9. Chapter 8 #2
Sandro ran his tongue over his top teeth. “You’ve cheated the family out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our accountants have been running the numbers since we got proof of your betrayal a few days ago. Do you seriously think we’d believe that was just for her medical expenses?”
Leo’s eyes widened. “I didn’t steal hundreds of thousands. It was twenty-five thousand max. I swear, Alessandro.”
I believed him, and from the way that Sandro stared at him, he did too. “Then where is the rest of it? Who else were you working with?”
Leo’s jaw clamped shut. Even if he didn’t say another word, he’d just confirmed that he wasn’t working alone. And if he wasn’t willing to talk, that must mean that the person or people he was working with were scarier than the man watching through the cameras.
“Come on, Leo. You know this doesn’t get easier from here.
You caved with a few punches from a man you thought was weak when we walked in the room.
It’s Marco’s turn now if you don’t talk.
” Leo sat there without saying a word, staring at the door.
“Why bother telling me this much if you weren’t going to say the rest? ”
After a few more moments of silence, Sandro got up and moved the chair across the room and resumed leaning against the wall, giving Marco the nod to get started.
Marco grabbed a pair of pliers and what looked like a scalpel.
“There are a lot of ways to remove someone’s fingernails, Givenchy,” his attention turned towards me before going back to Leo, “but I prefer this method. First, you put the scalpel under the nail, prying it away from the skin slowly.” Leo clenched his jaw tight as he screamed through the pain.
“Then,” he sat down the scalpel and picked up the pliers, “it’s easier to grab ahold of the nail when you want to remove it.
Again, I prefer slowly because it causes the most pain. ”
Sweat was starting to roll down Leo’s face.
Watching the scene in front of me made me want to puke.
I hated that I was having to be part of this, but if I thought about Leo being my dad, Atlas, Apollo, Percy, Potter, Brennan, Brayden, Damon, Davis, Brown, or Vander, knowing they would suffer this fate or worse if I didn’t do what Lucian wanted, I felt less guilty about it.
How shitty was that?
Marco removed two nails before Sandro made him pause to try to get more info from Leo. Not that it helped. All ten fingernails were removed before long and Leo still hadn’t said a word.
He had passed out a few times, but they woke him back up and went back to work.
“Still nothing to say, Farina?” Leo was now drenched in sweat and I swear I saw tears leaking from his eyes. But he didn’t talk. “Elio’s next. You know he’s good with a knife.”
When the man still said nothing, Elio moved from his spot across the room and grabbed a fillet knife. Lucian was watching, so I knew I couldn’t puke, but fuck if I didn’t want to just with the thought of what he was going to do to this man with that knife.
I mean, there was only one thing you did with a fillet knife.
As he approached the man in the chair, it seemed Leo was done being silent. “Please, don’t. I have a wife and kids. They need me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have stolen from the family. You’re dying today, one way or another. I gave you the option to do this painlessly, but you made the choice to not give me the information I wanted.” Sandro shrugged. “Does this mean you’re willing to talk now? Who are you working with?”
Leo’s lips slammed shut again and Sandro gave Elio the go ahead nod.
While he may have tried to contain his screams when Marco was pulling out his nails, he didn’t even try when Elio started peeling off his skin with the knife. The stench of piss filled the room as a wet spot bloomed on his crotch.
Elio laughed, as did Sandro and Marco, but I was doing everything I could not to puke. If all this man did was piss himself, I’d be impressed. Not sure many people would be able to manage that when being filleted like a fish.
Leo passed out a few times but these guys didn’t let that stand. They immediately got out some smelling salts to bring him back around.
The torture lasted for what seemed like forever before Sandro finally got a text telling him to end it.
Elio sliced the knife through Leo’s throat and the life drained from his eyes quickly.
Sandro reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, then pushed a button and put it back in his pocket.
“I’ve flipped off the feeds so that we can’t be watched while cleaning up this mess.
” It definitely was a mess. “We didn’t have Marco take out his teeth, so those need to be removed and then you’ll dismember him. We want six sections.”
“Why do we need to remove the teeth?” If we were feeding him to pigs who could eat through bone, why take out the teeth?
Sandro handed me the pliers before speaking.
“The pigs can’t digest them, so they’ll shit them out whole.
You don’t want some guy's teeth appearing in a pig field. That would be enough for cops to assume he’s dead and start investigating.
We’ll grind down the teeth to dust while you’re dismembering him, wrapping him up, and cleaning the room. ”
Elio snarled. “Why do we have to do anything if cleanup and disposal is on him? Especially since he barely did anything in the interrogation?”
“Because the fact that he’s having to do any of this to begin with is asinine. There’s no reason he needs to initiate into the family other than my father thinks this is a great power play.”
With a roll of his eyes, Elio held out a cup for me to put the teeth into when I pulled them out. I hate admitting it, but by the time all of Leo’s teeth were removed, I was exhausted. Pulling teeth wasn’t easy.
Marco handed me a band saw to start dismembering the man in front of me.
“Five cuts. Head, each arm, and each leg. That’ll give us six sections.
When you’re done cutting, there’s painters plastic on the shelf.
Wrap each section, then put them in garbage bags.
You need to bleach each of the tools, the chair, the floor,” he looked around, “and wherever you’ve gotten splatter on the walls.
I’d honestly just bleach the whole room to be safe.
There’s a switch on the wall that turns on the ventilation system to help get out the fumes, but you should still wear one of the gas masks on the wall so you don’t inhale too much. ”
With that, he gave me a pat on the back and headed out of the room with the others.