Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
In doing so, I’d like to think the men who meet with me are given a swift and honorable death, in most cases. Terror isn’t a balm to my soul. I do not draw enjoyment from the act itself. I do not feel anything. I prefer precision and cleanliness. A quick slash. Nothing that involves brute force or unnecessary dawdling. Most of the lads don’t know it, but I truly don’t enjoy the torture aspect. In those cases, I’m only doing what’s necessary and effective. It isn’t the pain I seek from the clients, only the answers. If they tell me what I need to hear, then it goes easy for them. The choice is ultimately theirs.
With that being said, Donovan is a different occasion altogether. He is one of our own. A man who took an oath to remain loyal to the syndicate. To his brethren. He broke that oath. Betrayed his own. The penalty for such a transgression remains the same as the first world that I ever knew. Death.
I believe it’s the common thread that holds all tight knit groups together. The imminent threat of death casts a shadow over wrong doing so large, so dark, that only the boldest or most ignorant of souls will choose to ignore it.
Still, it happens. I’ve laid to rest two other members of our syndicate before. The problem is only one of them was sanctioned. It did not stop me from enjoying that event, regardless. I strongly suspect, as the metal table scrapes against the floor behind me, that I will enjoy this time too.
Pleasure is a foreign emotion for me. The few times I’ve sampled anything remotely enjoyable, it has troubled me. It stands to reason that anything so intoxicating in potency should not be good. Like the pills they used to give me. Addicting. A feeling I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid.
For tonight only, I will allow myself this one small act of pleasure.
When I turn back to my captive, he is bucking against the table in an attempt to free himself. He should know better than to think I’d half-arse any of his binds. He’s been working with me for five years.
I pick up the scalpel and twirl it in my hand, indecision weighing heavily on me. As I said before, I don’t like to dawdle. I could make his death as quick and painless as all of the others before him. But I won’t. Because in this rare circumstance, Donny has managed to invoke a very human reaction in me. One I’ve not often felt before.
These reactions almost always seem to revolve around her. Sasha. She’s worse than the pills. Worse than anything I’ve ever encountered.
I’ve killed for her once, and I did so gruesomely. If ever there was a time I channeled my psychopathic tendencies, it was then. Donovan has brought upon me that same familiar urge. The demons who want to come out and play.
My fingers tighten around the scalpel when I think of him inside of her. Touching her skin. Tasting her in a way that I never can. Feeling her softness all around him. Her scent, her sounds, her hands. My body shakes with the force of loathing I have for myself and for her.
I don’t want her. I never wanted her.
Light spills into the room as the door cracks open, followed by the tiniest of gasps.
Before my gaze even moves, I know it’s her.
Her eyes dart to where Donovan is strapped to the table and back to me, scalpel in my bloodied hand. Her pupils grow even wider as clarity descends, and she stumbles back a step with the one thing I never wanted to see from her. Fear.
She can hate me. She can despise me. But fear me?
No.
I want to go to her. To comfort her and placate her with lies. But I won’t lie to her. I can barely even speak to her. I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say.
Conor pops his head in the door beside her, and I narrow my eyes in his direction.
“Sorry, Fitz.” He grabs Sasha by the arm and tries to usher her away. “I had to take a piss. I didn’t know she was down here.”
My chest heaves as he wheels Sasha away with certain revulsion and disgust on her face. She knows what I am already, she didn’t need a reminder. And like a switch has been flipped inside of me, this entire situation has managed to stoke my temper.
Mocking laughter echoes from behind me, and I turn to find Donovan has managed to spit out the bloody cloth.
“You should see your face,” he slurs.
I ignore him and retrieve the pruning shears from a hook on the wall along with a metal basin. His hands are already strapped down at his sides, and he starts carrying on again when I wrap a tourniquet around his arm.