20. Ivy
Ivy
“Y-you,” Emilio stutters. “H-how…”
“How am I here, or do you mean how am I alive?” Emmett asks softly.
Emilio’s face pales drastically. “I…” he stutters, glances at his father, then he clamps his jaw shut.
Emmett scoffs and keeps walking leisurely.
It’s as if he can’t see the guns trained on him by both Vaughn and the men behind him.
“Uncle, why can’t the head of the house be in his own home?”
“You’re no longer qualified!” Emilio rushes to say, his voice loud and hard. “The deal has already been done. Vaughn is now the next boss!”
This explosive anger doesn’t even perturb Emmett… just as my eyes don’t move away from him.
I watch as he keeps walking, each stride full of power and a disturbing aura that makes even Vaughn shuffle restlessly.
Emmett comes to a stop in front of the crying, bleeding, and shot Senator Hughes, glaring at him.
“Senator, you’re quite pathetic,” he says gently but from the corner of my eye, I see Vaughn tighten the grip he has on the trigger due to that very softly spoken insult.
“Y-you s-shot me!” Senator Hughes cries in stunned horror, as if he can’t believe it just happened to him. “How dare you?”
Emmett doesn’t respond… at least not in the way anyone expects.
Silently, he extends his hand out to the side, as if waiting for something.
Ty, who I last saw at dinner, walks up and hands Emmett what looks like a chainsaw.
Holy God…
Without sparing anyone a glance, Emmett starts the rusty-looking chainsaw, and it wakes with a vicious roar.
The sound is so jarring and violently loud that it makes my heart jump viciously.
What is he going to do?
I’m not the only one with that question as Senator Hughes looks up at Emmett with horror and fear in his eyes.
“W-what are you doing?” he stutters, his voice a loud shrill, but Emmett doesn’t even say another word.
Two menacing-looking men materialize out of nowhere. Moving in perfect synch, they hold Senator Hughes down.
His limbs are stretched out. As we all watch in stunned horror, Emmett brings down the rusty chainsaw and starts carving off Senator Hughes’s right hand, the one that was shot.
My jaw drops to the floor.
Emmett’s posture is relaxed, his hand movements almost gentle as if he’s holding a paintbrush.
But just like back then when he was using Jackson’s blood to paint, he’s sawing off Senator Hughes’s wrists leisurely, gently, taking his sweet time… but I know the longer he takes, the more agony Senator Hughes is in… and that’s exactly his goal.
The cries that erupt are too much to bear, louder than the old chainsaw.
Melissa and my mother are both frozen in horror, with their eyes almost bulging out, mouths agape, but Emmett doesn’t care, nor does he stop.
After he’s done with one hand, he proceeds to saw off Senator Hughes’s other hand, still taking his time to jaggedly leave a mess that even if Senator Hughes is rushed into surgery, they’d never be able to attach his hands back.
It’s a ruthless act done in the most disciplined manner.
Blood splatters onto Emmett’s face like a scene out of a gory movie, but his icy expression doesn’t waver.
Hell, he doesn’t even look like he feels it.
He just simply and directly mutilates the man that just slapped me.
Then, as if it’s a split-second decision, Emmett runs the jagged blade across Senator Hughes’s chest, creating the bloodiest pool of fleshy bits mixed with clothes. It’s horrifying!
When the machine is cut off, only the wretched cries of agony from the mutilated man remain.
Emmett drops the chainsaw right beside the crying man writhing on the ground.
Everyone stares at Emmett in shock.
“My apologies,” Emmett starts softly, not at all winded or perturbed by what he just did. “I usually have these nitty-gritty matters handled by my men, but you, Senator Hughes, you’re a person of interest to me. I had to show you the courtesy you deserve.”
A rush goes through me when I realize that Emmett is in fact extremely livid right now.
“Y-you!” Senator Hughes screams and cries, foaming at the mouth. Emmett smirks.
“Senator, why don’t we play your favorite game of quid pro quo ?” he says instead.
He picks up one of the sawed-off hands, dangles it like it’s disgusting, then in a move that makes Beverly and Melissa scream the roof off, Emmett leans down and slaps Senator Hughes’s face so hard, the sound is louder than the clap of lightning.
He just slapped the man across the face with his own sawed-off hand!
Not once, but he does it five times in quick succession, with each blow louder and harder than the one before.
Jesus…
I notice Grandpa Armando doesn’t even bat an eye as he watches this.
Scarlet isn’t moved at all.
But I notice Angelo has moved to the very back, while Giovanni is slowly reaching for something at his side, but all eyes are on Emmett’s bloody figure as Senator Hughes’s cries reach an unbearable level.
Emmett just reduced Senator Hughes from his highly respected persona to nothing more than a wretchedly mutilated, bleeding, crying man who looks just as pathetic as Emmett said he was, if not more.
It’s insane.
I’ve always known that Emmett and the boys know how to unalive, but up to this point in our lives, I’d never seen any of them in action.
“W-what did you just do? He’s running for president!” Senator Hughes’s father rushes forward, his face ashen and distressed with shock, but he’s blocked by another pair of tall, tough men who push him back, and he falls onto his bottom in shock.
Emmett doesn’t spare him a glance, or at anyone for that matter.
He simply has one of the men forcefully open the senator’s mouth, then Emmett stuffs the bloody hand in, making him almost swallow all his fingers, including the thumb.
When he’s satisfied by the gagged cries, he rises like a lithe, strong predator… and he heads straight for me.
His gaze on me is hard, cold, and sinister… and my feet are frozen solid.
From where I stand, the distance is quite big, but Emmett swallows it up in just four strides, and then he’s right in front of me.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Vaughn demands in a growl, but Emmett only looks at me with a seriously cold expression on his blood-smeared face.
“Hi, Angel,” he says intimately.
Hearing his voice, the tone low and soft only for me, my entire being reacts to him.
I gasp, as if a burst of violent oxygen has just been pumped into my shriveled lungs.
My whole body turns into a strange mix of mush and lightness as if I’m now a floating cloud.
Emmett’s sharp emerald eyes hold mine, and in them I see a rage so deep, my insides react fiercely.
What happened to him?
Where was he?
Why is there so much blood on him?
Is he okay?
I have so many questions that I can’t even utter. All I can do is look at him, wanting to touch him, slap him really, but the densely green forest of his eyes weakens me almost thoroughly.
“Hi,” I whisper, feeling the harsh absurdity of this interaction, but unable to help myself.
“Did you miss me?” he questions teasingly, his voice still intimately low.
I know he’s intentionally putting me on the spot right now, making sure I’m under his control.
I blink, noticing the rough stubble that highlights his sharp, chiseled jaw.
God, this man is so fine… and he just brutalized Senator Hughes’s body to a bloody mess.
“You’re here,” I croak, not knowing what else to say.
“I am,” he says, still in that low tone that makes something in me tingle aggressively.
“Where were you?”
“Had an errand to run.”
“Huh?”
Guns are still trained on him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
He looks like he’s wounded, judging by the blood on him, but he’s so at ease and unbothered like he’s leisurely picking up wild daises in a prairie.
Frozen, I watch as he raises his hand, about to touch me, but then he stops, frowns as if he’s unhappy about the blood on his hands, and then extends his hand out again.
My heart leaps in my chest, thinking he’s about to be handed the chainsaw again, but instead, Ty appears with a silver bowl on a tray and stands to the side.
Emmett gives me a look that pins me to where I stand, then he turns and starts to wash his hands in the bowl, the blood turning the water red.
Ripley appears with yet another silver bowl, and Emmett moves over to wash his hands in that bowl, until his hands are clean, without a single spot of blood is left.
While this seemingly systematic ritual is being done, no one utters a word, let alone dare to breathe.
A white towel is handed to him by Ty, and Emmett proceeds to slowly dry his hands.
How many times has Emmett done this? They even have a routine!
“What are you doing?” I finally ask, my voice groggy.
“Making sure none of this filthy, infested shit touches you,” Emmett says, leaving me stunned.
He turns to look at me then. I notice the blood splatters that were on his face have been wiped away, revealing his hauntingly sexy face.
When he’s done, he tosses the towel at the still crying Senator Hughes.
It lands directly on his face, humiliating and tormenting him even further.
Unconcerned, Emmett reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pill bottle and shows it to me.
Like a puppet whose strings have been pulled, I stare at the bottle incredulously, only to see my name and the type of pills these are.
“Your errand was filling my migraine prescription?” I say in a shrill voice, shocked.
Emmett smirks, twists the cap open, then he reaches for my hand and shakes out two migraine relievers into my palm.
Ty comes back with a glass bottle of water and offers it to me.
But all I can do… is blink.
“You look like you’re about to drop dead, Angel. Take the damn meds,” Emmett demands.
Stunned by this turn of events, I automatically open my mouth to take the pills, then I accept the water from Ty to chase them down… in front of everyone’s shocked gazes.
After I’m done, Emmett suddenly lifts his hand and tilts my face with his fingers, looking at my cheek that’s still throbbing with pain.