47. Nash
FORTY-SEVEN
NASH
"I swear, man, we didn’t know! We didn’t fucking know she was your girl when we took the money."
I slammed the fucking two-by-four into Clyde’s side again, tenderizing him like a side of beef as I salivated at every drop of blood the fucker gave up.
"You," — thwack— "are," —thwack— "a piece of shit," —thwack, thwack— "and it brings me great joy to beat you to death for laying a fucking finger on her."
"Easy, Nash," Rowan called as he watched idly on from the other side of the warehouse. "They’ve gotta be alive when we turn them in to Lilly."
I quirked a brow and stared at the bloody piece of shit who thought it’d be wise to take a job that included killing the girl under our protection. Bonnie, who we hadn’t started on yet, sat in a chair nearby, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, so high out of her mind that she couldn’t even work up any sympathy or sadness for her partner in crime.
I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it was her idea to take the job.
"Who agreed to turn them in? Not me." I slammed the splintering wood into Clyde’s face this time, relishing the way he turned his head with a groan and spat out several gold-plated teeth. "Oh, shit, Clyde. You put money in that mouth. Maybe I should knock out a little more to pay for her medical bills."
"Fuck, man, no more," he mumbled as the stench of piss burned the inside of my nostrils. "Please, just take me in. I’ll do whatever you want; just turn me in to the Guild."
"I dunno, man," I mulled, mocking his verbal skills as I notched the damn wooden plank over my shoulder like I was lining up for a home run swing. "You did a very bad thing, Clyde, and you’re gonna die for it either way. We only really need one of you to tell the story when we get back." I paced around him slowly, really soaking up his panic and desperation. Drinking in his fear. "Nobody says it’s gotta be you."
Bonnie perked up at that, her eyes watching Clyde for any sign he might make himself more valuable than she could be. Or maybe she thought he’d take the fall for her like a good little whipped-ass dog. But humans, at their core, are flawed, weak creatures. And this one in front of me was a prime specimen of how they would turn on each other, even those closest to them, if forced to choose between life as a traitor or death as a loyalist dog.
"Now’s your chance, Clyde," I murmured, as if the two of us were sharing a secret. "You can make it worth my while to keep you alive, and I can kill the bitch instead and let you plead your case to Lilly." I glanced at Bonnie, whose eyes were wide with fear now, trying desperately to mumble and yell around her gag and failing.
"She said we should take the job! It wasn’t me! I didn’t want to do it, but she said you pissed her off and deserved it. Think you’re better than the rest of us. Needed taken down a peg. And the money was too good to pass up."
Give a man an inch of rope, and he’ll still manage to hang himself and anyone with him.
"So, you were just walking along the sidewalk, and some stranger approached you and asked you to kill a woman, is that it?" I lifted the wood again, threatening him with more pain if I didn’t like the answers he gave. "How did it happen?"
Somehow, Bonnie managed to get her gag loose, and that shrill screaming voice made me cringe as she started making demands of her partner.
"Don’t you tell them a fucking thing, Clyde! They’ll still kill you and then me, too. Just shut your fucking mouth and don’t say another fucking word, you worthless scumbag. You’re the one who was trying to pick up hookers and got us into this mess."
These two were better primetime tv than a fucking late-night soap opera.
"So, whose fault is it, really, Clyde? How does picking up a hooker play into becoming a pawn in a game you’re not skilled enough to be playing?"
Rowan strolled over with a gun in his hand—Bonnie’s, to be exact. He twirled the thing lazily, staring at the shiny metal in his hands.
We weren’t gun guys. But that didn’t mean we’d never used one. Quite the opposite, actually.
And this one had fired several bullets into the body of the woman we?—
The—
Fuck, why couldn’t I admit it to my damn self now that the adrenaline and worry had worn off?
Harper was laid up in the Guild, a bag of blood dripping into her veins as we stood there and argued semantics. I wanted to kill something. Wanted to avenge her. Needed it like I needed pain to feel pleasure.
If I didn’t do something to outsource this rage building inside me, I’d snap on someone else. And it wouldn’t be pretty.
I didn’t want it to be her.
My body spun on a dime as Bonnie started to laugh, a sick and twisted sound that set the hairs on the back of your neck on edge, that made you embody a cat hissing at a dog who’d just crossed its path uninvited.
"You assholes think killing us will help? This man obviously wanted her dead. He stole and copied a key to the building for us. He paid good—real good—and told us exactly what to do. And he even kept you guys busy so you couldn’t help her while we did our job." She cackled again, her head falling back like some sort of monster in a horror flick. "You’re stupid to think he’ll ever stop. He won’t. He wants her dead, and I dunno why, and I don’t care. But it won’t end with us. He’ll find someone else to take our place, someone who will do the job this time."
"He’ll have a hard time getting to her while we’re alive."
Bonnie laughed as I swung the wood at her now, slamming the butt end of it into her side as she wheezed in pain. "You don’t get it. He already did get to her."
"No, Bonnie, I don’t think you understand. I will lay down my life for that woman, you hear me?" She took the tail end of my makeshift beat stick to the face, and I grinned as fresh blood trailed down her fucking face from that obviously broken nose. "She is mine, and nobody will take her from me. I will die for her, Bonnie."
I realized what I said a moment too late.
I couldn’t take it back now. I couldn’t change what I’d finally admitted. Of all the people to confess to, of all the fucking people to drive me to an epiphany, it was this bitch?
No. No, that wasn’t fair.
It’s not fair!
I tossed the board aside and pulled out a knife the assholes at the compound had missed in the side of my boot. It flashed under the fluorescent lights, a black matte blade with a wooden handle that I’d had custom-made for someone a long, long time ago. Etched in the blade, in a neat, continuous line, was a single nickname for a girl I thought I had a hand in killing seven years ago. A woman I never thought I’d ever see again.
A woman I loved more than the fucking depths of the ocean.
Harpie Girl.
I commissioned a knife in her honor the year we killed her.
And now, I’d use it in her honor. On the fuckers who dared to put a bullet in her body.
Slash!
I dragged the blade across her upper arm lightning fast. She didn’t even scream. She just stared down at the newly-welling blood and frowned. Only seconds later did she wince, as if the pain had been so fleeting she hadn’t realized it didn’t register.
She’d feel this one, though.
I slammed that knife so deep into her thigh, I felt it push through to the other side and slam into the steel chair seat .
This time, she screamed.
Yeah, that’s right, bitch. Scream. Scream like Harper did when you put that first bullet in her as she ran away from you.
Scream, bitch!
"Easy, Nash, she’s already screaming, dude." Rowan’s lip curled in disgust as he watched the blood pump out of her leg, spurting more with each beat of her traitorous, cold, unfeeling junkie heart.
"She doesn’t deserve mercy, Ro. She deserves to die." I glanced over at Clyde, who was taking this brief reprieve to whimper wordlessly and stare into space beyond his girlfriend and partner in crime. He wouldn’t look at her. No, I had a feeling if he did, he’d piss himself again. Or hate himself for turning on her.
Maybe he’d blame himself, like I did.
Maybe he should blame himself. He should hate everything about himself for being such a weak, pathetic excuse of a man. For saving his own skin and condemning his girl to certain death at the hands of a psychopath like me.
A very, very angry and slightly broken psychopath.
With a knife engraved with the name of my first love. My only love.
I was suddenly hit with a wave of inspiration.
I spun the knife in my hand as I dragged it out of Bonnie’s leg, grinning as she screamed anew, her agony only amplified by the way I twisted the knife in her muscle like she’d twisted it in my damn back. We worked together for the same Guild, dammit. I shouldn’t have to worry about double-crossers. Especially not someone I went out of my way to fucking avoid.
The blade tip touched the edge of my facial scars, and I grinned wider, feeling it dig into the scar tissue, a drop of blood welling up beneath it as it punctured me. "Do you wanna know how I got these scars, Bonnie?" She whimpered up at me, mumbling shit about how I was sick, calling me a freak and a monster and an abomination. "Well, Bonnie, I’m gonna tell you."
I dragged the blade along the length of my scar, reopening a wound that ran as deep as the self-hatred I carried with me every damn day of my pitiful existence, fresh blood dribbling down my cheeks, over my jaw, hitting Bonnie’s legs as I leaned over her.
"You see, there was this girl. And she was a looker, man. She was amazing."
She was too good for me. She was perfect. She was everything I wanted, and everything I didn’t deserve.
Her name was Harper Daniels.
And she was mine.
"She was everything a woman like you wishes she could be. And I loved her."
Oh, how I fucking loved her.
"But you see, Bonnie, she wasn’t mine to have. So I had to make do with dating women who would never measure up to her."
I licked my own blood from the black blade, grinning like some sort of specter of death as I felt my eyes widen further. The fear wafting off Bonnie was so palpable, it fed me like some sort of fuel. It sparked the flame inside me and fanned the blaze until it was big enough to burn everything in its path.
Her eyes widened, and she began to shake as I pulled Clyde’s gun off the nearby table and spun it around like some sort of sharpshooter, dangling from one fingertip.
"What are you gonna do with that?—"
"I WASN’T DONE TALKING, BONNIE!"
The butt of the gun came down on her temple, ringing her fucking bell enough to have her seeing double. And it shut her up, too, so.
Yay. Bonus Damage.
"Now, where was I?"
Rowan cleared his throat but wisely didn’t move to stop me. " She wasn’t yours to keep, I think," he supplied helpfully, and I pointed the tip of the blade at him, smiling genuinely that time, shooting the fucker a wink.
Who ever said Rowan wasn’t useful in a torture situation?
Motherfuckers gotta have your back.
"Ah, right. Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie. Women want to feel special in a relationship. They don’t wanna be a stand-in. They don’t wanna be a second choice. So most of my women didn’t last long. They got the vibes and bounced, or I got tired of them and dumped them."
But then along came that bitch.
"There was one girl who didn’t get the hint, though. She stayed far longer than she was welcome. And then, one night, when she wasn’t supposed to be there, I had a dream. And I cried out for the girl I’d never have."
I scratched my temple with the tip of the gun barrel, hating the emotions that ran through me at the memory of her.
Nothing she’d done was right. Her touches. Her words. Her accent. Her attitude. Her clothes. It was all WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
"She took offense to that. And then I made it worse, when she asked me who that girl was to me, and I refused to answer."
She didn’t DESERVE to know. It WASN'T HER BUSINESS.
All the eyes in the room now tracked me as I paced back and forth in front of Bonnie, and I could only guess at what was going through their minds.
Crazy.
Unhinged.
Killer.
Asshole.
Suicidal.
They’d all be right.
"She started putting her nose in places it didn’t belong. So I told her if she didn’t stop, she’d be gone." I blew at the opening of the barrel as I pointed it straight at my own face. I laughed at the danger. If the gun went off right now, who would it really hurt?
I didn’t care if I lived or died now as long as Harper was safe. As long as I got revenge for her for what they’d done to her.
"If you’re gonna kill me, fucker, then just do it!"
I backhanded her with the hand holding my knife, and it left a nice, red line across the bridge of her nose in its wake, stretching across her cheeks like someone had garroted her and the damn thing had slipped.
I laughed out loud. The sound was a horrible, manic thing that felt like a mix between a wounded animal and a lost soul from hell. It ripped at my insides and tore at the very lining of my esophagus like a million tiny daggers, all forcing their way up and killing me in the process.
"She went a little insane, she did. Started obsessing over this other woman she’d never know. Never meet. Never live up to the memory of. So one night, she snuck out of bed and grabbed a kitchen knife. She zip-tied my hands and feet to the headboard, and she carved this permanent smile into my face as I screamed and flailed and bled out on the sheets of the bed I’d made. And do you know what she told me when she was done?"
I bent at the waist and gripped Bonnie by the chin as she cried now, snot and tears mingling on her cheeks and lips as she pleaded for me to let her go.
Oh, Bonnie. We’re so far past letting go at this point.
You’re going to die here with me, a part of me I’ll carve out and lay at your feet, so that I never have to feel again.
"She laughed and admired her handiwork, and she said, ‘Now we’re both smiling!’"
With the cackling derangement of a dead man, I slammed the knife blade home in her fucking eye socket, putting every ounce of force into it as I pushed on the hilt with the palm of my other hand, the gun an afterthought, dangling from one finger precariously as Bonnie and Clyde both shrieked. Bonnie fought to free her hands so she could reach up and pry me off.
She wouldn’t succeed before she bled out, though.
The blade made a sick, wet, squelching noise as I jerked it free of her face. It was so deeply embedded in her thick skull, though, that I had to shove my boot against her chest and give myself leverage. When she finally popped free, the chair holding Bonnie tipped over, and she smacked into the concrete with a dull thud and stopped moving.
"Aw, shit, Ro, I think I killed her."