Chapter 5 #2
I want him to suffer like the animals he tortured. Every yelp, every cry, every ragged breath those innocent cats and dogs took with collapsing lungs—I want Brixton to echo. I want him to see the world flickering away at the margins and know, without a doubt, that he deserves this.
I started his torture tonight with my mini blowtorch, using it on the soles of his feet, like he did to his victims, watching them blister and blacken under the intense heat.
He bucked and writhed, screaming behind the duct tape, trembling at the edge of unconsciousness until he blacked out.
I’ve just revived him with smelling salts and the shock of my knife plunging into his gut.
I’m only getting started.
My phone rings, a harsh intrusion on my meticulous work, and I pull it from my back pocket with a sigh. I hate being interrupted. Cade’s face flashes on the screen. I turn away from Brixton as I answer the call. Cade appears, dressed in his black fatigues, ready for cleanup.
“I’m not done yet.”
My mask doesn’t surprise him. I only remove it right before I take their sight, revealing my true face to them in their final moments.
“I’m heading up that way in a few, anyway. It’ll take me almost two hours to get there.”
I glance over my shoulder at Brixton, the ten-inch knife plugging the hole it created in his stomach, blood seeping through the edges of the wound and onto the handle.
“Why not bring the chopper? It’s the middle of the night, and I’m in the middle of nowhere. That’s why I bought this place.”
Cade steps into the private executive elevator at my Denver headquarters. “Yes, but animals are sensitive to vibration and sound, and the wildlife sanctuary is only half a mile away. We don’t need to attract any attention at this time of night.”
A shiver of excitement runs through me at the mention of Luna and her sanctuary, so close to my own.
Only mine is one of suffering, not healing.
“Let me fucking get back to it so I’m done by the time you get here. You’re throwing off my entire goddamn rhythm.”
I end the call before Cade can respond, a habit he’s grown used to over the twenty-five years he’s been by my side.
Longer than anyone else has survived in my world.
Trust is a luxury I can’t afford, but Cade has earned it with blood and silence.
Almost ten years my senior, he’s the only one who knows I live for this.
The only one who understands the depth of my mission, who sees beyond the CEO facade to the predator beneath.
I turn back to Brixton, stepping up beside the table, my heart pounding with anticipation. He lifts his head, chest heaving, and I can almost taste his fear.
“Now, where were we?”
His wide, frantic eyes follow my movement as I wrench the blade from his abdomen. Blood sprays upward, splattering my clothes and mask with shiny droplets. He screams, and the raw, panicked sound vibrates through my bones like a drumbeat of triumph.
More blood flows from the wound, forming spiderweb-like patterns across his pale skin. The wound isn’t fatal. I’ve avoided vital organs. He doesn’t get a fast death. That would defeat the purpose.
My mini blowtorch hisses to life again, a blue flame dancing across the gaping hole, sealing seared flesh with a muffled sizzle.
Brixton’s whole body convulses, spasms rippling down his torso as his eyes flutter.
Strangled curses tear from his throat, fighting against the tape that seals his mouth.
His head whips from side to side, plastering slick strands of sweaty hair across his forehead.
“Tommy.” I let his name roll off my tongue, a chilling prelude to the events about to unfold. “I’m sure you’re wondering who I am and why you’re here.”
His eyes, wide, black pools, drown in panic. His fingers, bound at his sides, claw at nothing as his body shudders with each fractured breath.
I switch back to my trusted knife, drawing the blade along the inside of his elbow, severing tendons in one smooth cut.
The flesh parts like silk, the subtle give under the steel sending a thrill up my arm.
His body arches off the table, thrashing so violently I have to brace him with my knee.
Each muted shriek feeds the electric thrill coursing through me.
The concrete walls seem to pulse with the history of this place. Forty years ago, another monster stood in this same space. His victims were innocent. Mine are not. I’m aware of the irony—a killer living in a killer’s house. But we’re nothing alike.
My darkness adheres to a code and burns with righteous fire. It serves a purpose. Every life I take balances scales that the law abandoned.
I move around the table to his right thigh, and the knife slips in with little resistance.
My strokes are steady and measured. I savor every millimeter of red opening beneath my blade.
I taste it on my tongue—the metallic tang of retribution.
His muffled screams grow weaker as tears streak down his cheeks.
The human body is such a fragile thing, held together by skin and a vast network of muscles and nerves. It’s so easily breached.
I pause, my fingers slipping beneath the mask to wipe sweat from my brow.
Once more, I cauterize the cuts with the blowtorch, the sharp smell of burning flesh stinging my nose. My heart thunders, and I tilt my head, watching his convulsions with perverse delight.
I’m not a sadist. Not in the clinical sense. I don’t get off on pain. But watching monsters break—watching them realize, cell by cell, that judgment exists beyond badges and gavels—there’s satisfaction in that.
Brixton’s eyes search mine through the mask’s eyeholes for a trace of mercy, but he won’t find any. I show no mercy to my victims. The same way they showed no mercy to theirs.
I drive the knife into his chest; the resistance of skin, muscle, and cartilage is a little bit of a nuisance as the blade plunges through his right lung with a sickening squelch.
A violent jerk racks his body, his eyes bulging with shock, and he gasps, a single, shuddering inhale that rattles the metal table beneath him.
The high-pitched hiss of air escaping around the blade reminds me of a punctured bicycle tire.
The duct tape over his mouth balloons out with each failed attempt to draw air, then sucks back against his lips. His nostrils flare wide, working overtime, but it’s not enough. The wheeze from the wound is music, a sound that grows more frantic with each passing second.
“Not so easy to breathe now, is it? Now you know how scary it was for those animals, fighting for every breath.” I lean closer, savoring the wet, sucking sound that accompanies each failed breath. “That’s it. Fight for it. Feel the fear, Tommy.”
I twist the knife handle just enough to widen the wound. Fresh crimson spills across Tommy’s skin, pooling in the hollow of his collarbone.
“Do you know what happens when a lung collapses? The air that should go into your lungs is now filling your chest cavity. Pressing against your other organs.”
He’s fading, pupils dilating as his oxygen-starved brain begins to shut down. It’s time to end it.
Before I shove the knife into his left eye, I raise my mask and let him see my face, the last face he’ll ever see.
“My name is Damien Wolfe, Tommy. And I’m your judge, jury, and executioner.”