Chapter 5 – Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
I chew the side of my thumb, biting at the nail, lost in thought. A filthy fucking habit. But at least here, in the wet lab, I’m free to indulge in my filthy habits. All of them.
And fuck do I need that right now.
The man kneeling on the cold, sterile floor whimpers as Viper approaches him with a scalpel clutched in one hand. He tries to move, tries to pull away, but the restraints holding his arms above his head and attached to the ceiling stop him from going anywhere.
“I swear I don’t know anything,” he sobs.
Viper grabs his face, laughing, and draws the point of the scalpel over his cheek and jaw. He’s not pressing hard enough to draw much blood, not yet, but the sharp tip leaves an angry red line in its wake.
“Here’s the problem, Daryl,” I say, chewing at my nail. “I don’t believe you. And, more importantly, I don’t think he believes you. Right, brother?”
Viper brings the scalpel up to Daryl’s eye.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Daryl chants, pulling ineffectively at the restraints.
Daryl is good at pretending. Better than most. But it won’t take much more to break him.
“I’m going to make you look so pretty,” Viper purrs. He cackles, angling the weapon closer, almost touching the man’s cornea. “Give you a nice new hole to stick my dick in.”
“Jesus Christ,” Daryl sobs.
There’s no Christ down here, I think with a chuckle. No Gods, no masters. There’s just me and Viper. And whatever the fuck we want to do. Daryl will learn that soon enough. They always do.
Viper pulls his arm back, ready to strike, and, irritated, I finally intervene.
“Line, Viper,” I tell him.
But Viper isn’t listening. He tilts Daryl’s head up, lining up the blow that’s sure to take his eye, and more than likely leave our guest with an ocular lobotomy.
But we still don’t have the information we need.
“So fucking pretty,” Viper coos, lost in his own world. I know it’s not Daryl he’s thinking about, not Daryl he’s imagining kneeling before him, ready to accept his gift of pain.
“Viper!” I raise my voice to a shout, glaring at him. “LINE!”
This time, he listens.
Viper’s face goes dark, a muscle in his cheek twitching.
“Line.” He repeats it in a cold voice. His fingers clench and unclench around his weapon. His face pivots to look at me, lip curling in a sneer. “You and your fucking lines, Doc.”
He’s angry, but at least this time he stops. Dropping his hold on Daryl, Viper turns and chucks the scalpel at the wall before stalking away with a roar of rage.
I sigh, unfurling myself from my examination chair.
Kneeling on the ground, knees inches from the drain in the floor, Daryl sobs uncontrollably. I make my way over to the table, where Viper has all his tools laid out, and I pull on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
“Sorry about him,” I tell Daryl, snapping the gloves into place. I bend down to pick the scalpel off the ground and take it back to the table to spray it down with ethanol.
You have to keep a sterile torture room. That’s just common sense.
We’re not animals.
I keep the weapon with me, held at my side, as I advance toward Daryl.
“See, my brother isn’t quite right in the head,” I explain.
Emphasizing my point, Viper chooses that moment to slam his fist against the wall, shattering a tile.
Daryl winces, hard enough to shake the chains holding him.
I click my tongue but continue. “He doesn’t know where to draw the line, you know?
Sometimes he doesn’t notice when he goes too far. ”
Another fist to the wall, another broken tile.
“He’ll be fine in a minute, don’t worry,” I assure our guest. “He just needs to blow off some steam.”
Daryl’s sobs are lessening, his breathing calming. That’s good. We need him in a state where he can talk to us, answer questions.
“I know where the line is,” I assure him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Like we’re buddies. Friends. “I’m just here to make sure he does, too. You understand that, right?”
Daryl nods like my lie makes perfect sense, like he’s not about to have another hole bored in his fucking skull.
I crouch down next to him, so we’re face to face, and give his shoulder a squeeze. We’re just friends, having a friendly chat.
“We just want some answers. We want to understand what’s going on, and then this?
” I gesture around at the room, at Viper, at our tools.
I look pointedly at the gouge marks in Daryl’s legs, at the knife still sticking out from between his ribs.
It quivers and jerks with every sobbing breath Daryl takes.
“This can all stop. You can make it stop. It’s just that easy. ”
“I don’t know what you want,” Daryl blubbers, voice and body shaking with the force of it. And these tears, these are real. “If I knew anything, anything, I’d tell you, but I don’t—”
“Now that’s not the truth. I thought we were getting somewhere.” I start to beckon Viper over.
“Wait, wait. Just… What do you want to know?” Daryl asks.
There we go. It’s starting to dawn on him that he’s not getting out of this situation alive. That there’s only a slow, drawn out and painful future, or a quick nothingness.
I straighten, coming to my feet.
“It’s funny. You’ve been on our payroll for, what now? Two years?” I ask, striding over to where I keep my bag. I pull out a few papers, staring down at them. “And in all that time, we’ve never had a problem with you, have we?”
I think Daryl has started crying again.
“Imagine my surprise when I found out that someone on the city council—the council we fucking own—petitioned to have our newest building rezoned. And denied our liquor license.” I flip through the pages and turn, pointing the scalpel at a scrawling handwritten signature at the bottom of the page. “That’s your signature, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer through his sobbing, but he doesn’t need to. I already know it is.
“Here’s what I want to know.” I set the papers down, spreading them out next to Viper’s tools. “Who paid you off? Who’s behind all of this, trying to fuck us from the shadows?”
His shoulders shake with the force of his crying. “He’ll kill me,” Daryl whines.
“No,” I say. I gesture toward Viper with my scalpel. “He’ll kill you. But you get to decide if it happens fast or slow.”
“It’s not just me. My family…” He trails off.
Interesting that this man would profess to care so deeply for his family.
He would have ended up here for betraying us regardless, but he’s getting the brunt of our ire because, during my digging, I discovered a rape allegation from a few years ago he made disappear.
Men like this gain a modicum of power and use it to do whatever they want.
Being a father doesn’t absolve you of being a horrible, sexist monster of a man.
But his children aren’t at fault for his actions.
“We’ll make sure your family is taken care of. I promise. But you need to tell us what you know. This is a one-time offer, Daryl, and it will expire in fifteen seconds.”
“Fuck. I’m dead either way,” he mutters, half to himself. “You promise? You’ll get them out of the city if I tell you everything? You’ll keep them safe?”
“I keep my promises. Speaking of which.” I glance at my watch. “You have ten seconds.”
We have him. From the way he slumps against his bounds, I know we have him.
“The guy’s name is Dante,” he says, resolve crackling. “Dante Basso.”
My vision goes blank for a moment, the wet lab and everything in it disappearing. I give myself one long breath, eyes closed, to regain my hold on reality.
“Dante is dead. And you’re wasting my time,” I say. I wave my hand to my brother, gesturing him closer. “Break something important. Maybe that will jog his memory.”
“No!” Daryl’s voice turns frantic. “Wait, stop, he’s not, he’s—”
Viper is creeping closer.
“Maybe he’s lying about his name!” Daryl screeches. “I don’t fucking know! But I…I know what he’s after!”
I hold up my hand to stop Viper’s advance. He sways back and forth on the balls of his feet, waiting. Grinning like a kid on Christmas.
“Go on,” I tell Daryl.
“There’s a woman,” he sobs. “Some, some fucking woman, I don’t know. He’s been asking people about her, her address, her friends, where she works. Having people dig through city records, anything he can find.”
The room goes very, very still. I can hear my own pulse, pounding in my ears.
Viper isn’t smiling anymore. He’s still, far too still, staring at our guest like there’s nothing else in the world right now except him.
“What woman?” I ask in a low voice, but I already know. Even before he says it, I fucking know.
“Sydney something,” Daryl chokes out. “I can’t remember the rest, but—but give me a minute and—”
There’s no scream when I bury the scalpel through Daryl’s eye all the way to the end. Just a shocked wet gurgle. And then silence, as his head pivots forward, blood pouring down his face, over his jaw and down the open wounds in his chest.
“Do whatever you want with the body,” I tell Viper, removing my bloody glove with a snap. “But make it quick.”
Viper doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t jump forward like a kid at a carnival.
Before we were having fun, but now?
Now it’s fucking serious.
When he moves forward, it’s with a cold, deadly fury he saves for special occasions.
My brothers think Viper needs me here to tell him where the line is. They see that as my one real job, infinitely more important than tending Ash’s fight wounds and handling their books. Because I know. I can see that line, the one that separates us from the monsters, the one between good and evil.
But what they don’t seem to understand is sometimes I don’t give a shit about crossing it.
The scalpel comes out of Daryl’s eye socket with a sickening squelch as Viper takes over with the forceps, fully removing his eye. The vitreous humor shines brightly in the fluorescent lights.