Chapter 37
Luke
Ipull my bike into the clubhouse lot, park to the left of the door, and cut the engine.
The rumble dies, but the bass from inside the clubhouse still thumps through the walls, vibrating the night air.
Luca’s leaning against the building out front like he’s been waiting a while, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Not lit. Just there.
I swing off the bike and walk up the steps.
“Need a light?” I ask, already reaching to pull the one out of my pocket.
He flicks the cigarette out of his mouth and rolls it between his fingers. “Nope. Got a lighter already. Used it earlier.” He gives me a wink. “Besides, I’m trying to quit.”
I snort. “Since when?”
“About five minutes ago. Burning flesh kind of kills the mood.”
Now the whole wink makes sense. Seems he’s been having some fun.
He glances around the lot. “Where’s Doc?”
“Staying with Vee.” Luca pushes off the wall, and sticks the unlit cigarette back in the pack and slides it into the pocket on his cut. “She wants them gone… but doesn’t want to be part of it. She’s trusting us to end it.”
“My sister has too good a heart. Even for the wicked.” Luca pauses before continuing. “Let’s go.”
We head inside.
If the music wasn’t enough to tell me a party was going on then the inside was.
Brothers crowd the bar, bottles clink, laughter cuts through the roar of music.
Someone’s shouting over a card game in the corner while others are in various states of undress and fucking.
It smells like whiskey, smoke, and sex and long ago I would’ve stopped, grabbed a beer and shot the shit.
Before Vee, I would’ve even fucked one of the club girls, but since I laid eyes on her, she’s been the only one for me.
But tonight my mind is already downstairs, focused on the two men in the basement.
We move through the crowd without stopping and head straight for the basement stairs. The music fades with every step down, until all that’s left is the low hum of the fluorescent lights.
When we step into the room, Hank is standing near the far wall with the two Satan’s Rejects prospects. I’m sure their names were given to me at some point, but right now that’s irrelevant.
My eyes drift from them to the two men hanging from the chains. They’re a little worse for wear. Blood pools on the floor under their feet. One of them has a swollen eye that’s already turning a deep purple. The son's head is hanging forward like his neck doesn’t have the strength to hold it up.
I raise an eyebrow and glance over at Hank and the prospects.
Hanks shrugs his shoulders. “We were bored. So we had a little fun. Wanted them to have a taste of what was to come. Serves them right for what they did.”
My gaze drops to the duct tape over where I knew their gunshot wounds are.
“And that? Since when do we bandage our victims?”
“That wasn’t us,” the larger prospect says. I step closer and look at his cut for his name. Ace.
“Doc stopped by and put some duct tape and gauze over the gunshot wounds,” he adds. “Said he wouldn’t want them bleeding out too soon.”
Luca lets out a laugh beside me and I join in. Leave it to my brother to be a doctor and do the bare minimum to keep a man alive when he chooses to. But I get it. Death from bleeding out from a wound would be too good for these fuckers.
“Where’s Vee and Doc at?” Hank asks, his eyes staring past me to the door.
“At home,” I tell him curtly. Home. It’s odd to think but Vee’s apartment is now my home too because I sure as fuck ain’t leaving. Where she is, I am.
“Oh,” Hank whispers, nodding. He steps closer to me. “I want to see her,” he says quietly.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” I answer. “Not now. Not after everything.”
His jaw tightens.
“I just need to talk to her, Luke. Please. I’m fuckin’ beggin’.”
“No.” Luca’s voice cuts across the room sharp as a blade. “You need to give her what she wants. She doesn’t want to see you, so she won’t. Not until she says otherwise.”
Hank’s eyes flick toward him.
“She’s been through a lot,” Luca continues. “Not to mention she was already struggling with losing you.” He steps closer, his voice steady but firm. “She loves you. And she knows you don’t want the same as her.”
Luca’s charged words hang in the air. As much as I want to stand up for Hank, I agree with Luca. Hank made this mess and acted like a damn idiot. Now he has to live with the consequences of his actions.
For a moment, nobody moves.
Luca cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders like a man about to clock in for work. “Alright,” he growls. “Let’s get this done. Luke, let’s give these two men the ass whipping they deserve.”
“I want to help,” Hank adds, stepping forward.
“No,” is all Luca says. You’d think he was the Pres instead of Earl.
“I want the whiny ass prick who thought he had the right to put a sock in my ol’ lady's mouth. He touched her. Forced her delicate hand around his dick.”
Luca nods. “Then I’ll take this asshole. He should’ve been dead the moment he thought of buying my sister. A ten-year-old child.”
Abraham, Hiram, whatever the fucker wants to be called, doesn’t take his eyes off Luca as he approaches him. Blood drips from his lip, hitting the concrete in slow, steady drops.
Luca pulls a knife from the holster on his belt and stabs it right into the man’s shoulder. “You and your son picked the wrong family to mess with.”
Luca must have expected some reaction. It’s not like he can talk so perhaps some fighting back, trying to break free from the chains. But nothing. The man just glares.
Luca sighs. “See, that’s disappointing. I wanted more of a fight.”
“Well, let’s have some fun,” I say a little too excitedly. “I have a woman to get back to and I still need to get some clothes from my house.” Then, just because I know Hank is there and listening, and I want him to really get what he’s losing, I say, “I’m moving in with my woman.”
I forget about Luca and what he’s doing, and focus on the man whose life I plan on taking.
I see him move in my periphery, but I don’t waste time. I step over to the table and look at all the tools on the table and hanging on the wall. I want the fucker to suffer, but I want to be done with it too.
It takes me a minute to decide what I want to do first. But when it hits me, the corners of my lips turn up.
The fucker is already reaping the rewards of one of the vile acts he did to my girl.
My body shakes just thinking of what those socks must taste like.
But thanks to Luca’s addition, it has to be ten times worse than how it was for Vee.
I pick up the clippers, blades strong enough to cut through bone. It was a little treasure that Doc brought home from the hospital for us to use. He’s going to pay for every finger that touched my girl.
I turn and head toward the son. I haven’t even bothered to remember his name because he’s nothing. A nobody. Someone that no one is going to miss or ever be able to find.
His eyes land on my hand as I step up in front of him and they go wide with fear. I imagine he’s trying to scream, but all I hear are muffled sounds coming from his mouth. He starts fighting as best he can, arms jerking the chains as they groan their resistance.
With every movement he makes, the metal cuffs bite into his wrists, causing him to bleed more. His arms are stretched high above his head, his shoulders probably screaming from the strain. I know mine would be. His ankles are still bound and his bare toes barely scrape the concrete floor.
Luca’s laughter cuts through the room, but I don’t lose my focus.
“Hank, chair,” I order, needing to get a little height so I can do what I have in mind.
“Fuck, Ace, wish we had some popcorn for the show,” I hear the prospect say with a chuckle.
Hank steps up beside me, not with a chair but a stool. He places it on the ground in front of me and I step onto it.
“Trust me, this is going to be far more painful for you, but that’s okay.” I wink at him.
I take hold of his right hand and start with the pinky.
The smallest of all the fingers. I press the other ones back and place it between the blades of the cutter, and squeeze.
The movement pulls the blades together. The first squeeze cuts through the flesh, but now I have to do the bone.
So I squeeze again until I remove the digit.
I move quickly, catching it before it falls to the floor as blood pours from the wound.
“Nine more to go,” I tell him, showing him the pinky, using the bleeding end of it and smearing the crimson liquid on his face before tossing the finger to the floor.
I continue on with the others. One by one. At one point he passes out from the pain, and I take a page out of Luca’s book and stab him in the shoulder. His body jerks awake, and I get back to work.
Once I’m done with the fingers, I step off the stool and roll my shoulders, slow and deliberate, working out the kinks.
My eyes drift over to Luca and I see the shape Abraham is in. I was so caught up in my torture that I never noticed he had removed the sock from his mouth and cut his tongue out, along with removing his lips.
My eyes drift lower, taking in the carnage he’s inflicted on the man, and I have to say I am thoroughly impressed. How he’s still breathing is a mystery.
“I wanted to drag this out,” I tell the son. “but I have better places to be. However, there’s one more thing that has to go before I kill you.”
He lifts his head with effort as his eyes plead with me to stop. His skin is pale from all the blood loss, but he still has more to be purged from his body before I’m done with him.
I take hold of his flaccid cock; he’s so weak at this point he doesn’t have any strength to fight.
“You know what comes next? Don’t cha.”
I place his cock in the cutters and clamp down, once, twice, and then a final time. I could’ve done it with one go, but, I wanted to drag out that pain just a little bit. I drop the appendage to the floor and I hear the three men behind me groan in pain.
“Fuck, I felt that,” one of them says.
“Luca, I’m done with this one,” I say as I drop the cutters to the floor, pick up the discarded knife, and stab him repeatedly in the stomach before plunging the knife into his heart, leaving it there.
By the time I step back, both men are hanging limp from the chains.
I step over to the table and pick up a towel and wipe the blood from my hands. I’ll use my room here to take a shower and change clothes before I leave.
“We just need to take them to Cassie to dispose of them permanently. Then I’ll get some prospects to clean up the mess down here,” I tell Luca, who’s cleaning his hands as well. “You can get a change of clothes from me and a shower in one of the empty rooms.”
Hank steps forward. “I’ll handle the bodies.”
I just stand there for a moment. Stunned and thankful for his offer.
“Just let Vee know I’m sorry,” Hank adds quietly. “About what happened.”
I know he is, and fuck, I wish he would’ve gotten his head right earlier. But I think what happened to Vee scared something inside of him. I step over to him and place my hand on his shoulder.
“If you love her, Hank… really love her… then prove it to her.”
Hank doesn’t look away. Not even when Luca steps up beside me.
“But don’t do it unless you can accept that wanting her means accepting everything that comes with her,” Luca speaks up. “Including her having a relationship with Luke and Doc. She’s suffered enough pain for you to worm your way back into her good graces, only to not be able to share.”
With those final words, Luca turns and heads to the door. “I’ll meet you upstairs,” he calls out to me.
Silence fills the room again.
Hank takes a deep breath. “I do love her. I fucked up. I’m not sure about the sharing, but I’m willing to try. To work on myself. But I’ll honor her wishes.”
I squeeze his shoulder once more, and then I turn and walk out of the basement without another word. It’s time to be with my woman.