Chapter Twenty
Brynne
“Wakey wakey,” I tease Max. I’ve tied him down to the stone slab in my torture chamber. It’s weird to be able to say I have one of those in my house. This house was truly made for someone like me. Max slowly comes to and looks around the room. It truly is a scene straight out of a horror movie
“What the fuck is this?” he pulls at his restraints.
“Oh, I would just skip all the dramatics. Isn’t this what you do to your victims?” I step out of the darkness with my hands clasped behind my back. His eyes narrow as he assesses me. That’s one of my favorite things about killing someone. They always assume that I’m weak because I’m a petite woman. What they don’t know is that I know multiple martial arts thanks to an old friend from down south. Before I took Clara back north, I made sure to come back stronger.
“ Who are you?”
I take the knife out from behind me and twirl it in my hands. “We can skip all this back and forth. You of course don’t need an introduction. I know all about you Max.” I take a step closer to him and his eyes don’t leave the hunting knife in my hand. “All your dirty secrets,” I whisper.
“ Y-you have the wrong guy,” he studders.
“Oh I most certainly do not.” I drag the knife down his chest and stomach. I press harder when I get to his groin. He finally realizes that he is naked.
“Whoever you are. I can pay you. My dad has a lot of money. Name your price and it’s yours,” Max pleads. I run the knife down his flaccid dick.
“What if my price isn’t money?”
“Oh god,” Max gulps.
“You guys always ask for him, but he never comes to your rescue, does he? There is no god here Max,” I pause. “Only the devil and she wears lace,” I wink and do a twirl for him in my red lingerie. I place the knife to his throat.
“Please, Please no,” Max cries out. I smile and kiss his lips. He shakes his head to get away from me, but he isn’t going anywhere. Sophie Lamanta deserves justice and I’m here to get it for her. The red lipstick from my lips smears on Max’s face and it looks poetic with the fear in his eyes. He shakes his arms and legs to try to get free. I press the knife harder into his throat to elicit some blood. His blood tastes bitter when I lick his wound.
“Let’s get to the point here. I’m going to kill you. There's no way around that, but you could choose to do the right thing for once in your life.” I walk over to the table covered in tools. I pick them up one by one and assess them. Maybe I should just use them all on him. “Do you remember Sophie Lamanta?” I ask.
“W-who?” Max says.
“Wrong answer,” I take the cutting pliers and walk over to his left hand. I lift his ring finger and place it in the pliers. “ You won’t be needing this anyway. I doubt anyone would want to spend the rest of their life chained to you,”
“W-wait wait,” I press the plier handles and his bone crunches under the metal. “Fuck,” he screams in agony.
“That’s more like it, are we going to answer honestly
now?”
“You’re fucking insane,” he spats. I tilt my head to the side and smile devilishly. I take his severed finger and run it down my neck and between my breasts. Sliding it over the lace covering my toned stomach and stopping just about my pussy. Max watches my every move. Even though he is in pain I don’t miss the way his cock twitches at the sight of me touching myself.
I look back down at his severed finger and back at him. He stills under my eye contact. “I think I need something bigger. Maybe next time I’ll cut your dick off and fuck that.”
“Jesus,” he whispers.
I look around the room. “He’s not here either, just me and you Max. I suggest you think about my next question very seriously, before answering.” I set the pliers down and grab the pictures I found when I trashed his flat. These were only a portion of his collection. Multiple girls weren’t in Clara’s reports.
When I searched his flat I found his own little torture room. A hidden camera with a bed in the middle of the room. I left the videos so there would be something to ruin his reputation once he is deemed missing. They will search the house and the flat. With how trashed it looked it will look like a kidnapping and his rich little daddy will probably issue a reward for him. Then all the scum bags will do my job for me by bombarding the police with false information.
“Who are these girls?” I turn the pictures around and flick each one at him. The stack is so big, I could do this for an hour and probably never run out of pictures.
“ I-I,” I interrupt his stuttering.
“Think about your answer here Max. The cost is going to be more than just a finger next time.”
“I didn’t take all of those. I only participated when I had to,” he explains.
“When you had to?” I ask.
“Yes. My father was the one who wanted the pictures,” he lies.
“Tsk, Tsk.” I wag my finger. “I said no more lying,” I
pick up a sledgehammer and lift it above my head.
“No, wait,” Max screams. I swing the sledgehammer down and his right knee caves in. The area instantly blows out and his scream is guttural and makes me wet. There is no coming back from a shattered kneecap.
“Oh, that looked like it hurt. Let's hope it doesn’t get infected,” I poke it with my finger and Max screams. “I told you not to lie,” I shrug.
“Please just let me go,” Max cries.
“No can do. I’m not done asking questions. Why did you and Daddy dearest take pictures? Did he participate in every rape?” I enunciate the last word to show him how much of a low life he is. He closes his eyes in pain and finally starts talking. Only took a severed finger and shattered kneecap, what a little softy .
“My father isn’t who everyone thinks he is. He's not a good man,” Max explains.
“David Penfield not being a good man? Who would have thought that?” I say jokingly. I raise my eyebrow to have him continue.
“It started as a joke where he would bring me along with his friends, but they would show me what to do. He told me that men were owed, and this is how to get it. I didn’t know what I was,” I place the sledgehammer on my shoulder.
“I would think about how you're going to finish that sentence.”
Max takes a deep breath and I can see the pain in his eyes. “I just meant that at the time I was just a boy. I didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. I was thirteen when they had me join. I wanted to say no, but I was too scared. These men were bigger than me and I thought this was how I was going to get my father’s approval.” Max closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know that I was going to like it. I know it wasn’t all my father’s fault, but I would like to think that if I wasn’t a part of it,” he pauses. “Maybe I would have turned out differently.”
I place the sledgehammer on the table and grab a
scalpel. I tuck it in the back of my lingerie. “Wait what are you doing? I told the truth,” Max pleads.
“Oh I know Max, but you still haven’t told me about Sophie Lamanta.”
Max sighs. “Sophie was the first one I lured back to the flat. I didn’t think they were going to be as rough as they were with her.”
“Who?” I ask.
“My father and his two other friends.”
“You didn’t participate?” Max doesn’t answer me and I grab for the scalpel. I’m about to slice a piece of his thigh when he finally answers.
“Yes, I did, but I wish I hadn’t. I knew she wasn’t going to be the same after. They hurt her badly. I had never seen them so ravaging with one of the girls. I don’t know if it was because I was the one to bring her or because she was the youngest we had ever had.”
Sophie Lamanta was twelve when she took her own
life. I can only imagine what she had endured in that flat if she didn’t make it to her teen years. I thought about ending it a few times, but revenge kept me alive and moments like these let me know I made the right choice.
“How old was she when you took her?” The medical
records that Clara sent over had dates on them and if the math was correct, it would have made her eight. My stomach flips when my memories of that age try to come back.
“She was a week from turning nine,” Max admits.
“Who else was there besides you and your father?” I
ask in a stern voice.
“His friends. I only know one of their names. The other one never said his name, he always made them call him Daddy.”
“Give me the name,” I remember every time my foster father brought me to his friends and they would share me. The worst one would make me call him daddy. I don’t get my hopes up thinking I've got him. I’ve been looking for these men ever since I came back to New York. They were the worst, and I know I wasn’t the last girl to come within their clutches .
“Will you let me go if I do?” Max asks. Now it's my turn to lie.
“Yes.” I watch hope bloom in his eyes and my heart races at the fact that I get to take it away from him soon.
“Robert Hachett.” Max lifts his head to look down at me. I twirl the scalpel between my fingers and walk around to his good leg.
“You see, when I was in college studying medicine, I took anatomy and it was the most interesting class. I learned all the right places to cut to prevent you from bleeding out, but don’t worry, it still hurts all the same,” I smirk.
“You said you would let me go,” Max cries.
“I lied.”