he always has. And he’s trying to rile me up, so I’ll lose control and kill him quickly.
Inwardly, I smile like a sadistic motherfucker, thinking of what his end is going to entail in just a few short minutes.
Taking one last shot at him of my own, I toss back to him something that Leeva shared with me. “And whispered my name while she slept.”
She had told me everything he had confessed to her; knowing about Luthor Wentzell whisking her out of the country after New Orleans, how he tried to get to her, worked with la morte, the death ring, to try to get his hands on her and the Wentzell fortune.
That ring is still out there, but with Len’s USB, we have some knowledge of its structure and operations.
We’re still trying to figure out if we should act—it’s a global operation, outside our territory, but more than that, it’s well beyond our ability to take down alone.
Adamus Jones has checked in with me as he promised, keeping it vague and like we’re partners for some criminal enterprise, and I know Len is still alive at least.
“Leeva would still be with me if she had only listened and not come to the compound that day.” Harrison pulls my attention back to him, waiting to die in this hellhole.
Yeah, I’m very much done with his breathing, not just the same air as me, but any air.
I don’t bother to argue with him about his fucked-up view of events, or that he has no remorse for cheating on Leeva, or that she lost her child right after.
There’s no point.
“Tats,” I call out to where he’s working in his back room, or the lab, as he affectionately calls it.
“Wait,” Harrison sputters, knowing that things are about to take a turn for the much worse for him.
Tats pokes his head out. “I’m ready when you are, Army.”
I stand from the chair, looking down at my piece of shit brother.
“Wait!” He struggles against his restraints, trying to buck off the chair. The chair doesn’t move, though, because we bolted it to the floor. “Wait, Hayes! Army! Wait!” he screams.
Tats walks over, and together, we undo Harrison’s restraints.
He’s smaller than both of us and has been tortured for twelve hours, but he still fights, knowing that he’s fighting for his life.
But with his wound from where Leeva shot him and the torture he’s endured, he’s weak, and we easily get him into the lab.
We toss him into a tall tub-like structure. He lands on his ass inside but pops to his feet, the ledge of the tub coming mid-torso.
I punch him in the face, relishing the feel of his crunching and breaking bones, and do it again.
I’d love to beat him into pulp, but what’s coming for him is a fitting, agonizing death for his sins. For what he did to Leeva and the anguish she’s lived through for years as a result.
“Ready?” Tats asks me.
I nod, and he kicks the door closed, then hands me a face mask, similar to what a soldier would wear to ward off chemical warfare.
He and I slip them over our heads, and Harrison’s eyes are wild as he realizes what’s happening.
“No!” he screams, trying to crawl out of the tub, so I punch him one last time.
“Stand back, Army,” Tats warns, holding a lever on the wall.
Once I do, he pulls the lever, and a huge bucket above the tub tilts over, spilling its contents all over Harrison.
His screams fill the room, only heard by us in this soundproof facility. Tats pulls the levers for two more buckets to dump their contents over Harrison as his legs give out and he disappears from view.
I step closer to peer into the tub, seeing him writhing and screaming in agony as Tat’s magic solution for getting rid of bodies works to eat away and dissolve his flesh.
Tats joins my side, admiring his handiwork.
“Ever done this to a live body?” I ask, my voice muffled through the mask.
“Nope. It’s a fucking gnarly concept, though,” he says without taking his eyes off my brother. “You going to put him out of his misery with a bullet to his head?”
Memories of holding Leeva in the hospital as she shattered after losing her baby ravage me, followed by the hellish years—more than a decade—wasted and when she was taken from me, and how I damn near lost her after he stabbed her in the chest. Her fear that I’d be killed by my MC family for touching forbidden fruit when it never should’ve been forbidden in the first place.
I’ve made mistakes, as had Leeva, but my bastard brother played the worst role in preventing our happily ever after because he targeted her, he hurt her, all just to strike at me like the fucking coward he is.
And there’s no mercy for that.
“No bullet. No mercy. I’ll watch the life fade from his eyes, and he’ll dissolve into the nothing piece of shit he is.” My voice is calm and holds no regret. “Then I’m going home to my woman to get my happily ever after.”
Tats grips my shoulder, smiling through his mask. “Well-deserved and well-earned, brother.”