Chapter 10
“Wake-up, sleepy head.” I yank the hood off his face.
The slap to his cheek is hard. The red mark blends in with the mottled red color already forming on his face.
Flexing my sore knuckles, I wait as he comes back to consciousness.
The glare from the one eye that’s still open makes me smile.
The other is nicely swollen, bloody, and purple.
I light another cigarette and watch him, blowing the smoke into the opening of the trunk.
The bastard looks pale and sickly. Most likely from the Amanita bisporigera powder I sprinkled on the food deliveries I’ve had sent to his place, courtesy of a ‘secret admirer’.
Dumb fuck didn’t question why he was getting free food.
He just ate it up like the little piglet he is.
But after seeing him manhandle Camryn, his slow poisoning was not enough.
Rage overflowed when I witnessed the moment he put his hands on her.
I itched to carve his mark in my chest, disappointed that I won’t have time to skin him, take some of him with me.
Carving my marks into his flesh would soothe the fury, but I don’t have the time to devote to the long process of torturing him.
My roster is already full with multiple bodies that need processing, waiting for me in the forest. I won’t have the pleasure of claiming his kill.
I will initiate it, but the Mestizos will finish him.
I lift the plastic bag of his bloody hand out of the trunk next to him.
He starts to feebly kick at the side of the car where his feet are bound and trussed up like a roped calf.
It must be challenging since I broke his ankle, and I know his kneecap is destroyed from the times I hit him with my hammer.
His ribs are also probably cracked from the times I kicked him, using my steel-toed boots.
But my favorite part was hacking off chunks of his hair.
Using my knife to slash and chop until he was left with bald spots and shaggy layers all over his head.
Another small bag rests in my back pocket, stuffed full of his dark brown hair.
It’s all part of demeaning him, for the way he ripped the stuffed animal Camryn held that day.
Something about seeing him rip the small owl hit me right in the gut.
That she had a small owl was enough to make me feel some kind of way.
It felt kismet, if I believed in that shit, that she had a small owl in her possession.
Seeing that ratted owl also reminded me of Ivory and how much she loved her stuffed animal when she was a young girl.
His muffled shouts behind his gag remind me of my task. I chuckle, opening the bag and pulling out one of his fingers. It’s covered in blood and starting to decay. The bag bulges with blood from his fingers and palm.
“Recognize it, huh? Thought you would. You’re lucky I didn’t have time to take both your hands,” I murmur.
His handless arm is wrapped neatly in gauze behind his back.
He can’t feel the pain since he passed out when I was removing his hand with my saw.
The numbing painkiller I gave him will wear off soon, and then he’ll feel it and wonder what I’ve done with his hand.
Lifting the mangled remains, I turn it left and right in the plastic. “It will be a nice a souvenir.”
His sweaty face looks at me, his eyes widened in horror. His next word becomes clear. Please.
I pull down his gag, and he grumbles, “Who the fuck are you?” His swollen lips make it difficult to say the words without slurring.
“I’m Death, Reed Spencer. Your death. You dared to hurt what’s mine. Her pain belongs to me, not you.”
“Her? Who are you talking about!? Sarah? Megan? Is your girl, Kimber? She said she was single!”
Jesus, he can’t even remember who he fucked. “Think harder.”
“Um. Chloe? Paula? Was it Brittany? Oh god, it was Evelyn right? She said she was into polyamory. I only fucked her once!”
I flick out my knife, wanting to cut his throat.
He fucked around on Camryn with six women?
I knew there were a few, but it burns me that it was so many.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s disloyalty.
“I really think I may need that other hand. You can’t remember a fucking thing.
Maybe if I remove the other one it will become clear.
” I lean closer ready to slice a few fingers.
“Wait! Fuucckk… I’m sorry…let me think.” He pants and I can see his brain moving. The blood loss isn’t helping. “I don’t know, man. The only other one was Camryn, but you can’t be talking about her. She’s a frigid bitch and was a lousy fu-”
I lean down and grip his neck, hating that he even touched her. His eyes widen, and he shrieks her name.
“Camryn?! That bitch!? Jesus Christ! I don’t care about her! I was just using her! You can have her!”
Pulling in another drag of my cigarette, I bring my knife to his mouth, tapping the sharp tip against his lower lip.
He stills, eyes going wide. I trace the outline, making sure he feels the impression.
It would be so easy to slice into his skin, remove his lips.
He blinks, whimpering at my implied threat.
Good. “You want me to remove your tongue?”
He shakes his head vehemently.
“Then don’t fucking mention her name again.”
He pulls away and whispers, stuttering. “You’re— You won’t get away with this.”
“I already have Reed Patrick Spencer. Thirty years old. Father unknown. Mother, Dana Spencer. Second-rate associate professor. A degenerate who uses his mother’s disability checks to help pay his bills.
A fuck boy who sleeps with rich socialites and female students promising them a passing grade if they suck his cock.
” His eyes widen at the stream of personal facts.
“Who is going to miss you? Where you’re going no one gives a shit about you a man like you.
You’ll have no worth except for the organs they’ll harvest off your body.
Then they’ll leave your carcass on the side of the road, left for the street dogs to devour.
Your mother may mourn you, but she has one foot in the grave.
Then there will be no one. You will just be another asshole, forgotten the minute they bury you.
From this moment forward you’ll forget Camryn Park. Understood?”
His frantic nod does nothing to help the compulsion I have to hack his body into small pieces and feed it to the animals in my forest. Because I need to inflict a bit more pain for the way he insulted her, I slice a bit of his lip, loving the sight of the crimson drops that run down his chin.
He cries in pain, tears leak out of his eyes, and my cock twitches at the pain I’m causing.
I replace the hood over his head and step back, tossing his crutches inside.
I slam the trunk and lean against it. I delight in his muffled grunts.
The obscenities. His pleas for mercy. Each garbled plea soothes the jagged edges of my fury. Eventually, his screams turn to sobs.
“Where do you want him?” Onyx walks closer, wrapping the rope around his arm to form precise loops. He opens the passenger door to his SUV and tosses the rope next to the rest of his tools.
“Dump him in their territory. Near their headquarters if possible. He’s already dead, anyway. His liver is hemorrhaging. They will have some fun with trying to figure out why and what it means. By then he’s already dead.”
“It could be traced back to her.”
“I’ve already planted it so that he’s been buying drugs from them. The police will think it’s a drug deal gone wrong. They won’t connect it to her. Their lease is paid off. The money will be returned to her with a note of his apology. The apartment will be cleaned and disinfected.”
He nods and leans against the car with me. “This isn’t like you.”
“Isn’t it? I’m a killer, Onyx. We all are.”
He nods again. “True, but the deaths on our souls are not like him.”
“Whether it was for my country or my club, I do what needs to be done. He’s just as bad as the rest.”
“Because he fucked around on his girlfriend behind her back and stole his mother’s money? Small sins, Stone.”
“Not when it comes to her.”
I leave the statement there. I’m obsessed with Camryn Park, and the need to kill anything and everything that dares to hurt her is becoming a goal I never thought I’d have.
“You’re getting out of control. I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Maybe.” I feel his stare, and I can’t look at him because in all the years he’s known me, I’ve always had a goal: avenge my sister and niece’s death.
Remove the Mestizos from the face of the earth, hunt down every last one of them like the rabid, diseased dogs they are.
Now she’s become the nucleus, and I can’t pretend otherwise.
My fixation is uncontrollable and yes, there are days when I want to starve the need and forget her, but other times I need to feed the monster that wants to lock her away for only my use, my viewing pleasure.
“And when did you become a moral compass?”
When I look at him, I see the ravages of pain on his face. The man who witnessed the screams of his wife and daughter. Heard them being raped and murdered, and then found their almost burned bodies.
“Things change,” is his response, and I wonder what has changed. Onyx steps away from the trunk with a firm, “Be careful.” I step, Reed’s bloody hand a heavy weight in my pocket, and watch him get into the car and drive away with Reed Spencer in his trunk.