Chapter 100 #2
When I spotted Arnold sitting in a chair on the other side of the table, his hands handcuffed to the iron bar on the tabletop and his feet shackled to the chair, I stopped in the middle of the room.
The door slammed shut behind us, and Mr. Bellrose strode purposefully forward, pulled out one of the three empty steel chairs, and sat down, while Arnold glared at him with hostility.
“What’s going on here, hmm?! What kind of room is this?!” he growled at Mr. Bellrose, as if he already knew him.
It wasn’t until two more seconds had passed that his gaze shifted to me.
Immediately, something hardened in his expression, while I felt as if I were growing rooted to the spot.
Unable to do anything but stare at him, I let all the disgust and hatred deep inside my chest consume me until my fists clenched so tightly that I felt my nails digging into my skin.
A condescending smile played around his lips before he leaned back, as if he had forgotten that I was the reason he was rotting away in here.
“Davian. Joseph’s golden boy. Daring to come here.”
And he didn’t even know it.
As the disgust threatened to corrupt every last cell in me, Mr. Bellrose gestured to the chair beside him, and I forced myself to slowly step closer and sit down.
Someone entered the room behind us, wheeling in a steel table with a silver briefcase on it, but Arnold and I ignored the two men, who immediately disappeared again, and stared at each other.
I wanted my gaze to burn into him. Ready to hold his for the first time until he realized this wasn’t some cute little visit.
“Your face reminds me of Troy’s whenever he thought a Fitzek could afford a misstep.”
His smile vanished, and all that remained was that deeply depraved gaze, dripping with spite and corruption.
“Something inside me always knew you were the biggest mistake Joseph ever made. A pitiful orphan boy with a toddler, falling for a swindling whore.”
He snorted, leaned back further, and kept eye contact, not noticing how white my knuckles were.
“He should have shot that little slut his illegitimate daughter had been in the cradle, along with that bitch he apparently fucked sore for years.”
My fist twitched and my jaw threatened to pop out.
There was so much I wanted to say. With my fists. And I wanted to see him bleed miserably.
No one spoke of her that way.
If Mr. Bellrose didn’t do anything, I would forget his rules and myself and cut out Arnold’s tongue with the razor blade in my jacket pocket.
“Instead, he let her roam free.”
He shook his head.
“I should have taught the boy how to use a gun. But he always wanted to solve everything through the law. The law. The law. The law… We are the law, Davian!”
Anger lay in his voice as his gaze darkened.
“And you’ll come to understand that once I’m back out there and you’ll bitterly regret your little hero’s mission from two months ago.”
Madness settled into his gray-blue eyes, and I found myself fixated on them, letting even more disgust wash over me.
I wasn’t that man.
“You better get your cute little daughter to safety while you still can.”
I jumped up, but Mr. Bellrose yanked me back into the chair, whereupon Arnold began to laugh.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Rydell. He’s not getting out of here. And no one’s getting near him. Your daughter is safe.”
I tried to calm myself down while everything inside me was raging, ready to get whatever it was we were going to do to him over with, and leaned back while Arnold eyed me triumphantly.
Patience, Davian. Patience.
“Did you set that rich bastard on me?”
He looked back and forth between me and Mr. Bellrose, but I didn’t respond.
“Maplecrest is flourishing under Monica’s management,” I said instead, which wiped all mockery from Arnold’s face. “This year’s applicant pool includes seventeen women.”
All those years he had hated her. All those years she had stood up to him, even though he had humiliated her so thoroughly that she should have left and never returned to Maplecrest. Yet she had come back.
For Lara. For me.
Because she was so damn strong.
“If I weren’t sitting in this cell, I’d take you and that cunning cunt and put a bullet through both of your heads!”
Arnold spat on the floor.
My fists clenched again.
“Careful.”
Arnold snorts.
“Or what? Hmm?”
He glared at me like a madman.
“Do you think I’m afraid of a boy who spent years cowering because his mentor kept him on a leash?”
He snorted again.
“At your age, I worked my way up, built something of value, and didn’t let anyone push me around. But you? You’ve wasted away because you raised a kid as if you were a housewife, instead of getting yourself a decent woman.”
The snorting was starting to get on my nerves, which was why I looked over at Mr. Bellrose, who was eyeing Arnold as if he were a zoo animal whose value to the zoo he hadn’t quite figured out yet.
“Has it left you speechless, or what?”
I looked back at Arnold, who was leaning forward and could count himself lucky that I remained leaning back.
“I’m getting out of here, Davian. I’ve made sure of that. And if that blonde slut is still on my faculty by then, her days will be numbered.”
My patience snapped, and I lunged forward, causing Mr. Bellrose’s surprisingly strong hand to land on my chest once more, and I glowered at Arnold.
“One more disrespectful word about my mother, and you’ll wish you’d been shot in the war!”
We Got Your Wife…
Carlos Rafael Rivera
That was the moment his maniacal grin faded.
“Your…”
He broke off.
Oh, how satisfyingly it was working inside him.
Suddenly, he gave a dry laugh.
“Do you know when she got pregnant?”
Again, his smile faded. And it was as if something flickered across his gaze. Something I had never seen in his expression before.
Confusion.
“At fifteen.”
Realization flashed through his eyes. His right eyebrow twitched.
Another emotion crept in.
Disbelief.
“Because a pedophile criminal felt intimidated by her.”
Mr. Bellrose stood up, leaving Arnold – who was staring at me, frozen in place – no chance to speak.
Suspenseful Investigation Piano
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“Most people in my line of work perform genital mutilation on rapists.”
I held Arnold’s gaze, soaking in every second of his growing realization, unable to process what Mr. Bellrose was talking about.
You’ve hurt us. All of us.
“However, since I intend to ensure that you never walk free again, I have decided on a method that, in my opinion, is far more appropriate, and far more promising.”
Mr. Bellrose took off his coat and his suit jacket, which he wore over a black vest and a shirt of the same color, revealing the black shoulder holsters from which – after carefully draping the jackets over the back of a chair – he drew two pistols in one fluid motion and placed them symmetrically on the metal table next to the suitcase.
He then rolled up his sleeves evenly, opened the suitcase, and pulled out a long, broad cleaver, whose blade reflected the sterile light of the room so sharply that Arnold and I both stared at it.
For a moment, unease coursed through my body.
There was no way this could actually…
“You will be administered a highly concentrated dose of sildenafil every day. An extremely effective remedy for increasing potency, though it should be dosed carefully if one wishes to avoid pain.”
He said it with such ease. As if he were explaining a scientific topic to someone. As if he had done this countless times before…
Arnold stared at Mr. Bellrose as if the latter had lost his mind, while Mr. Bellrose calmly disinfected the cleaver and placed it on a sterile surface.
My gaze fixed on the deep black, jagged yet curved rune tattoos on his vein-covered forearms, which formed flowing patterns that seemed familiar to me, though my brain failed to make the necessary connections.
Mr. Bellrose took off his leather gloves, reached for plastic gloves, and pulled them on with focus and precision.
“If you don’t want to suffer any pain, you’ll have to make use of a hand.” He smiled peacefully, as if he had just made a lighthearted joke, and looked at Arnold. “Just not your own, because we’re going to remove those in a moment. First the right. Then the left.”
He strode to the door, knocked once, and immediately two guards entered the room, walked around the table, grabbed Arnold by the arms, and tied him to the chair’s pre-installed iron rings with several leather straps.
“What the hell!”
He began to struggle.
“Let go of me!”
But the men were stronger and had him tied to the chair within a minute.
“Davian! Who is this guy?! Tell him to stop or there will be consequences!”
A new feeling mingled with all the confusion.
Satisfaction.
I leaned back again.
“Davian!”
But I said nothing, just stared at that disgusting scumbag, ready to watch him get a taste of his own medicine.
Normally, there was something inside me that wanted to prevent suffering.
But over the past few months, I had fallen out of my trained patterns, leaving the doors open for Atrinus.
And even though he mostly fed on obsession and inspiration, I could feel him lurking deep within me.
Ready to see those people bleed who had taken his muse away from him.
“Untie me or I’ll make sure that…”
“Enough with the threats,” Mr. Bellrose cut him off in the calmest tone and stepped around Arnold, only to immediately slip a ball gag over his mouth from behind, causing him to widen his eyes. “You’ve wronged many people. You’ve wronged my family.”
Arnold began to make noises, staring up at Mr. Bellrose as if he were in shock and didn’t know what Mr. Bellrose was talking about. And I was grateful that I didn’t understand a single one of his panicked words.
He didn’t seem to have expected this.
“And no one.” He tightened the neck strap so that Arnold’s head slammed against the chair and his eyes widened even further. “Hurts my family without paying the price.”
Arnold looked at me for help, but my help was the last he would get.