Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
ENZO
Ethan Fiorelli lives in a run-down apartment block in Charleston Heights, on the kind of street where nobody opens the door if they hear a scream.
Angelo works this area a lot, but I don’t have much cause to come here as a rule.
I do, however, have cause to keep tabs on Ethan Fiorelli, even if not for this reason.
The stairwell smells like stale urine and old cigarettes, and the bulb on the second floor flickers on and off, a distinct tink sound every time it goes black.
I come to a stop outside Apartment 22. The door has a crack running diagonally across the frame, like someone’s kicked it in at least once before and nobody’s bothered to fix it.
Inside there’s the muted sound of a TV. I press my palm flat against the wood, just to feel if he’s close, if the floor creaks under him, if he even knows I’m here yet.
He doesn’t.
I don’t bother to knock because he doesn’t deserve any kind of warning.
The door gives way on the second kick, swinging in against a wall covered in unidentifiable stains.
The stench of the place hits me before anything else—old food and stale sweat.
Takeout containers are stacked in the sink, an ashtray sits overflowing onto a coffee table ringed with stains from coffee mugs or beer bottles. It smells like filth.
He’s walking out of what I assume to be the bathroom, scratching at his balls.
I watch the recognition cross his face, see it curdle into something between fear and sheer panic.
He opens his mouth and makes a strange, garbled noise, like the sound is stuck in his throat.
For some reason, he makes a run for the front door, like I would possibly just allow him to fly right past me.
He’s a big guy, at least six foot like his brother, even if he’s a lot skinnier these days, but I’m so filled with rage I could put The Mountain himself on his ass right now.
I push Ethan back and he stumbles over his own feet, falling over the sofa and landing with his ass and legs in the air.
He jumps up quickly, rights himself, then holds out his hands like that will any way protect him from what’s about to happen.
“Enzo,” he says, trying to inject his voice with a little friendly cheer, even as it trembles. “What are you doing here?”
“You don’t know?”
He shakes his head, eyes wild as they dart between me and the door. “No idea. Haven’t seen you for years.”
I kick the door closed behind me. “Six years to be exact. Not since I killed your brother.”
He shrugs, licking his lips, edging backward toward what looks like a bedroom. “Water under the bridge, man,” he says, limbs twitching with every half step he takes.
“What? I beat him to death with my bare hands and you think that’s water under the bridge?”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, beady eyes still everywhere but on me. I close the gap between us. “I knocked most of his teeth out, busted his eye so bad one of them almost came out of its socket. Definitely broke his jaw and more than a few ribs. Shattered his kneecaps. Then I killed him.”
Ethan is blinking at me, like a startled rabbit caught in headlights.
“All because I thought he had consensual sex with my fiancée.” I take another step closer and he has a full body shiver. “Can you even begin to imagine what I’m going to do to you now that I know what you actually did to her?”
His skin pales so fast, like all his blood is rushing straight to his feet, and I’m sure he’s going to pass out. He staggers back into the bedroom, which is fine by me because he has no place left to go. “Enzo, I—I—” he babbles.
I sweep his feet from under him until he falls backward onto the bed. Then I drop my bag onto the yellowed dresser. His eyes snap toward it. “Oh, yeah, that’s all for you. I have plenty of toys for us to enjoy, you sick piece of shit.”
His lip wobbles, but the terror gives him a burst of adrenaline.
He launches off the bed like a wounded animal making its last-ditch attempt at survival.
My fist connects with his jaw—a satisfying crack of bone followed by his howls of pain before he falls backward once more.
Not nearly satisfying enough though. Not yet.
His headboard has sturdy wooden spindles that will come in handy.
I take the zip ties from my pocket, work quickly to secure his wrists.
He bucks and fights me, but even if he weren’t basically a weak pathetic piece of shit, he’d be no match for the rage-fueled strength that’s coursing through my veins right now.
He begs and cries once he realizes he can’t move. I ignore his pleas just like he must have ignored hers. Every single time I picture his filthy hands on her, imagine how scared and helpless she must have felt, my fury is renewed. I tune out his pathetic sniveling and unzip my black bag.
That shuts him up. He shakes from head to toe.
I pull out the syringes first and lay them on the dresser.
“W-what are they?”
“Adrenaline and morphine,” I tell him. “A trick I learned from an old friend.” Alejandro Montoya is a man I greatly admire, ruthless when he needs to be but not needlessly cruel for no reason.
However, his torture methods are legendary, and I spent some time in L.A.
a few years back, learning his craft from him.
“You see, at some point, Ethan, you’re going to pass out from the pain.
Maybe, if you’re lucky, your heart might give out. These stop that from happening.”
“Puh-please, Enzo. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
I flash him a smirk. On that we can agree. “Oh, I know you will. And then I’m going to torture you just for fun anyway.”
Tears and snot run down his face.
“But tell me everything and I might not use this.” I pull the two-by-four from the bag, the one wrapped with razor wire. “I’m sure given what you did to my girl, you can imagine what I plan on doing to you with this.”
His eyes blow so wide I’m surprised they don’t fall straight out of his skull. He shakes his head from side to side, his long hair flailing wildly. I kick him in the shin and drag his attention back to me. “Tell me everything I want to know. Start from the beginning, Ethan.”
He spills his guts, just as I knew he would.
He starts with how my father and Carmine contacted him with a job, offered him money to rape my girl and frame his brother for it.
Every single thing was set up and timed to perfection.
The text from Rafael’s phone—the same phone my father got his hands on and kept a hold of long enough that Raf would simply think he’d left it at home, as usual.
The photos Ethan took at the right angle so I’d know it was her and suspect it was his younger brother.
They have the same ring, and it never fucking occurred to me it could be him because Ethan wasn’t even on my radar.
I swallow down the bile as I force him to tell me about that day, how he was given instructions by my own father from a burner phone.
What to say. What to do. Where and when to send those disgusting photographs he took of her.
Tommy was sent messages too, so he’d walk straight into the aftermath and react exactly as he was supposed to.
Both of us were played like puppets, so that we’d be exactly where we were supposed to be at the right times.
It was like a huge fucking production, with Carmine and my father pulling everyone’s strings, mine included.
I let him spew it all out of him, like a cleansing—if anything in the world could ever cleanse him—along with more tears of self-pity and snot and filth.
And when he’s done talking there’s still more I need to know.
“You let your own brother take the fall for what you did? He was killed and you did nothing to stop it.”
“I didn’t know you’d kill him. They told me they just wanted to drive a wedge between you and they’d protect him.
I swear I didn’t know…” He sobs. Pathetic sack of shit.
“And then afterward, your father showed me that video he had from some kind of hidden camera in the room. He told me if I ever talked then he’d release that video, and then I’d be dead too. Don’t you see, he used me too?”
Jesus fuck, does he actually expect me to feel sorry for him? “They used you? You were paid to rape someone. Not just someone, my fucking Rayne. My whole fucking world. A woman whose air you’re not fit to even breathe.”
He’s still crying. Still sniveling. “I’m sorry, I just… It was just supposed to be…”
I grab the two-by-four and smash it into his shin. Blood and bone go everywhere, caught up in the wire. He howls so fucking loud it almost bursts my eardrums. “How much did they pay you?”
He’s still crying.
“I swear to fuck, I’ll smash your other leg open if you don’t answer me.”
“Ten thousand,” he sniffs.
I almost smash his skull open with the wood but restrain myself. That would be far too easy. “Ten thousand bucks to ruin her life and get your brother killed?”
I can barely hear anything for all the goddamn fucking crying.
God, he needs to shut the fuck up now. “Rayne told me you stuffed her panties into her mouth to keep her quiet,” I say, grabbing a serrated blade from my bag.
I yank down his dirty sweatpants and his screams grow louder.
“So I think you deserve some similar treatment, don’t you? ”
I cut off his cock with one smooth slice of the blade, and while he’s screaming in agony, I stuff it into his open mouth, finally muffling his goddamn crying. He almost chokes on the flaccid flesh. “Could be worse, Ethan. At least it’s tiny.”
I take the rest of my tools from my bag, making sure he gets a good look at each of them as I do. Predictably, the useless motherfucker passes out, and I administer the first shot of adrenaline.
It works like a charm. Now he’s all wide-eyed and alert again. Exactly how I want him. “Do you have any idea how much I love her? How much it fucking hurts me to imagine her in pain? The kind of rage I feel when I think about what I did? The years I lost with her?”
He stares at me, his mouth still stuffed with his own cock.
“I don’t think you have any idea what love feels like, but if you can think about the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life, then multiply it by infinity, you might have an idea of how much it kills me to see her hurt.
And that might give you some small indication of how much I’m about to make you suffer. ”
Three hours later I walk out of Ethan’s flat, covered in his blood and shards of bone matter.
I have tortured men before—for information, for revenge, to send a message.
But never like that. I’m good enough at what I do that I can get what needs to be done quickly, and with minimal mess.
But not tonight. Tonight I did things that I never imagined I was even capable of.
Every time my conscience told me he might have taken enough, when his entrails were hanging out and his eyes were all he could plead for mercy with, I remembered what he did to her, and it filled me with a fresh anger that I could only take out on him.
I left the two-by-four inside him. I’d have taken a picture to show Rayne if I’d thought it would have brought her any comfort, but I know it wouldn’t. She’s not made that way.
I pick some of his soft tissue off the back of my glove, flick it onto the ground.
Then I climb into my car and head to Frenchy’s, where Luca’s waiting for me with a clean set of clothes and some industrial strength cleaner.
I suspect no amount of scrubbing will get his stench off me, but I refuse go home to her smelling anything like him.
There’s already a clean-up team on the way to dispose of his body, scrub his flat with bleach, and do whatever else they need to do.
By tomorrow, no trace of Ethan Fiorelli will exist. Apart from the trail of destruction he left behind in our lives.