Burn (Wildcats #2)

Chapter 1

TARA

Iraised the axe and slammed it on the fucker’s fingers, slicing them right off his hand.

Those were the fingers he’d used to burn his wife. Now, I’d send them to her as a gift.

He screamed like a banshee, tears and snot streaming down his face. “Stop it. Please, call an ambulance,” he begged, his mangled hand splayed on the table, his body tied to the chair.

A dark chuckle escaped me. “Did you stop when your wife begged you to?”

His eyes pleaded for mercy he didn’t deserve. I slammed my palm on the table right beside his intact hand. “Answer me!” I roared.

“No,” he whimpered, the smell of urine reaching my nose.

“I love it when they piss themselves,” Samaira, a.k.a. Crimson Tiger, one of my fellow vigilante besties, remarked from outside the torture cage. We were deep in the basement of our safe house, and as the resident torturer of the Wildcats, she was having the time of her life.

I was the resident hacker. I didn’t particularly enjoy blood and gore and torture, but I never held back when it came to the men who liked to burn the women around them.

I pulled off my dark-purple-and-black panther mask. The fucker’s eyes widened.

I tilted my head, letting him have a proper look at the scars decorating my face. The jagged, brutal remains of an acid attack. The horror of my life. The proof of the atrocity committed by a weak man. “You see this?”

He nodded, his hand shaking with fear, his body shivering from the blood loss.

I nodded back, my voice cold. “I don’t pity a man who burns a woman.”

“Please,” he sobbed.

I grabbed his unharmed hand and swung my axe again. The blade hacked through his fingers, the echo of his screams bouncing off the walls.

“I, especially, don’t pity a fucking cop who burns a woman.”

I looked at Naomi—the medic of our group—who was in the cage with me. “Would he last for ten minutes?”

She shook her masked face. “He should be fine for five, probably.” I’d already had her patch him up twice in the past two hours.

I turned back to the fucker, wiping the blood off my blade.

“This,” I said, waving the blade near my scarred face, “was torture. It still is. The sheer agony of the acid melting your face off is fucking maddening.”

I pulled out a pack of cigarettes from my back pocket. My eyes met Naomi’s, and she gave me a nod. She wrapped up her kit and walked out of the cage, leaving him behind, screaming for her help.

What he didn’t realize was that as a medic, she was the one who saw the most harm. She was the witness to women’s deepest agony. To their harshest pain. She was the one with the least mercy among the five of us.

I lit the end of the cigarette and stood over him. Slowly, so he could watch the horror coming to him—so he could remind himself of his own actions that led him here—I pressed the glowing bud of the cigarette on his bare neck. And I held it there.

Until he screamed.

Until he thrashed in the chair, trying to escape.

Until he begged.

I pulled back, only to grind the stick harder into his face.

I thought about the scars on his wife’s body. The scars he’d put there. Mercilessly. Mindlessly. Relentlessly. Over and over again, until she came to us for help. To save her. From the very man who was supposed to protect her. Cherish her. Love her. From her fucking cop husband.

I jabbed the glowing bud against his skin, over and over again. “Man.” Jab. “Maketh.” Jab. “Monster.”

I showed him the monster that the man from my past had turned me into. I jabbed the fucker till I’d gone through the entire pack of cigarettes.

A loud clang against the cage snapped my gaze to Lena, a.k.a. the Golden Lioness, the leader of the Wildcats. She tapped her watch, signaling for me to wrap this up.

I sighed and turned back to the crying, blubbering mess of a man. Just the way I liked them. With a shrug, I pulled the handgun from my holster and shot him in the head.

I walked out of the cage, knowing the cleanup crew would handle the mess. All the ladies had pulled off their masks now that the target was dead.

“Nice work, Tara. Loved the hacking of the fingers.” Samaira wrapped her thick arms around my shoulders. She had a few inches on me, but I was quicker.

Lena and Naomi walked behind us. Naomi patted my back, sighing. “Could you and Sami try not to chop off critical body parts right at the beginning?”

Sami and I exchanged a look and burst into laughter. “I could, Naomi. But…”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sami finished my sentence.

Lena sighed, but she had a small smile on her face. “Tara, I’m all for vengeance as long as it doesn’t affect your mental health. You can always say no to the torture. We can just put a bullet in them and be done with it.”

I thought about all the men I had tortured and killed so far.

All of them have burned women in one way or another.

All of them, rotten to the core. I remembered the attack on me.

The endless days of pain and humiliation.

The daily struggle of trying to look in the mirror.

The nightmares. The constant itching. The ruined face.

The life that died because of one man’s actions.

I shook my head. “Sometimes death is too easy a punishment. I’d love to burn fuckers like these a thousand times over, but I guess I still have some humanity left in me.”

Lena nodded, her short bob framing her face perfectly. “All I care about is you girls. We slay the monsters for women, but never at the cost of our happiness.”

She was the best leader anyone could ask for. In her emerald-green suit and black-lace corset, with her gold earrings and bloodred lipstick, she had mastered the look of a badass vigilante queen, ready to take down the scums of the city in her five-inch heels.

As the three women headed to the dining room of the safe house, I took a shower. After quickly washing the blood, the gore, and the man off me, I changed into my comfiest black sweatpants and hoodie. With just the five of us here, I skipped my half-mask.

The moment I stepped out of the bathroom, a frantic clicking against the floorboards came rushing at me.

A second later, the most vicious, adorable dog lunged at me.

With a quick laugh, I caught my big baby in my arms, letting him lick all over my face.

“Shadow, baby,” I cooed. “We saw each other half an hour ago.”

“He started missing you half a minute after you left him upstairs,” Sloane pointed out, walking right behind my cute, little—actually large and vicious—black Doberman.

Sloane, our pink-haired undercover specialist, was just as ruthless and bloodthirsty as the rest of us.

She handed me a cold jar of berry milkshake.

My eyes narrowed. “Is that Sami’s?”

She gave me a mischievous little nod. “Mm-hmm.”

I narrowed my eyes into slits, setting Shadow back on the floor before clutching the jar. “And does she know that I’m holding her milkshake?”

She twined our arms together and steered me in the opposite direction to the dining room. “I don’t want to get pounded into the ring. So drink it quickly, then throw the jar away somewhere. Nobody’s gonna know.”

Only Sloane would steal from Sami. I bit my lip, a smile finally slipping on my face, and quickly opened the jar. “Oh, she would definitely know.”

Sloane gave me an overconfident wink. “You totally deserve it after the kill.”

That, I did. I chugged the milkshake as Sloane kept watch, then threw the jar out the window at the back of the safe house, right as a loud shout echoed from the kitchen. “Who the fuck took my milkshake? Sloane!”

Sloane winked, and her expression shifted from mischievous to innocent in the blink of an eye. She ran to the kitchen. “What happened, Sami? How could you even think I’d touch your milkshake?”

I followed, raising my hands in mock surrender. “Not me. I just got out of the shower.”

Sami’s eyes narrowed at the two of us before she whirled around, screaming, “Lena, we need security in our safe house. Nothing is safe here. Somebody keeps stealing my shit.”

Sloane winked at me and rushed behind Sami, nodding solemnly at her complaints, leaving a ridiculous smile on my face even though I’d just tortured and killed a fucking abusive cop.

That was why I’d joined the Wildcats. To be a part of something real. To be with people who truly understood me. To be with sisters.

Lena gave me purpose. Samaira gave me power. Naomi gave me hope. Sloane gave me laughter. And my Shadow, he gave me life.

I’d never let anything harm them. I was a Wildcat, and I would eliminate anybody who dared to threaten our little family.