Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Brandon
“What’s the rush?” I ask from the doorway. He looks up, irritation flickering across his expression. He’s on his knees, frantically transferring cash from the safe into a duffle bag on the floor. His passport lies on the desk blotter. He continues to empty the safe, paying no attention to me.
I step inside the office and close the door behind me, pulling out my new gun and pointing it at him.
“Why are you being so rude, Devin?” He’s still focused on his task and hasn’t seen the gun yet.
“Didn’t I kick you out?” Devin asks, not looking up. “What do you want?”
“Just looking to have some fun,” I tell him, sitting on the leather loveseat across from his desk.
This statement piques his curiosity enough for him to glance over at me and his jaw tightens when he sees the gun.
He sizes me up, trying to gauge how dangerous I am.
I think it’s hard for him to fathom that I, still a child in his eyes, could present any real danger or actually derail his plans.
“Aren’t you a little old to play with toys,” he quips. He’s cool as a cucumber. Like most people I’d be at the very least nervous if someone pointed a gun at me, but he appears perfectly at ease. He places the last few items from the safe into the bag and zips it closed.
He drops the bag on the floor behind his desk and sits in the task chair. He looks at the gun and shrugs his shoulders.
“I have to admit I didn’t think you’d be this upset about being evicted.”
“Oh, no,” I say, laughing, “that’s water under the bridge. I’m curious what all this is about, though.” I gesture at the safe.
“Been a while since I traveled,” he says. “Do you mind if I grab some things out of the desk?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. Hands on top would be much better.”
He steeples his fingers. Even now, his face is affable, a smile implied by the slight curve of his lips.
“I’m sure you want an explanation,” he says glancing at the door.
“No one’s coming, Devin,” I tell him. “Your wife is meeting with a lawyer so she can stay out of prison. Deja is never setting foot in this house again. And you, are never walking out.”
“Brandon,” he says, amused, “is that thing even loaded? Do you actually think you can shoot me.”
“The man who gave my mother a drug overdose and then fired her? No, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble shooting you.”
There’s a flicker of surprise in his expression, but nothing more.
“I don’t know what you think—“
“I watched the disks. I almost vomited a dozen times, but I watched what you did to them. An eight-year-old, Devin?”
He throws up his hands as if I just accused him of drinking milk directly from the carton.
“So you know.” He shrugs.
“Why?” My heart races and I try to slow my breathing down. I need to stay in control. Based on his past actions Devin might not hesitate to use the gun against me if he gets his hands on it. I should just finish him now, but I need to understand.
“Why not?” he said. “Lindsey was so weak and easy to manipulate. It was pathetic. The more we saw her weakness, the more contempt we had for her. It was fun as hell to make her do every humiliating thing we could think of. Sex was just…we’re men.
Any man with control of a helpless woman is going to take the opportunity to stick his dick in her.
The stupid bitch would wake up with her holes sore and never figure out that we’d fucked her. ”
Bile rises in my throat, and behind it a wave of anger like I’ve never experienced.
“Sweet little Deja just wandered in one night by pure chance,” he went on. “I’d always been in love with Nisha, but she was Jules’s girl. Deja was like having a little miniature version of her to play with. Until Jules found out.”
“How’d he find out?”
“She had a tummy ache and he examined her. I was the first person he called; it never occurred to him that I was the one who did it. Tanisha was out of town. I told him to wait till she got back before telling her or going to the cops. That gave me about twenty-four hours to set everything up. It didn’t even cost that much money.
“Why are you dragging this out anyway? Aren’t you man enough to pull the trigger?
Need me to work you up so you have the balls to do it.
You know why your dad left you? I told him Lindsey and I were fucking, and the idiot believed me.
Are you as much of a pussy as your sperm donor or did I rub off on you at all. ”
“I don’t know how you fooled everyone into thinking you’re a nice guy.”
“Cause I don’t give a fuck, Brandon. I’ll say anything, because I don’t give a shit about any of it or any of you. The only person who matters to me knows exactly what a piece of shit I am and loves me anyway.”
“You think so? Is that why she retrieved the bloody clothes for us? Anton’s already had them destroyed. There is nothing holding him back from crushing you like an insect.”
He watches me, his eyes narrowed. I can see the wheels turning in his mind. His hand tightens into a fist, though he doesn’t seem to be aware of it.
“So you took Tanisha to Anton. How long have you been working for him?”
“How’d you figure that?”
“My wife and I share our locations.”
It’s my turn to fill in the gaps. Devin was able to see where Tanisha was by looking at his phone. He must have been looking for her and seen that she was at Anton’s home. He probably saw her go to the bank as well. That would explain why he’s packing up to leave.
“I don’t know how you forced her to help you,” he says, “but you can tell your boss to watch his back. I’m not going to let some lowlife get away with threatening my wife.”
“No one threatened her, Devin. All Anton had to do was show her the video of you with her daughter.”
For the first time since I came into the room he looks truly upset. Is it possible that he really loves Deja’s mom? It doesn’t seem as if someone like him could love anyone.
“I just need to talk to her,” he says, almost as if trying to convince himself. “Nisha will be able to see that Deja wasn’t harmed. She’s perfectly fine—an overachiever, even. If she doesn’t remember anything then it’s like it never happened.”
“You think the fact that your victims don’t remember means what you did was, okay? What you did to my mother—“
“Was an accident. You’re acting like I did it on purpose.”
He laughs, as if the whole situation is no big deal.
An almost serene feeling settles over me.
I’ve heard enough. I’m not going to get satisfying answers from him because he’s no more complex than an animal.
A simple predator, he preys on others because he can, because unlike a normal person he has no empathy and no conscience.
But like an animal he has keen instincts.
I start raising the gun, but he leaps over the desk with a gun of his own and fires, almost before I can duck out of the way.
The bullets drill into the loveseat, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling the room.
I fire at him from the ground, a lucky shot catching him in the hip and another in the shoulder.
He lists to one side, the gun no longer pointing at me.
He hasn’t made a sound, and his stoicism bothers me. I want to hear him scream.
I’m plowing into him before he can get another shot off.
His gun goes flying and, in the collision, so does mine, but it doesn’t matter.
My fist connects with his face, the jolt going up my arm like I hit concrete.
My hand explodes in pain, but it’s worth it to see the blood flowing from his nose.
The bones of his face are no match for the strength I’ve built up in the gym.
He gasps, a beautiful, bloody gurgle coming from his mouth.
He starts to fight me, trying to throw me off, but I have the superior position and youth on my side.
“We actually have something in common,” I tell him, kneeling on his uninjured right arm. He punches me with his left, but the angle doesn’t allow for much leverage.
My hand shakes with adrenaline as I flick my knife open. His eyes widen, only now betraying fear despite already having been shot and beaten.
“I have a side of myself I keep hidden from other people as well.” He tries to kick me, but I easily avoid his legs.
Time seems to slow as I decide my next move.
I feel a smile spread across my face as I drive the knife into his upper thigh.
His scream covers the sucking sound of the knife exiting his flesh.
A pool of blood spreads slowly under his body.
Later I realized how lucky I was not to sever his femoral artery, but in the moment, I feel nothing but elation as his limb twitches feebly, the nerves he needs to control it sliced through by my knife.
“I really like that,” I tell him, repeating the motion on his other leg, inches from the bullet wound. His scream is hoarse this time. “This is so much fun, and thank you for being such a piece of shit I can do this without feeling bad after.”
I smile down at Devin's writhing body, my hands sticky with his blood. Until this moment I thought I would be horrified by the act of slicing through another’s flesh, but I feel only satisfaction and the pleasurable hum that comes from inflicting pain.
He was a dead man as soon as he touched Deja, and I like to think that I’m not only punishing him for hurting the women I love, but exacting the revenge David would have taken if he’d lived long enough to realize his friend was the one who raped his child.
I press the knife deeper into his thigh, eliciting another raw scream.