Chapter Forty-Two #2
“Let me go.” His voice is rough. “You have no legal authority to —”
“Save it,” I say.
He starts in on all of us, voice rising.
“You think this is over? You have no idea what you've done. I will have every one of you prosecuted. I have people in every agency, every office, every —” He stops, coughs, blood on his lips.
Starts again. “You will regret this. You will spend the rest of your lives regretting this. I will make sure of it. I have friends you have never heard of and they will come for you, they will come for your omegas, they will —”
“Fascinating.” Lex sounds genuinely bored. “He's still talking.”
Then Wallace’s eyes find Espie. His lips pull back. “You stupid little omega. You did this. You untie me right now or I swear to gods I will —”
My boot connects with his chest. The air goes out of him in a wet, ugly grunt and his words go with it. He curls around the impact, gasping, and I crouch down and wait for him to look at me.
“Some people never learn,” I say.
I reach down and unstrap the knife from my leg. It's a good knife. Heavy.
“This is for my alpha.”
I take the smallest finger of his left hand first and sever it.
Then I cut the next. Wallace screams but by the fourth he has stopped making words and is producing something lower and more animal.
Blood pools dark and fast under his hand and he writhes against the zip ties but there is nothing he can do.
When I finish with the left hand I stand up and wipe the blade on his pants.
Wallace is weeping. Snot and blood and tears all mixed together, his whole face collapsed into something unrecognizable.
“How dare you.” His voice shakes but the entitlement in it is still there, still amazingly intact.
“How dare you do this to me. Do you know who I am?
Do you have any idea who I have behind me?
I have people. People you will never see coming.
And when they come they will start with your omegas.
I'll make sure of that. I'll make sure you watch.
I'll make sure you're still breathing when they —”
“He needs to shut up. Not everyone wants to hear the sound of his whining,” Sera says.
She holds out her good hand for the knife. Wallace sees her coming and something breaks open in his face. Real fear this time. The kind that knows.
“No, wait, wait, I can give you names, I can give you locations, I have information you need, please, just listen to me, please —”
Sera crouches beside him. She takes his right hand in her good hand and holds it flat against the tunnel floor, spreads the fingers.
Wallace begins to pant. “Please don't. Please. I'm begging you.”
Sera takes the smallest finger first. One clean press of the blade, straight through the joint. Wallace's whole body bucks and the scream that comes out of him fills the tunnel and bounces back off the walls.
Sera waits for the scream to drop.
Then she takes the next one.
He is begging between each one. Full sentences at first, names, locations, offers, promises, anything, the complete collapse of a man discovering pain for the first time.
By the third finger the sentences have broken down into single words.
Please. Stop. Please. By the fourth there are no words left, just sound, raw and shapeless, pouring out of him and pooling on the concrete the same as the blood.
She takes the fifth.
She stands up slowly. Looks at the fingers where they've fallen on the tunnel floor. “Look at those. Nothing special about them at all.”
She kicks them into the dark.
She turns her back on him, and reaches for Espie and pulls her in hard against her chest.
“Don't look,” she says into Espie's hair. “He is not worth a single second of your attention. Not one.”
Espie clings to her, shaking, face pressed into Sera's neck, and Sera holds on and strokes her hair with bloody fingers.
On the floor, Wallace is making a noise I don't have a word for.
Both hands destroyed, his face a wet ruin, lying in his own blood on a tunnel floor under a city that will never know his name after we're done.
He has stopped threatening. He has stopped bargaining.
He is just making that sound, over and over.
I find Aubrey. He's standing very still with his arms wrapped around himself, jaw working, face pale. I pull him into my chest.
“I'm —” He stops. Presses his mouth shut. Tries again. “Stupid omega emotions.”
“No such thing.” I hold him harder. “You are the strongest male I know. Don't let me hear you say that again.”
He tucks his face against my shoulder and breathes and I hold him there and let him. Wallace has gone quiet. Mostly.
The red in my vision drops by a degree. Not gone. Not even close to gone.
But I have plans for Ethan Wallace. They don't have to happen tonight.
Levi clears his throat. I look up. He's standing a few feet off, arms crossed, giving us space, urgency underneath it. Four members of the SWAT team stand behind him.
“Whenever you're ready,” he says, “I'd like to bag up the rubbish.”
I pull in a breath and steady myself. Wallace has information. There are omegas unaccounted for, facilities we haven't found, threads we’ll need him alive to pull. He is more useful breathing unfortunately.
“Can you take him to the OHC? Adrian and I would like a few words with him,” I say.
Levi raises his brows and looks back at Wallace. “Better there than dirtying my cells. Less paperwork too.”
Levi signals the team and they drop down from the platform, picking up Wallace and dragging the betas.
“Thank you, Levi,” I say. “I mean that.”
He shakes his head. “Just take care of your pack, Kev.”
We walk back up to the platform and are halfway across when Levi goes stiff. There's something on the ground behind a bolted-down bin. Levi crouches toward it. A sweatshirt. Grey, dirty, the hood flipped inside out. Sera has gone very still at my side.
“Isla Wilson,” she says, quiet. “That's hers.”
Levi picks up the sweatshirt and lifts it to his face.
Something moves through his expression that he doesn’t even try to hide.
He lowers the fabric slowly.
He looks shattered.
“Mate,” he says.