Chapter 15 #4
Poison leaned over Desmond’s shoulder to look down at his wet lap. “Goddamn, Steel. You’re just bringing all the bodily fluids out of these fuckers. Remind me to buy you more cigars.”
Steel was starting to get a headache, and not from the foul stenches now accumulating in the room. He put the cigar away and leaned over Desmond, placing his hands on the man’s arms and pressing down hard. They were nose to nose, barely an inch separating them.
“I can make your death fast or slow. That will not be determined based on what your answer is but how quickly you give it to me. The choice is yours. Now, a simple head shake will do. Did you or did you not kill my daughter?”
Desmond’s chin trembled around the ball gag as he, slowly, started to nod.
A chill washed over Steel. He wasn’t sure what he expected to feel when he finally came face to face with his daughter’s murderer, but numb was not it.
Standing, Steel looked to Poison and Kitty, who were leaning against the back wall like they were watching a concert of a popular band. Kitty even had his arms wrapped around Poison’s shoulders.
“Take him,” Steel ordered without pleasantries. The couple stepped forward. They didn’t bother to unbind the man, just took hold of the back of his chair in unison and started to drag him behind them. Steel didn’t bother with any further instructions; they knew where to take him.
Looking at the other five men, Steel cracked his neck. He was running on pure adrenaline. Had been for months, and now that the ending was finally in sight, he was starting to feel the effects when he needed his strength the most.
“Which one of you drove the cage?”
All five men, ranging from early twenties to late forties, stared at him with horror-filled eyes.
Running on fumes and out of patience, Steel stepped up to the first on the left.
“Were you driving that night?” The man frantically shook his head.
Steel reached into his pocket and pulled out the cigar cutter.
Placing the man’s right pointer finger through the hole, Steel asked again.
This time his voice was short and clipped. “Were you driving that night?”
Again, the man shook his head. Steel stared into his eyes, not seeing color but pure fear. Deciding the man was telling the truth, Steel made quick work of removing the man’s finger. A muffled scream rose up as the man tried desperately to breathe through his nose.
Taking the finger stump, Steel removed the man’s ball gag long enough to force the digit into his mouth, and then redid the strap. It was his choice whether or not to swallow.
The next man in the half circle was already shaking his head by the time Steel approached him. He was nodding to his right with such force he nearly tipped over his chair.
Steel pointed. “He was the driver?”
The man nodded, his tear-filled eyes wide with a silent plea for mercy. He found none. Steel removed two of his fingers, just because his cowardice rubbed Steel the wrong way. Tossing the bloody digits at Papaw, he said shortly, “Take care of those for me.”
Then he approached the driver. “You drove that night? You were in the cage when Desmond shot Baldwin through my daughter?”
The man was older than Desmond, maybe thirty. His eyes bounced everywhere like he was tracking a rubber ball. He jumped when Steel snapped his fingers in front of his face. Startled, the man started nodding before he seemed to realize what he was admitting to.
Poison came back into the room. “Him too?”
Steel nodded.
Solo, Poison dragged the driver out of the room too.
Turning on the two men who had all ten fingers and toes, Steel said over his shoulder at Seamus, “What do you want done with these four?”
“They’ve seen too much,” was Seamus’ answer. “I can’na trust their loyalty after this or to keep their mouths shut.”
Steel, though, walked away. “Then take out your own trash.” He headed over to Kelly. The robust man seemed to be doing his best to try to fade into the background, like if he stayed still and quiet enough, Steel would forget about him.
“Your son may have given the order, but it was at your insistence,” Steel told Kelly in lieu of an explanation for his pending death.
Stepping over Eoin’s downed form, Steel squatted behind the man.
Ignoring the bile and shit surrounding the middle Gavigan son, Steel picked him up by the hair and forced him to face his father.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world, watching your child be lowered into the ground.
Seeing her lying still and frozen in a fucking coffin that you had to pick out!
Of walking away from her, knowing that she’s dead and yet you don’t want to leave her.
I wasn’t there, Kelly. I didn’t hold her as she died, didn’t get to say goodbye.
She died alone on the streets like an animal.
I watched the video of her death over a hundred times.
I know the exact expression on my daughter’s face when she died. ”
Holding up his hand, he waited until Starbucks placed his butterfly knife in Steel’s open palm.
Gripping the handle, Steel flipped the knife around and jammed the blade into the upper right quadrant of Eoin’s abdomen under his ribcage.
He’d gone in so far that his fist started to sink into the cavity he was creating as he ran the blade across the man’s liver.
It would not kill him. Not right away, that is. But it would be a very slow, very painful demise.
Standing, Steel offered Starbucks back his bloody, soiled knife. He was grateful the man kept it so sharp. As he stepped over Eoin’s disemboweled, gasping body, he stared Kelly down. “Do you have anything to say to your dying son?”
One hand slick with blood, Steel removed Kelly’s ball gag.
“You fucking coward!” Kelly spat out the moment the gag was removed.
Except he wasn’t talking to Steel or Eoin.
He was talking to Seamus. “You don’t have what it takes to be the head of this family.
You’re nothing more than a worthless waste of space.
I should have killed you the moment you were born.
I knew a weak, pathetic boy like you could never grow up to be a man. ”
Steel glanced over his shoulder to see Seamus standing behind one of Eoin’s soldiers with a gun in his hand. He didn’t know whose weapon it was, but also noticed that several of the Via Daemonia and the Non Cras had their guns out as well. It was a tentative truce at best.
Staring his father in the eye while his own brother lay dying in his own excrement, Seamus raised the gun to the back of the bound lackey’s head and fired. Down the line he went, until one, two, three, four were dead.
Handing the gun back to Ghost, he said in a dead voice, “I hope ye rot in Hell, ye miserable bastard.” Then he turned and walked out of the room. Gypsy, the Non Cras’ Secretary, followed him.
Ghost met Steel’s eyes and made the universal signal to hurry up. Steel knew it had nothing to do with Ghost not wanting to give Steel the time he needed to avenge his daughter and everything to do with their need to finish before the sun rose.
Kelly and Eoin were proof that it wasn’t only the bosses who were responsible.
They may have issued the order, but it was Desmond who had pulled the trigger.
Desmond who decided not to wait until Rodney Baldwin was alone to shoot.
He was the man truly responsible for Melanie’s murder.
Kelly and Eoin were just the players who moved the pawn into place.
“Let him watch his son die and then shoot him,” he said to anyone who wanted to volunteer for that assignment.
Steel left the room, turning his back on the four, soon to be six, bodies. Keys might be in his van, but he’d be on cleanup duty with whoever remained behind.
Papaw and Ghost followed. Outside, a line of bikes were set up. Their headlights the only illumination on the dark lawn. Kitty straddled a bike with Poison leaning up against him. Based on how he moved his arm, he likely had his hand down the front of her pants while they were waiting.
Seamus stood off to the side on the wide porch. Gypsy was still tailing him, though the man wasn’t doing anything but applying first aid to his new brand.
In the shadows of the headlights, two figures could be seen behind the bikes.
Both bound with their hands behind their backs and their ankles tied together, they each had a long chain wrapped numerous times around their torso, which connected each of them to a single bike.
Steel noticed Desmond was the one attached to his hog.
The driver whose name Steel had never caught was chained to Ghost’s.
They weren’t gagged, but their pleas for mercy wasted what limited breaths they had left in this world.
“We ready?” Poison asked. Kitty moved back on their bike so she could get on in front of him. He passed her a helmet before putting one on his own head.
For some reason, their act of safety struck Steel as ironic, considering. But if Jenna were here, Steel knew he’d be doing the same. Straddling his bike, Steel turned the key. His hog wasn’t the only one to roar to life as the club members started theirs.
Not waiting to see if anyone else was ready, Steel put his bike into gear and headed down the drive. Ghost soon caught up to him. Steel heard the others a little further back as the screams of the men being dragged alive behind the bikes echoed across the cloudless night.