Chapter Thirteen #2
Caleb throws her onto the bed in the back and Felix steps in after him, leering as if he’s already unwrapping her.
“Just don’t leave a mark on her face,” Caleb says, his performance flawless enough to make my teeth grind.
He grabs a bottle and strolls out, vanishing into the trees where Dane waits with his mask and gear.
Outside, the guards shift position. Inside, Felix lunges. Tamsin kicks him hard, making him grunt but he recovers fast, pinning her down with a knee wedged between her legs. I curl my fingers around the handle of my knife.
Beau taps the feed—Caleb and Dane drop the guards near the boat, clean and quiet.
That’s my cue.
The compartment bursts open and I’m on my feet, boots hitting the floor hard enough to make the walls vibrate. Beau moves for the helm, shoving us off the dock while Caleb and Dane clear the last of the security.
Felix freezes when he sees me. “Who the fuck are you?”
My hellcat doesn’t waste the moment; she drives her feet straight into his crotch. He folds with a strangled groan, collapsing to his knees.
I crouch beside him, my voice a low growl against his ear. “You slapped my girl, so I’m going to cut off your fingers and make you eat them.”
Behind me, Tamsin makes a gagging sound. I glance over, one brow lifting.
“Really? You gag at this, but sewing a testicle into an eye socket is fine?” I throw my hands up. “Seriously?”
She laughs, shakes her head, and walks straight into me.
Her hands pull my mask up and her mouth crashes into mine.
Her moan hums against my tongue, and my hand fists in the curve of her ass, hauling her legs around my waist. I don’t care that Felix is still breathing in the same room. Let him see who she belongs to.
“You fuckers know who I am?” Felix spits. He’s still hunched over, still clutching himself as if that’ll save him.
Tamsin twists in my lap, still straddling me, and meets his eyes with a smile sweet as sugar.
“And do you know who we are?” she purrs. “We’re the ones who made all your pervert friends disappear.”
She’s glowing. Gorgeous, lethal, and it makes me want to lock her in my arms forever, even if it’s while I carve him up right here.
We hit shore fast. The van’s waiting, engine rumbling. I grab Felix by the collar and drag him up the dock, nothing but garbage in my hands. Beau’s ready, syringe in hand. One quick jab in the neck and the bastard’s dead weight, his head lolling as the fight drains out of him.
We haul him to the van. Caleb and Dane emerge from the shadows, masked.
Tamsin strips without hesitation, wig, contacts, heels, and that dress that made me want to murder half the poker table.
She tosses it all into a pile on the boat.
I peel off my hoodie and pull it over her head, shielding her from the night air and from any eyes stupid enough to linger.
Caleb’s grin widens as he flicks his lighter. Flames bloom along the boat, roaring higher as the heat licks the air.
“Fucker gets off on burning things down,” I mutter.
Tamsin’s chuckle catches the firelight, turning her hair into black silk edged in gold, making her look as if she crawled straight out of hell.
Dane tears off on his bike while the rest of us climb into the van. Tamsin’s tense beside me, eyes fixed on Felix’s limp body. She’s holding herself together with nothing but willpower.
“I can kill him,” I whisper, leaning into her, lips brushing her neck.
Her cold fingers touch my cheek, steadying me.
“I know, Eiden, but I need this.”
Her voice is raw, threaded with something I’ve never heard from her, a thin crack in the armor. I see it in her eyes; this isn’t just another kill. Felix Foster isn’t just another monster to her. He pretended to care for Daisy, planned her destruction, and savored it.
“We’re here,” Beau calls, breaking the moment. Dane’s bike is already parked at the tree line.
Tamsin glances out the window, and turns to me, sudden and sure, sliding back into my lap.
“You—”
I smirk and tip my head toward the cabin crouched in the dark. “It’s only fair to end it where it all began, hellcat,” I murmur my words into her ear, watching the jump of her pulse at her throat, already tasting the violence waiting inside.
Dane’s done his work well. The place looks exactly as it did the night we first saw her in it—plastic sheeting draped over the walls, chains swaying faintly from the ceiling, the table lined with every tool she’s ever favored, right down to that dull little knife I told her to replace.
She steps inside, the scent of metal and cold earth thick in the air. Her hand curls tight around the doorframe.
“If you ever leave me, I’ll cut your balls off.” Her words hit like a fucking knife to the gut because her tone is serious.
I move in behind her, my chest pressed to her back, arms locking around her waist. My heartbeat hammers against her spine.
“I will kill the entire world for you, Tamsin.” I kiss her shoulder. “I won’t go anywhere, ever.”
Felix wakes to the sound of plastic crackling under him as Caleb and Beau chain him against the wall. His head jerks, eyes darting, breath already ragged. He tries to move, but the cuffs bite into his wrists, the chain across his chest locking him into the chair under the harsh light.
The table beside him gleams: knives, pliers, hooks.
I step into his view, mask on, knife in hand.
“You remember what I said?” My voice stays low, even. “About making you eat your own fingers?”
He spits at my boots. Wrong move.
I slam his left hand flat on the wall near the chains and drive the tip of my blade into the base of his pinky finger.
Bone crunches against the wood and he screams, the sound high and raw, thrashing until the chain across his chest jerks him still.
I cut through tendon and knuckle until the digit comes free, slick and warm in my palm.
“Open your mouth.”
He shakes his head. I clamp my hand around his jaw until his teeth part and shove his pinky finger between them, covering his mouth until I feel the wet convulsion of his swallow. He gags, choking, eyes bulging and I pat his cheek.
“Good boy.”
I step back, letting her take the light. She peels the hoodie from her head, slow, as if she wants him to memorize her face.
“Do you know who I am, Felix?”
He blinks, squints through pain and adrenaline. “You’re just some—”
“Think harder,” she cuts in.
“Daisy,” she says, letting the name hang in the air like smoke.
His body jerks against the restraints. “Daisy…” he repeats, and I see it, that flicker of recognition, the sick glimmer of pride curling at the corner of his mouth.
“She’s my cousin,” Tamsin continues, stepping in until her shadow falls over him, close enough that he can smell her perfume through the blood. “She came home broken, covered in bruises, crying so hard she couldn’t even speak—and you thought you got away with it.”
His lips twitch, but she cuts him off, her voice harder now.
“You didn’t. You’ll never get away from me, Felix. Every scream you make tonight is for her. Every drop of blood you spill is for the women you destroyed.”
Beau and Caleb remain silent, standing behind her as sentinels, the darkness at her back.
She reaches for her knife, a small, sweet, deadly smile curving her lips.
“And when I take your eyes, I’ll make sure you leave this world in the dark… the way you left her.”
She moves with the precision of someone who’s been living for this moment. Every step is measured, inevitable.
The blade kisses his cheek first, shallow enough to sting, deep enough to bleed. His head jerks, breath hissing through clenched teeth.
“Felix,” she says, calm as stone. “Say her name.”
He glares, jaw tight.
Her hand snaps up, gripping his chin so hard his teeth click. “Say it.”
“Daisy,” he spits, trying to turn it into a sneer.
The knife answers before I can, cutting deep across his thigh. His body bucks against the chains, a strangled yell tearing loose.
“What did you do to her?”
“She wanted it—”
He doesn’t even finish before Tamsin opens another red smile above his knee. His scream rips through the cabin, raw and cracking.
“Liar.”
The blade works again, and again. Every denial earns another savage slash; every truth another line that makes him twitch and sob. The air turns heavy with copper and fear.
When she drags the blade down his cheek to his throat, he starts shaking. “Please—” he gasps, but it breaks into a cry when the tip bites into the soft flesh of his stomach, letting the warmth spill over his skin.
His breathing fractures into panicked wheezes. “Stop! Please, I—”
The sharp stink of piss fills the air as the dark patch spreads.
She doesn’t blink. “Pathetic.”
When she finally reaches his eyes, he’s just hiccupping breaths and wet, broken sounds. She doesn’t hurry, makes him wait, lets the anticipation cut deeper than the steel.
And then—The Shame Socket.
I fist a hand in his hair, forcing his head back while my other hand pries his eyelid open. Caleb moves in with a smirk.
“Can I help?” he asks her.
She smirks back and nods.
Caleb braces the other side of his skull, holding him steady while she takes the scalpel. The cut is slow, precise, a perfect circle. His scream rips through the cabin, loud enough to make my ears ring. He gags, thrashes and my grip only tightens.
The eye pops free with a wet snap. Beau steps in, holding a steel plate, and she drops it with a slick sound that makes Felix retch.
The second eye comes out the same way, merciless. By the end, his face is a mask of blood and tears, chest rising in shallow, panicked pulls.
From the doorway, Dane chuckles. “This is fucking insane… and fun.” He leans against the frame, content to watch.
Tamsin kneels, and Dane’s grin fades. “That’s my cue. I’m out.”
“Thanks, man,” I say without looking away from her.
She slides Felix’s jeans down, one clean movement, and severs his sack. It lands beside his eyes on the plate. His last breath rattles out of him before his head drops forward.
Her gaze finds mine. I pull my mask off.
“He raped over thirty women that we know of,” I tell her. “We’re sure he killed at least a dozen. They all deserved this.”
She nods, and I can see it now, the crash after the high, the way adrenaline is bleeding out of her.
Beau steps up with the needle. “Let me do it, okay?”
She peels her gloves off with a snap, leans in, and kisses his cheek. “Thank you, Beau.”
His ears flush red as he threads the needle and begins sewing each testicle into its new place. “You know, I patched up Eiden after you stabbed him, guess it was practice.”
I huff out a dark laugh and step into her, wrapping my arms around her waist.
“You okay?”
“I’m happy it’s over,” she says softly. “And now all I want is you… and a warm bath.”
Her kiss tastes of copper and fire.
Outside, Caleb hauls the body into the van for disposal. When he comes back, his lighter flicks open and shut.
“Now,” Caleb grins, “the best part.”
The tiny flame dances in his eyes as he flicks the lighter. I pull Tamsin hard against my side, my arm locked around her waist, because I need her here, anchored to me, while we burn this chapter out of existence.
The cabin stands as a silent witness, steeped in the stink of blood and fear. Plastic sheeting flutters in the breeze, stained dark where it soaked through. Felix’s stench clings to everything. Not for long.
Caleb tosses the lighter inside.
The fire catches instantly, Dane made sure it would burn fast and brutal. Flames race up the walls, devouring the table, the chains, the plastic. The air fills with smoke, the crack of splitting wood punctuating the roar.
Tamsin doesn’t look away. Her black hair gleams orange in the firelight, her lips parted, her breathing slow, steady and calm in the way only someone who’s finally claimed their vengeance can be. She’s watching the place where she carved her justice and letting it vanish into the blaze.
“It’s gone,” I murmur into her temple. “But you’re still mine. Always.”
Her head tilts, that corner-smirk curving just enough to make my pulse climb. “Always, my masked man.”
The roof caves in, sparks screaming into the dark sky. For a moment it’s just us, the fire, and the quiet certainty that Felix Foster’s name will never be spoken again.