Chapter Seventeen
Savage
I can’t get the images of the fight out of my head. The proprietary way Eamon handled Tobias, even though the boy clearly didn’t enjoy it. The way he seemed completely fearless when it came to my father finding out he’s fucking another man…
“I saw something I wanted, and I took it. Now it’s mine. Padraig respects that.”
I’ve spent my entire life being sure about the things my father hates and the things he needs me to be, and somehow Eamon managed to turn that idea on its head with just a few words. I’ve invested all this energy into being the kind of man my father wants me to be…
And it was what? All a waste?
I just want to know how every single motherfucker I meet, including that smug, obsequious little shit, seems to have the kind of commanding, dominant energy that my father respects. Apart from me. What fucking gene did I not get that lets you act like you’re in control of every situation?
Even Micah has it. And I know that Father is disgusted by the fact that he’s gay, even though he never said as much out loud, but it’s not like he ever did anything about it. He’s always seemed content to keep Micah at arm’s length, both when we were kids and recently, while taking his anger and his vitriol out on me.
I’d always assumed it was out of some kind of deference to Micah’s mother, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe Father sees Micah’s dominance and it earns him the few flakes of respect he needs to remain unbeaten. While I can do every single fucking thing right on paper, but he still manages to see right through me to my soft, constantly crumbling inner core.
And that’s why I disgust him.
Which makes everything I’ve ever done for him a waste. Because I can control how I talk and act and who I fuck, but I can’t dig that fucking weakness out of me, no matter how hard I try.
And I’ve tried.
I turn up the heat on the water sluicing over my body, hoping it can burn these thoughts out of me, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works.
Micah was so different when I overheard him with his little friend the other day. It was a shock. I’ve always known he has this competent, controlled side of him. He’s been amazing at taking care of me, obviously, while I’ve brought him nothing but chaos and misery. But seeing how that translated to his sex life wasn’t something I ever wanted, but it was fucking eye-opening.
“Stay still while I fuck your pretty face.”
“Good slut.”
God, it’s nothing I ever would have imagined coming out of his mouth. And once I saw the dude he was saying that shit to, that made it even more wild. That guy was big. He was basically my size. He had showy gym muscles, and I could have severed his esophagus with a spoon if I’d needed to, but still.
He seemed so masculine, but just a few minutes before I saw him, he’d been on his knees, begging my brother for more and crying to the sounds of ‘good slut’.
I can’t wrap my head around it.
If only I could figure out how to mainline that kind of dominance into myself, I think it would fix all my problems. I’m so jealous that even thinking about it is making me get hard. I pause to lean against the wall of the shower and focus on the sensations.
The water beating down on me, so hot that my skin prickles and tingles everywhere it lands.
The pressure and heat stiffening my cock at the thought of being that kind of dominant person in bed.
What it must be like. Putting someone on their knees. Having them look up at you with total desperation, tears on their face, coming undone for you.
I know all of Micah’s expressions pretty well by this point, and I can clearly imagine the salacious, self-satisfied little smirk he probably wears while he pounds into that guy’s mouth. While he lets all those filthy words slip out of him, praising him and teasing him and degrading him all in the same sentence.
How he probably makes the man shiver and want to touch himself, but forces him to wait for permission.
The tile is unforgiving where I’m leaning my forehead against it, but I don’t care. I’m too distracted by the feeling of a full, aching erection that I didn’t have to fucking fight for. For the first time in months. Maybe longer.
I don’t think. I reach down and wrap my hand around my length, stroking myself firmly before my body has the chance to realize what it’s doing and call for a retreat. Every thought in my head turns into white noise at the pleasure of it, and then the world is reduced down to this: my tight grip, all that friction building something, and the sound of my panting breaths filling the room.
Panting like a slut .
The thought invades my mind from fuck-knows-where, but I’m too distracted to linger on it. It all feels too good.
Everything assaults me at once. The things that I’ll never embody but Micah does: dominance, confidence, control. The way he made a man who could tower over him kneel and love him for it. There isn’t even space in my brain for jealousy right now, because the images of it are all too vivid.
Even though I didn’t actually see anything, because I was in the other room fucking that girl. And even though I should probably be thinking about her right now, as I fuck my own fist and moan into the emptiness of the bathroom.
But I don’t. I want to know what it is about Micah that made that man kneel. I want to know how it felt, and if it was as incredible as it sounded.
I want to know how hard he came.
I want to know if my brother called him a ‘good slut’ while he spilled his cum all over the kitchen floor.
There’s a telling pulse in my gut, and then I feel my cock flex. My orgasm hits me out of nowhere, almost like it did the other day, and before I know it, I’m painting the tile with so much cum I can’t believe it was all trapped inside me.
My pulse is racing, and my heartbeat is too loud echoing in my ears. My chest heaves, but the steam is thick in the air and I can’t seem to catch my breath.
I don’t know what just happened. It wasn’t right, I’m sure. Anyone who I told would say it was fucked up. But it didn’t feel fucked up.
A sudden wave of hot anguish hits me, and I screw up my face for a second before I swallow it down. I will not cry over this.
It’s bad enough that I act like a fucking pussy all the time. I’m not going to compound the humiliation by getting fucking weepy about it.
I consciously reach out and find the numbness that’s always waiting at the periphery of my awareness. Grabbing on to it with both hands, I pull it over my body like a blanket and let it settle in.
No thoughts. No feelings. No idea what the fuck that was.
All I need to do is finish my shower and go to sleep. I can figure the rest of it out some other time. Or maybe never. Actually, never sounds perfect.
Instead of being woken up by the feeling of Micah’s weight shifting the mattress, it’s a pounding at the door.
My body goes from zero to sixty in an instant. I’m up and thrumming with adrenaline, heading to the door to see who the threat is. I clock that it’s still dark out, and I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours.
Thankfully, Micah has a peephole. Because it is a threat at the door, but of all the threats in my life, it’s not the worst.
Colm, Lucky, and Eamon, all dressed like they’re about to go rob a liquor store.
Which, to be fair, is possible.
I should be more cautious, but sleep is still dragging at my limbs and the small amount of distance I’ve gotten from my old life has made it seem that much less real, so without any other checks, I open the door and let them in.
They all pile into Bambi’s apartment like they belong there, which immediately makes me chafe. But I don’t say anything. If they’re here as a group, it’s because Father sent them. I know Colm can’t stand Lucky and wouldn’t be hanging out with him for fun, and I’d be fucking stunned to discover anyone in this world voluntarily spends their time with Eamon.
It was crystal clear from our interaction today that even his little boy toy is there against his will. Which sucks. If I were the hero type, maybe I could do something about it.
Unfortunately for Tobias, I’m sure I’m just another villain in his story. It’s my birthright, same as the rest of these losers.
“What do you need?” I ask, rubbing sleep from my eye as I close the door behind them as softly as I can. We don’t need to cause any more fuss for Micah’s neighbors than we already have this past month.
Colm gives me an appraising look. His eyes run up and down my body—mostly exposed because I stumbled out here in just my boxer briefs—and I get the feeling he’s looking for physical weaknesses.
“You look good. Better, Sav,” he says while clapping me on the shoulder in that warm, masculine way some guys just master without meaning to.
“I don’t know about you, Colm, but I’m not here for a lap dance. We’ve got work to do.”
Eamon’s voice is like a cheese grater to my fucking nerves. I force myself to look him in the eye, and I can’t help but smile a little when I notice the bruises already forming on his throat from when I attacked him earlier.
With a faux-innocent expression, I gesture toward them.
“What happened to you?”
If I was hoping to catch him off-guard, that was stupid. The smug shit always has something to say for himself.
“Just some bitch,” he tells me, a glint in his eye and a wicked smile playing on his lips. “She didn’t like the way I was fucking her. But don’t worry, she’ll get what’s coming to her.”
Anger curdles in my stomach, and I have to shove down the urge to strangle him all over again. Colm is looking between us with a wary expression that tells me he’s reading between the lines here more than I’d like, but thankfully, Lucky breaks the tension.
“Come on, Savage! We caught one. It’s finally time for a little fucking violence, after being cooped up in this shithole town for weeks.”
He punches me on the arm harder than he needs to. When I look at him, he’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement, like a little kid on Christmas morning.
“Wait, caught one of who?”
“The Aryans! The motherfucking Aryans! Come on, let’s go torture some information out of him.”
He’s already tugging at my arm, like I don’t need to get dressed first. Eamon is still smirking at me, but Colm is the only one who seems to be taking this seriously, so I study his face.
“Your father gave orders. We need to extract some information from him, and you’re still the best. He told us to come get you and then go work the guy over.”
Something inside me sinks right through the floor. I think it was that teeny-tiny piece of hope that I’d allowed myself to have that maybe Father had forgotten about me. Or that maybe I wasn’t worth anything to him anymore. That I could just drift away into nothingness, and I wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore.
Of course not.
My thoughts flicker to Micah. What would he say if he knew what I was about to do? If he knew that not only was I a violent piece of shit, but also that I specifically excelled in this truly dark side of an already dark business?
“You good to do this, Sav? We can tell Padraig that you’re still?—”
“I’m fine.” I cut Colm off, partly because I know my father won’t take no for an answer if he’s sending them here specifically to get me, and partly because Eamon is already looking at me gleefully, like this is exactly what he wanted to happen. “Let’s just go.”
In my head, I tell myself I want to get them out of the apartment as quickly as possible so there’s no chance of Eamon and Micah crossing paths. But deep down, I know that’s an excuse. Micah won’t be home for hours. If I wanted to take a stand against my father, now would be the time to start.
Instead, I say yes, the way I always do. Because I’m weak, and the thought of fighting him is worse than bearing the shame of giving in.
It didn’t take long for me to get dressed and into Colm’s Escalade with the others. In fact, the whole thing happened so quickly, it sort of feels like I blinked and ended up standing in a barn, on some satellite property we apparently own outside of town.
I don’t have any of my old clothes here, just what Micah’s bought me. And he’s bought me normal people clothes. So I’m in jeans and a soft gray t-shirt made of some stretchy material that’s snug across my chest and shoulders, making the sleeves ride up. Nothing else. It makes me feel kind of naked.
I’m standing in front of a man who’s been stripped, beaten and suspended by his wrists from a rafter, but I’m the one who feels naked because I’m about to torture someone while wearing work boots and dark wash denim that my little brother bought me at Target. I’m not sure how that manages to be ridiculous and make sense at the same time, but my brain thinks it does.
We haven’t even started, and I already feel floaty and disconnected from the room around me. God, how was I ever good at this?
Or maybe it’s how easily I disconnect from reality that allows me to be good at it. Maybe you can’t be good at torturing people if your mind stays present.
Well, Lucky and Eamon both look completely present and eager to get on with the show. Eamon is standing behind me, arms crossed over his chest to make himself look bigger, his usual self-satisfied smile on his face, happy to look like an extra in a mob movie.
Lucky is bouncing around, picking up all the different tools that they have laid out and waving them in the guy’s face, accompanied by a string of bloodthirsty expletives and descriptions of what I’m about to do to him. He looks like a kid in a candy store, as usual. He doesn’t even seem high. His eyes are bright and clear, his mohawk is perfectly coiffed and his entire being seems dedicated to scaring the shit out of this man for the fun of it.
Colm, as usual, stands to the side and watches with an indecipherable expression on his face.
I guess it’s time to get this show on the road.
The man looks pissed. His face is covered in dried, tacky blood from a gash on his forehead. I’m assuming that’s how they took him. He has shaggy, chin-length brown hair that’s also matted with dried blood, and his body is almost as covered with tattoos as mine.
I don’t know what all of them mean, but I know enough. He’s mid-ranking—high enough that it’s going to cause problems when he turns up missing—and he’s definitely a member of the same branch of the Brotherhood that wants me dead.
“What information do we even need from him?” I ask Colm, my voice already hollow and echoey in my ears.
“Everything we can get. Where they’re based around here. How many of them there are. What they’re running, if it’s more drugs and guns?—”
He’s still talking, but the sound of his voice is swallowed up by my blood rushing in my ears.
I think I would hate this less if it weren’t all so fucking pointless. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. But I know exactly what level of debauched, gut-churning violence the next few hours are about to contain, and I know exactly how useless it all is.
The Brotherhood hate us, and we hate them, because we’re rivals. We’re all fucking criminals, who will continue to squabble over control of our shitty little trades in drugs and illegal weapons.
Sure, they’re targeting me now, but tomorrow it’ll be someone else. We kill this guy, then they kill one of ours in retribution—although please, God, if you exist, let it be Eamon—and so on and so on.
The demand for drugs and guns isn’t exactly going anywhere. And it’s not like there’s not enough to go around: this country is fucked up .
All the rest of it feels like a lot of posturing at the end of the day. My father loves to brag about my skills in this particular arena. Information extraction. I think he likes the clout it brings him more than he likes any of the information I’ve ever actually tortured out of someone.
What a waste of energy.
With exhaustion nipping at my heels, fighting for dominance with my mounting anxiety, I turn my attention to the task at hand. I let the guys do the talking. I wasn’t listening to Colm when he gave me the highlights, anyway. All I need to do is work.
The man makes it through all the nails on his right hand being pulled before he starts to scream. When I clip a battery to his testicles to start hitting him with low-level electric shocks, he starts to whimper.
But still, he doesn’t talk. Clearly, someone here really drank the Kool-Aid.
I have a headache from all the screaming and the acrid stench of burning pubic hair. When I turn away for a few seconds to rub at my temples, Lucky loses his temper. I’m in my own protective mental bubble, so it takes longer than it should for the havoc to penetrate my consciousness.
When it does, I realize he’s pummeling the guy’s face, blood gushing from the prisoner’s nose and down his chest, screaming at him for information, while the other two try to drag him away and yell at me to help.
My feeling of exhaustion only intensifies.
I need this to be over.
Steeling myself, I pull out a blade. It’s time to get messy, so we can finally all move on with our lives.
The rest happens in a blur.
Blood. More screaming that turns to wet, choked gurgles. My muscles burning with exertion. A dull throb in my wound, where it still hasn’t totally healed and isn’t used to this. The constant chatter of Lucky’s ridiculous running commentary in the background.
And then it’s done.
We’ve gotten what we could from him, and if he’s not dead, he’s about to be. I’m moving like a zombie, shuffling around the barn to gather up my shit. My limbs are all sticky with his blood.
“Sav.” Colm’s face appears in front of mine, looking at me intently like he’s been trying to get my attention for a while. “Do you want to go? Eamon volunteered to ditch the body.”
I shrug. Whatever.
“Are you good?”
“I’m fine. I need a shower. Let’s head out.”
My voice sounds like a stranger’s, but I don’t have the energy to care.
Lucky and I pile into Colm’s car while Eamon stays behind to clean up. I should really find a place to wash off here before I track evidence all over the car, but it’s not going to happen. It’s cold, in the early hours of the morning, and the idea of standing under a garden hose outside this barn is already making me shiver violently enough to have Colm looking at me and turning off the A/C.
It’s not like anyone’s going to be investigating this guy’s death, anyway. No one cares when a criminal goes missing, and the people who do care are already fully aware of who is responsible.
They’ll come for us soon enough. I just hope I have time to take a shower first and wash off the stench of his death.