Chapter 26 #3
“Rosa has not only broken the leash, she can never be caged again. The drugs are leaving her system, and I think leaving her immune to weak alpha barks. Hell, she may even be immune to all of them,” he growls. “Renzo and your entire family fucked up, Elio.”
“Where do you want the brand?” Grant asks, showing me the red letters burning with heat.
“His chest please,” I rasp. My body feels imbalanced and shaky, and I’m content to watch as Grant presses the brand into Elio’s skin.
He screams and screams, and Carter rolls his eyes and hands me something.
“A grenade?” I ask, eyes wide.
“Pull the pin and shove it into his mouth. Make sure he hears you tell him what it is,” he says softly.
“His tongue will hold down the safety lever. He’ll have to decide whether or not it’s worth having his head blown off.
If he decides it is, then we get guts rained all over us.
It’s nothing a good scrubbing won’t take care of. ”
He’s so blase about it, I can’t help but grin. It helps beat back some of my monsters, and once Grant moves, I hold the grenade over Elio’s face, waiting for him to focus on it.
“Shhh. Be a good boy and eat this for me.”
I pull the pin and he begins to piss himself as he grinds his teeth together. Ah, he thinks I can’t shove this in his mouth if he won’t open his mouth. Cute.
“Open wide!” Ciro’s voice booms as he and Nico shove a burning hot, pointed fireplace poker into my uncle’s asshole.
“Ahhhh! Fuck!”
I cram the grenade into Elio’s mouth before he can shut it again, enjoying the way the fear finally crawls into his gaze.
“Not only are you incontinent in your old age,” I say, getting to my feet as I glance at the piss the guys managed to avoid, “but you’re also a royal pain in the ass. If I use the flamethrower with that in his mouth, what will happen?”
“It’ll turn into shrapnel. In order to be on the safe side, we’ll pack up and move back. Once he explodes, the rest of the house should slowly go up along with him. It’ll get rid of most of the evidence,” Grant says easily.
He hasn’t been around for many of the meetings I’ve had with the Five Packs, but I appreciate how knowledgeable he is.
“I guess we should move back then. Can you let everyone else know?” I ask.
Grant presses a button on his comms, relaying that information to them, waiting a few minutes until he nods along with whatever was just said to him.
“They’re starting a bonfire of bodies in the backyard,” he says. “It’ll be a controlled burn, and we’ll have a drone watch it in case it needs the fire department.”
While Elio doesn’t have many neighbors, I still want to be observant of any properties around it. Whenever the fire department does get around to coming out here, the response time will take longer since he’s in a more rural part of town.
“Let’s do this before the old man decides to be ornery and take his chances with the grenade,” I sigh.
Grant lifts his bag up onto his shoulder, and I realize he’s already all packed up. I am definitely feeling spacey, and I hope this isn’t a precursor to getting sick again. I don’t have time for it.
“It’s point and shoot,” he explains, handing me the weapon. “Let’s move back! Rosa, you’re going to start here at his feet, and begin moving back as the fucker lights up on fire. Say your goodbyes, or whatever you need to do.”
I stay quiet as they move back, not wanting them to hear what I really want to say.
“Uncle, I hope you enjoy Hell,” I say slowly, enunciating so he can hear me as I push the trigger to eviscerate the fingers I cut off earlier.
May as well, he’s not going to need them in this life or the next.
“I have been mourning a mother all this time who was sad and angry. She hated me because I exist, and that’s why she tried to kill me. ”
Starting at his feet, I hold the flamethrower there, watching as the skin turns black and begins to break apart. His screams are muffled as he holds the grenade in his mouth, and he fights against the nails holding his body down.
I continue to talk, knowing he can’t hear me.
“When you see her, tell her I forgive her. She really did try to love me, in her own way. Otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted to six.
Mama could have killed me when I was a baby and couldn’t fight back, but she didn’t.
” Gasping in a breath, despite the heat, I continue, “I’m stronger than she ever was, and my life won’t be hers.
I will not hate any children that I have, because they’re innocent of the evil things others have done to me. ”
Taking a step back, I move the flame up his body, taking my time. Much like blood, fire tends to spread and the wood begins to burn away from his body.
“I don’t forgive you, Elio. So big and strong, yet here you are, dying alone in your own piss with a poker in your ass.”
I don’t blame Ciro and Nico for not bothering to pull the damn thing out of his hole.
“May you be tortured over and over in Hell, with pokers and giant dicks that do to you what you so desperately wanted to do to me. Fuck your entire bloodline, except for me, because I disown the lot of you.”
I continue to step back as I give the rest of his body a chance to burn, running the flame up to his chest before I turn off the flame and let strong arms lift me up.
“We have to go, piccola,” Dario rasps, carrying me out the door.
Elio is already dead by the time the grenade goes off. I watched the light in his eyes go dim by the time I reached his waist with the fire. The pain finally got to him, or perhaps the damn man’s heart gave out. Either way, my revenge is complete.
For once, I got the last damn word.
Without being asked, Dario, Nico, and Ciro stand outside of the house while we watch it burn. The explosion from the grenade is loud and makes me flinch, but it’s satisfying to know everything Elio built, will soon be gone.