CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
When he stops the Jeep, he studies my face for a beat, drawing a conclusion. “Shit. You’re just here because you’re fucking her?” He scrubs his hand over his face, wheezing through a guffaw. “I get it, man. Good pussy. And that cunt was a virgin when I had it, but sti—”
My fist pummels his eye socket with enough force to slam his head into the driver’s window and have him ricocheting back toward me, all with a scintillating thwack that appeases my ire. Blood pours from his left nostril and his already-swollen eyelid.
He smiles, wicked and depraved, the monster revealing himself. “Now, this is more like it. At least I’ll die knowing I’ll haunt your dreams, motherfucker. Every time you taste her, you’ll know I had her fir—”
It’s my pistol that strikes him this time, his cheek breaking open and spilling before his head has even followed through on the bounce off the steering wheel. He’s deformed and bloody and still fucking grinning.
It’s not even close to enough.
Maddox yanks Keller’s hair, holding his head in place. “I do love seeing you lose it, Axe, but we should move this to the woods.”
“Fine,” I concede, getting out and expecting them to follow.
Maddox and Jax zip-tie Keller’s wrists behind his back as Ryker and Cash join us. Then we march him out to an area we scouted earlier.
Still hanging on to his heckling spirit, Keller slings another gibe. “You’re planning to hunt down every fucker who did her dirty?”
Pride in Zara’s strengths swells in my chest. “Only those she hasn’t already taken out.”
The towering trees can’t truly be appreciated beneath a midnight sky, but the scents of damp earth and pine and a mushroomy fragrance permeate the path.
And the loneliness of it calms me. Because isolation is what he chained Zara to when he stole the choice from her.
She might’ve chosen that route anyway. I’m sure her father was her hero, but maybe she would’ve had a chance to experience a life that wasn’t rife with the misery of trusting no one and the haunting gift of being the benefactress of death.
So, bringing him here, surrounded by the type of brotherhood he’s likely barred himself from, and returning him to the silent earth feels fitting. Once we make it to our spot, Jax jumps to start a bonfire because what every deep forest execution needs is a kumbaya blaze.
Maddox shoves Keller to the ground. Cash helps strip him down to his boxer briefs so the cold does some of the work for us. And while I didn’t plan on interrogating him because I thought I had all I needed, I decide to ask a question about something that’s gnawing at me.
“I’m not much for elaborate torture tactics, and we don’t have our usual equipment out here.
So, for every question you refuse to answer, I’ll shoot an extremity.
” I don’t wait for acknowledgment because he’s familiar with how this goes.
“What organization did you make the deal with? The one opposing Kratos?”
“I don’t know, man.” He rolls to his side, alleviating some of the strain on his shackled wrists. “Kratos wouldn’t let me out of my contract, and I got wind of another group that wanted them dead, so I went for it. Just like you would have.”
I tsk, arching a brow at him in the firelight. “Nothing about what you did is how I would have done it.”
Unable to ignore a challenge, he huffs a scornful chuckle. “Well, I suppose that’s true since you’re bewitched by the same cunt I bartered with.”
His shrieking scream echoes off the steepling oak trees when the bullet pierces his floppy dick, and I feel my first twinge of satisfaction since we arrived. The few punches to his face weren’t nearly enough suffering for him disrespecting Zara.
Ryker steps forward and snaps a picture. We need a few to carry out our plan in its entirety.
“This is good video footage,” Cash says, referring to Keller’s bleats.
Ryker agrees, recording the pain, the pleas, and the gory remains of a worthless cock. But then he wordlessly steps back to the other three, where they all perch on fallen logs in their dress attire. The crackling wood and smoky-maple aroma of the bonfire consume us while we wait.
When the wailing finally ceases, I resume my questioning, which has little to do with Zara and everything to do with my morbid curiosity. “Why—and tread lightly here—was the contract so bad that you were willing to sell Zara’s services?”
He breathes through his teeth with a hiss to stifle the agony of his mutilated appendage, his eye swollen shut now and his cheek bloody and bruised.
“They were out of hand. Newer when they sought me out. Power hungry. Had me offing people left and right and never upped the original pay, even though they could afford it.”
“So, you had them all killed for this other anonymous group?”
“Not all.” He grunts as violent tremors ripple through his legs. “There were fourteen by that time, and only eleven showed, but that was enough to cripple them.”
I prowl around him, my wrath igniting fiercer than the writhing flames at his backside. “Enough for Zara to cripple them. You didn’t lift a fucking finger.”
“Au contraire,” he quips in a smart-ass lilt. “I pulled the strings, and my lovesick puppet danced.”
That has him losing three fingers, his hand gushing and squirting all over the carpet of dry leaves as he roars a low groan.
Maddox kicks Keller’s feet. “You’re really slow on the uptake, man. Losing a dick wasn’t enough?”
“For a guy like that,” Cash taunts, “one who only has the faint recollection of pussy, what good is a hand without a dick anyway?”
Ryker crouches down in front of Keller and replays the video of him screeching. “I’m gonna pass this on so she sees what kind of bullet she dodged when you left her.”
Jax is busy playing in the flames, but he glances over, the blaze capering in his eyes. “He’s wearing down, Axe. Finish it.”
I dip my chin to Jax, who has a keen sense of how others are faring, and wrap things up. “Last question. You said Kratos was power hungry, and this other group wanted them wiped out. What type of power was Kratos after—arms, drugs, trafficking?”
“Yeah.” Keller grimaces, his eyes fluttering as he gathers his words. “Kratos had their hands in everything—all that shit, politics, and legit dealings. Too much.”
“And the other?” I press.
“I don’t know.” His teeth chatter, either from the cold or shock. “But Kratos feared them, and they felt … bigger. That’s why I took the deal and gave them Zara.”
Why he gave them Zara. As if she were merely a tool to gift them.
My molars grind until I can hear the tiny fractures spreading through them. Until my vision is a blur of forest and blood and my sweet fearless Thorn.
Of rage and retribution.
With the toe of my shoe, I roll him over onto his stomach and lodge a bullet just above his zip-tied wrists, in his spine—one of the most excruciating places to be shot.
Smashing his face in the dirt, I muffle his screams, which still manage to echo through the woods.
So, I wait for them to subside enough for me to explain my final verdict.
“That’s what you did to her—a sweet young girl who could’ve had any future she wanted.
You used her for what you needed and left her paralyzed to a painful life where death would always be chasing her.
So, that is how your remaining hours—or if we’re lucky, days—will be. ”
No clemency here.
My eyes land on my brothers. “Put the fire out, and let’s go. I’ll call a cleaner to follow up tomorrow and see if he’s still breathing or if an animal finished him off.”
Jax unfolds a collapsible shovel that we brought with us and starts scooping dirt onto the flames. Maddox and Cash help, so the fire is extinguished in a matter of minutes. Ryker lights the path with a flashlight, and we start to trek back the way we came, but Jax’s voice stops us.
“He’s out of his mind right now because you hurt someone he cares about, and that’s the one thing that severs his control.
Or let’s face it—makes him as crazy as the rest of us,” he says to Keller, looming over him as the four of us stand, puzzled as to what he’s doing.
“Lucky for you, he taught me mercy.” With that, he shoots Keller in the head.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I bark, so irate that my skin itches from smoke and ashes and embers, like it did nineteen years ago.
“I kept you from losing yourself to this piece of shit, like you’ve kept me afloat all these years whenever I’m drowning in torment.” He walks toward me and grips the back of my neck. “I’ve got you too, Papa Axe.”
“I’m not drowning,” I assure him. “He deserved it.”
“He did,” he agrees. “I wasn’t showing him mercy as much as I was you. The last thing we need—the last thing Zara needs from you—is to stir old ghosts.”
I glance between Keller’s lifeless body and Jax’s tender depravity, cognizant that I helped create both, but one satisfies the sickness inside me while the other is my redemption.
Since I promised my siblings I wouldn’t become my father and that is the furthest thing I want for Zara, I grit my teeth and rasp my vow. “No old ghosts.”