CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
KAGE
After she falls asleep, I climb off the bed, being sure not to wake her. I kiss her softly on the neck and she stirs, while moaning my name, but doesn’t wake up. I can’t help but stare at her while I get dressed. The last thing I want to do is leave her, but I need to do this.
I pull my pants on, and go into my armoire, and grab something I rarely use. A sword. It’s not how I normally handle things, but special cases call for special circumstances.
Taking one last glance at Raina, I take a deep breath. Every time I look at her, I’m struck by her perfection. It’s just like Bones said he felt about Athena. Fucking breathtaking.
I turn away from her, and head through my house so I can go to Psycho’s as planned. As I head out, I stop to talk to the man Raina calls Hulk, and give him very clear instructions.
“My girl is upstairs sleeping. Nobody goes inside unless she’s in danger. Perimeter check every half hour. Things will change with her here. Anything happens to her, and it’s your neck on the line. Literally.”
He nods like the good soldier he is.
“Understood, Boss.”
I walk away from him, and get into my Range Rover with a smile on my face. Reaper is the only one of us that kills for fun. Bones, Psycho, and I don’t go looking for someone to kill, just to kill them, but when we get to do it, it’s fucking beautiful. We enjoy it. Especially when the person is someone who has wronged us greatly. Tonight, Leo Abruzzo is that man. When he violated Raina all through her childhood, he wounded her deeply. By hurting her, he hurt me. After I saw how she reacted to me simply mentioning her phone, I decided to let Psycho handle it. And sure enough, that’s who the text message was from. The asshole who likes to touch little girls for his own sick pleasure, and is still tormenting her with his text messages. After tonight, he will not be.
I pull up to Psycho’s mansion and park. His team sees me, but don’t say a word. They never bother any of us. Walking around to the side door that leads to the basement, I go down the steps and enter my code to get in, while carrying my sword in my left hand.
The door closes behind me automatically, and I walk to my brother’s slaughter room. He calls it an office, but that’s not accurate. Nobody other than us has ever entered his ‘office’, and left alive. It’s a slaughter room.
He points to a shaking Abruzzo in a cage.
Psycho chuckles. “It felt like it’s what you would do.”
And I’m interested in that, but I’m equally curious about the pretty brunette tied to his table with the muffled screams.
“Shit, brother. I didn’t know you had a date tonight.”
He stands beside the metal table with his favorite knife in his hand, a ka-bar with his name engraved on the blade. This woman, whoever she is, has lost a lot of blood, and I can tell he’s been at it a while, because she has stitches all over her body. That is his trademark after all.
“Meet Diana. She prefers Didi, but we don’t give a fuck, do we, Diana?”
She tries to say something but can’t, because of the purple duct tape over her mouth.
“Purple?” I ask with a laugh.
“It’s her favorite color. See, I am a nice guy.”
Leo is crying in the corner, and I turn to him with a glare.
“It’ll be your turn in a minute, asshole. Just wait.”
Turning back to Psycho, I ask, “What did she do?”
He turns to me, pointing his bloody knife as he talks, “The ADA I told you about that’s been sniffing around. This bitch is her friend, and was spying at the warehouse on 7th.”
I shake my head in disapproval.
“Oh, Didi,” I say with a smirk.
“How do you want to do this?”
He chuckles obnoxiously.
“Fine, I’ll kill her so we can carry on, but I’m going to kind of miss the way she screams.”
I shake my head at him.
“There will be another.”
He grins with the excitement of a little kid.
“There’s always more. Maybe I should be a serial killer like Reaper.”
I narrow my gaze.
“You take way too long. You wouldn’t get nearly enough kills.”
Staring down at her, he pulls her dark brown ponytail back and looks into her eyes, as she trembles on the table.
“Goodnight, bitch. Maybe in your next life you’ll be less stupid.”
He slashes her throat, and the blood pours from her flesh onto the table, and eventually the floor. My brother, the psycho that he is, chuckles.
“Well, I don’t think we can stitch that one up.”
We walk over to the cage holding Leo. He sits shaking like a fucking leaf, in jeans that have clearly been soiled. Psycho comes over beside me, and we watch him like you might an animal in a cage. Waiting to see if they do anything exciting.
My brother looks at me with disgust on his face.
“I hope that’s just piss.”
I nod in agreement, but it would not be the first time someone shit their pants in Psycho’s basement. Honestly, I think it’s happened in all of our basements. He tries to pull his stained t-shirt down over his fat belly, but it doesn’t work well.
“When I saw your text message to my girl, I was not pleased.”
He shakes his head furiously.
“I didn’t text nobody.”
Nice use of the English language, asshole.
“Raina. She’s mine, and you fucked up by ever touching her.”
He holds his hands up in defense, as if he has any.
“I didn’t know.”
Psycho reaches through the cage, grabs him by the shirt, and pulls his face, smashing it against the bars, speaking through a clenched jaw.
“You knew she was a little girl though, right?”
My brother is as pissed as I am. The Bonetti men are not known for good deeds, but we don’t fucking molest children. That’s a line none of us will ever cross. There’s good, bad, evil, and fucking disgusting. We are a mixture of the second two.
Psycho lets him go, and he falls to the floor with a whimper.
“I want you to know what’s going to happen. No surprises.”
The terror travels through him visibly as he listens to me.
“Normally, I would have kept you in a cage for weeks, you would have suffered, and eventually died from starvation. I can’t do that, because Raina is at my house, and I don’t want her thinking constantly about you being in the house. If I have my way, you’ll never cross her mind again after today.”
He cries out desperately.
“Please let me go. I swear, I’ll never touch another girl.”
I turn to my brother with an arched brow.
“What do you say, Psycho? Should we let him go?”
We both laugh, and Leo starts crying so hard he vomits on the floor of the cage. My brother starts screaming.
“Fucking pig. Lick it up.”
Appearing to have a pair of balls for a moment, he looks at Psycho and shakes his head no.
“You’re going to kill me anyway. You lick it up.”
I’ve seen it before, so it’s not surprising when Psycho snaps. He opens the door to the cage, and grabs Leo’s white hair, slamming him down to the floor, which in this case is metal bars covering concrete, not very comfortable.
“Lick. It. Up.”
Psycho lets go of him and stands beside me. We both stand with our heads tilted, like we are watching some new interesting discovery. It takes a lot to turn my stomach, but it’s pretty fucking gross. Eventually, Psycho starts laughing and so do I, as we talk about the last thing he ever eats being his own vomit. Once he finishes, I grab him by the shirt and pull him out of the cage. I stare at his vomit covered face and shake my head.
“You really are one gross motherfucker. Now get on your knees.”
He does as he’s told, but whimpers like a pussy.
“You said you’d tell me, you didn’t tell me.”
“Right. My apologies.”
I show him my sword.
“I’m going to cut your fucking head off, and present it to my girl as a gift.”
He looks at me in pure shock, and it’s honestly hard to keep a straight face.
“I’m romantic like that.”
Glancing at Psycho, I ask, “You think this will work?”
He starts cackling like a maniac, with his hands on his knees, literally doubled over in laughter.
“No, I don’t. That thing is dull as fuck. Eventually it might work, but you’ll be here for the next week.”
He walks to the back of the room, and presses a button, revealing a wall of blades.
Taking one off the wall, he brings it over to me. “If you’re going to do it, do it right. This is why you need them custom made, Kage.”
Every knife my brother has is a custom. He won’t have it any other way, but he kills this way frequently, and the rest of us don’t.
I take a look at it, and it’s a curved sword, but it looks sharper than mine. I guess we’ll see if it works as well as I want it to.
I look to make sure Psycho is out of the way, and swing it back, before swinging hard at Leo’s neck. His head hits the floor first, followed by his body, and I stand shocked.
“Holy shit. That was fucking awesome.”
My gaze moves from the sword in my hand to Leo’s head on the floor.
I’m in awe as I continue staring.
“Do you know what’s not awesome, Kage?”
Leo’s cold, dead, pale blue eyes are wide open, as I continue looking at him. I may have to do this again, because I didn’t hate that.
“When you make a fucking pact with your brother, and break it.”
He jabs his blade into my thigh.
“What the fuck, Psycho?!”
My brother looks at me with pure disappointment.
“Oh, come on, Kage. You knew it was coming. Pull your pants down and sit. I’ll stitch you up. If you’re a good boy, I’ll even give you a lollipop.”
I pull my pants down, and sit on the chair near the metal table with the dead girl on it.
“Fucking asshole.”
He grabs his supplies, and presses a towel down to stop the bleeding.
“I barely even got you. I told you I was going to stab you. You deserved it.”
My brother is full of shit. He stabbed me deep enough to require stitches, but not so much that I’ll die.
I groan more in annoyance than anything, but he’s right. If there’s anything we all know, it’s that you don’t make a bet or a pact with Psycho, unless you’re willing to pay up.