Chapter 34
HAYES
Simon is the kind of man you wouldn’t think would last long in a criminal organization.
He’s nervous, flighty, and timid. Not the best in a high crisis situation, he’s usually freezing instead of reacting. With a lean frame, long nose, and pale blond hair, he’s nerdy, and unassuming.
Somehow, he’s been the longest clan doctor in the last decade.
He yanks on the stitches, having spent the last hour repairing the cut artery. Without Collins’ crisis experience, I would’ve died from blood loss.
God, I love her.
“Easy, Doc,” I drawl, feeling him pull against my skin, gritting my teeth. He’s the worst.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, forehead sweaty. “The artery was a clean cut, but I need to make sure everything is tied off. If you move the right way and it comes apart, you’re dead.”
“Fantastic.” I sigh.
“Sorry.”
Jesus, Collins would’ve been better. With her gentle touch, she’s a godsend in comparison to his sporadic movements. Wheeling his stool closer, he grabs more gauze. “At least Collins was there. That tourniquet is the only reason I’m able to put this back together.”
“Tell me about it.”
He continues working and I look to the open door. Collins deposited me without much fanfare—tugging on her dress, drenched with my blood, heels kicked off. She claimed wanting to shower, but I saw how she paused at the door.
The same thing she did when Killian brought me in after the first trial. I was out of it, so I thought I imagined it, but no. It was there. Fear, real and heartbreaking. Something about this room scares her.
What down here could scare my viper? She’s unflappable in the middle of danger, taking in the bloodshed so easily. I admire her control, her inability to be swayed by the shit of our world. But for something to crack her resolve, it had to be big.
And I want to figure it out. I need to protect her.
“All those nights working the morgue came in handy,” he says, dabbing blood from the wound. “Taught her to react fast.”
Confused, I tilt my head, trying to gauge his face. “What’s that?”
Simon pulls the thread tighter, brows furrowed. “The morgue. Collins used to be here all the time.”
“In here?” I ask, brows furrowed. I suddenly want to hold my gun. “Why the morgue?”
Simon glances up, scanning me before looking away. “She used to train here.”
It sounds innocent enough. Collins wants to be a doctor, working in the morgue is a great way to gain experience. It would explain why the sight of blood or death doesn’t scare her.
But my mind won’t let it go. Who trains in the morgue?
“When was this?”
“Uhm…” He winds the thread around his tweezers, tying off a section. “God, when she was younger. Twelve maybe? She spent her nights down here with Ferguson.”
My mind stills. The fuck?
“Doing what?”
“Teaching,” he says, simply. At my confused look, he sighs, going back to his job, almost like I’m the thick one. “Ferguson used to bring Collins down here at night to check out the bodies, the wounds, and do autopsies.”
My stomach twists. At twelve, he had her down here, poking and prodding dead bodies?
“Then once she got the hang of that, he had her help in the interviews.”
My blood runs cold and the room buzzes in my ears, silence loud.
Ferguson used to call torture sessions interviews.
He would bring in rats, informants, enemies, hell, druggies and sex workers to test out his torture techniques.
With a metal table full of tools, he’d strap them down and figure out different ways to make them talk.
It didn’t matter about what—this was purely for him to give into the sadistic shit inside his veins.
I still remember my first time interviewing with him.
I had been in the clan only two years and had made it through rough patches, sticking close to Maeve.
Because of that, I got his attention—he wanted to know what I was made of.
He only brought down special runners to the torture room—only those he thought would stick it out.
From what I understood, Killian and Maeve started young.
It explained so much about them. How he made them into monsters.
He brought me down into a dank cell, cement walls and dirt floors, with the sound of something scurrying in the corners. There was a man tied to a chair with thick belts and metal clasps. It smelled like old blood and vomit.
I was there ten minutes, watching him pull back layers of skin on the guy’s chest until white bone peek through before Maeve found me.
I was in rough shape—it was the first time I had been in a small, enclosed room since my escape, and I was close to having a meltdown, listening to the man scream and smell the burning blood from Ferguson’s blow torch.
It took less than two for her to push me out and lock the door behind me.
I never knew what happened in that room, or what she told Ferguson, or what she had to do to keep me out, but she saved me. It was a few years later when Maeve invited me into another interview without Ferguson.
The man in the chair wasn’t someone I knew—but someone we needed information from. Her techniques were methodical, thorough, and clean. I learned how to calm myself, how to never give into the depravity, but to get the information and leave it behind.
To know Collins was stuck with Ferguson—who lived, breathed, and enjoyed the suffering of others, in that terrible room, forced to do unspeakable things, at twelve? I swallow my vomit.
I’m positive he allowed Michael to hurt Maeve because he wanted her to be hurt. And Ferguson hurt Collins. He twisted her senses, so now she craves the violence and pain to feel good.
“Relax your fist,” Simon chastises, patting my arm. Exhaling, I try to hold back my anger.
“Did you help, Simon?”
The doctor nods. “I had to show her what to look for. Keep the guys alive.” He sighs. “At first, I thought she’d break, right? Killing is easy, but dissecting someone who is alive, that takes skills. A strong stomach. But she did it.” Simon shrugs. “Impressed the hell out of me and Ferguson.”
“For how long?” My voice is like iron.
He ties off a knot. “All night, sometimes. For years. Ferguson would lock us in until the guy either talked, she learned something new, or the guy died.”
My anger rises like a tsunami, fast and powerful, sweeping through me with a sick vengeance. Ferguson abused all his children in his special way. And Collins was no different.
He psychologically tortured her. Forced her to endure horrendous things in order to prepare her for something. Knowing him, he had a plan, a motive for this.
I wish he was still alive. I’d kill him, torture him, for harming my viper.
“Did you ever stop him? Tell him enough?”
Simon snorts. “Right. Tell Ferguson ‘no?’ Collins tried the first time. She shook like a leaf but never cried. Tough girl that—”
Grabbing the metal tray, I slam it into Simon’s face, actions no longer under my control. His body catapults across the room, crumpling to the floor as I jump to my feet, standing over him.
Blood drips from the tray and I heave, anger pulsing in my veins like a charging bear. I’ve been in this life long enough. I don’t check his vitals—his skull is smashed wide open, and head tilted at an odd angle. He’s dead.
I’m not sorry. The only thing I am sorry about was never stopping this to begin with. Collins has this secret, this tarnish on her soul, and I never knew.
God. She’s stained in blood and her father’s sins, unable to ever get clean. I loved her, watched her for years and never knew.
“Huh,” Killian comments, leaning against the doorframe. “I always thought if anyone was going to kill him, it’d be me.”
“Fuck,” I curse, dropping the tray. Red splatters the wall and I run a hand through my locks. “Why are you everywhere lately?” My body is still tight, needing another fight to take the edge off.
The reaper looks like a good option.
Killian smirks. “It’s my thing.”
But right now, I have a mess to clean up. Grabbing Simon’s white coat, I search for his wallet, keys, phone—anything that might be used to identify him. All of it needs to be destroyed.
“Grab his legs, I’ll get the upper half,” I direct, pulling the body so I get his arms.
Killian tsks, seemingly put out, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I work for you now?”
“At this moment? Yes.”
He takes out his phone, clicking a few keys, ignoring me. I still might kill him. “Is that so?”
“Killian,” I growl, patience thin. “We need to dump the body before Maeve sees.”
Not that she’ll care that I killed Simon. It’s more of an inconvenience than anything.
I just don’t want to answer questions right now.
Killian sighs, annoyed. “You know she’ll figure it out when there’s no doctor on duty, Prince.”
“Killian.”
“Fine.” He slips his phone into his pocket. “I’ll grab Maeve’s car.”
“You know she hates it when you take it.”
Bored, black eyes gaze at me. “What are you going to do, Prince? Put him on your bike and ride him through the streets to the fire pit? You don’t think someone will notice the corpse unable to hang on?”
He has a point. “Just be quick.”