Chapter 37 #2
The fear of going too far. Of doing too much. Of showing too much and going to that place that made people see her differently and not being able to go back to the way things used to be.
“Go ahead, baby,” Ace encouraged, nodding towards the men.
Joy smiled up at him, and he pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
Joy turned finally to face the men. She stepped forward slowly, heels clicking against the concrete as she sized them up.
Marco looked her up and down as she passed, licking his lips. She smiled at him and in one motion, drew her knife from its spot at her thigh and made a shallow cut at his neck, not deep enough to kill, but enough to make the threat of it clear.
His eyes widened and hand flew to the spot as the other men began to mumble nervously. Joy looked up at Ace to see him grinning.
Joy relished in the feeling of it. Of doing this not for someone else’s gain and not having fear of being shunned afterwards.
The men straightened, not out of respect but fear of the unknown.
Joy craved more of that.
She crouched in front of Marco, dragging the tip of her knife up Marco’s thigh and stopping a few inches away from his groin.
“Let’s make this easier. You’ll want to answer his questions before I get mad,” she said softly. “Trust me.”
Marco swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure.
“You don’t scare me, crazy bitch,” he muttered through bloody teeth.
Joy smiled.
“You know, there’s this stereotype of cutting off hands and fingers in the mafia,” she started, dragging the tip of the knife up his body, then down arm.
Ace pulled up a chair, sitting back and watching with a wide smile and intense eyes as he waited to see the direction this would go.
When Marco tried to move, she pressed the palm of his hand into the concrete with the heel of her shoe, causing a pained grunt.
“I guess that’s cool if you want a souvenir to make a statement. But if you really want to inflict the most pain, it’s the fingertips you want.”
She picked up his right hand. “Do you know why that is?”
He tried to yank his hand free but Joy bent it at the wrist, not enough to break it, but enough to make him howl out in pain.
“I’ll tell you anyway,” she continued like nothing happened. “It’s because the fingertips are full of nerve endings so they’re super sensitive. That’s why paper cuts hurt like a bitch.”
With that, she snipped off the tip of his index finger in one swift movement.
Marco let out a blood curdling scream as he tried to take his hand from her grasp.
“We can do this all night, Marco,” Joy spoke over his screams. “You have nine more fingers and since the area is so small, you won’t bleed out before you can tell us what we want to know.” She maintained eye contact with Marco as she spoke.
“If we run out of fingers, I know five more places that will make you wish your mother had swallowed you. How you wanna do this?”
The front of his jeans darkened and the distinct scent of urine filled the air as Joy snipped off another fingertip.
There she is, Ace thought as he watched her sink calmly into her darkness, his dick hardening by the second.
Joy dropped Marco’s hand then kicked his legs open, bracing them open with her own.
“Another place that has a lot of sensitive nerves,” she started, “is right here.” She plunged the knife into his inner thigh, a few inches from his groin. Marco screamed out but the pained sound that escaped him when she twisted the blade was animalistic.
Dark blood mixed with the urine that coated the front of his jeans as he wailed.
“Holy shit!” one of the men yelled as Marco’s screams bounced off the walls.
“Wait – Wait!” the other yelled.
“Bro just tell her–”
Immediately all three of them began talking over each other.
Ace chuckled darkly.
Joy giggled as well as she whirled around, bloody knife in hand with a sinister smile. “Oh look, baby!” she cackled. “Everybody can talk now.”
“I see that, Rose,” Ace grinned like a proud teacher.
Joy tilted her head slightly as she looked down at Marco twitching on the ground. “You were saying?” she asked.
Marco panted, his head lolling as he put his untouched hand over his stab wound.
“We wasn’t the ones calling the shots!” he sobbed.
Ace stepped forward slowly. He grabbed him by the battered face, forcing eye contact. “I know that dummy, I wanna know who the fuck was.”
The men hesitated, their eyes all flicking to Marco.
“I don’t have the patience my man has,” she snapped. “Answer him or I’m collecting more fingertips. Or maybe I’ll take another kind of tip,” she said, motioning to his groin with her knife.
Ace couldn’t help but cringe.
“Isaac! It was Isaac,” one of the lieutenants cried.
“Shut the fuck up,” Marco grunted.
Ace stilled, then turned to Von. Confirmation that what the video had implied was exactly what it looked like made Ace pace in anger.
He ran his tongue over his teeth as his mind worked to decipher how Isaac had done this under his nose.
“Keep talking,” Ace demanded.
When he didn’t open his mouth, Ace sent a bullet into his forehead, watching with a blank expression as his body hit the ground with a thud. He fired another shot into the other man’s chest.
Only Marco remained.
He licked his dry and bloodied lips, then cleared his throat. Ace could see it had finally sunk in for him that he wasn’t leaving alive no matter what.
“He came to me a few weeks after I was arrested,” Marco started. “Said all the shit going on was because you weren’t fit to lead and that he already had some shit in motion to get you out the way.”
Von scoffed behind them. “And you just went with it? You easy as fuck.”
Marco scoffed through the pain. “Shit… looked like a better option than y’all.”
Ace moved fast, grabbing Marco by the front of his shirt and dragging him up despite the damage to his thigh.
“You think I’m the problem?” Ace growled in his face.
His voice dropped lower, more dangerous, as the betrayal set in.
“I gave you a seat at my table and all it takes is one nigga getting in your ear and you ready to murk me.”
Ace shoved him back to the ground.
“Remy, are we able to get the messages and calls from his phone?” Ace asked.
Remy answered from the corner of the room. “Yep, working on decrypting them now.”
“Good,” Ace said, not looking away from Marco. “Finish this nigga.”
Without hesitation, Von sent three shots into his Marco’s chest.
Ace turned to Joy then and brought her in under his arm. “Good work, baby,” he said, before kissing her on the forehead.
Joy simpered under his praise, swiping blood from his lip before kissing him.
“Von, call cleanup and have your men on the lookout for Isaac. He’s probably already laying low but once he finds out Marco is dead, he’s gonna run for it.”
Von nodded, the atmosphere heavy with the weight of what this revelation meant not only for their organization but their family.
Ace guided Joy out, helping her into the car. Remy went his separate way, while Von got in the backseat of Ace’s car.
“Aye, y’all can drop me back off at the house?” he asked, sticking his head between the driver and passenger seat.
Ace huffed. “Yeah man.”
Joy chuckled at their dynamic.
“Aye Jane, you a lil crazy but you cool with me,” Von said bumping her shoulder.
Joy scoffed, turning to him. “Oh, now I’m cool with you? This morning, you wanted me dead.”
He waved her off. “Damn a nigga can’t change his mind?”
She laughed, shaking her head.