Chapter 39

When we make it down the stairs and arrive at the metal door, I grab Cat's hand and turn her to face me. A few feet away, Kurt stands with his beefy arms crossed over his chest. For a week now, he and one of Mathias's men have been vigilantly watching over the scum behind the door.

"Are you sure you want to do this? It's not going to be pretty."

With her brows dropping, she looks at the door, and I know the wheels are turning in her head. As she straightens her spine, she swivels her eyes back to me. "Yes, I'm sure," she says.

Things are about to get messy. I wasn't exaggerating when I said it wasn't going to be pretty. In fact, it'll be downright ugly and would make even the strongest stomach weak. It's not something a woman should ever see. But if there's anyone who deserves to be part of this, it's Cat.

I know it's not a black and white decision for her. It's not what she wants to do, but what she needs to do.

I pull her closer, dropping my chin to look down at her. "If at any time you want to leave, let me know, and I'll get you out of there."

She rolls to her toes and brushes her lips against mine before rolling back down. "Stop, Hunter. I'll be fine. I need to do this." Something hard passes over her eyes. "I want to see that man suffer and bleed. I need to see the pain in his eyes. Because I won't truly believe it's over until I'm standing over his cold, dead body."

As fucked up as it may be, Cat's words have my cock twitching. I'm not blood thirsty. I don't kill people for sport. I do it because if I don't, another innocent person will be hurt. Silas and I don't truly make a difference in the world, but even if we only save one person from suffering, then that's enough for us. What matters is how we make a difference in that person's life.

What fills my cock with blood are the emotions she is letting out. Fear and pain have been so much a part of Cat's life for years. Even when she refused to acknowledge what happened, I could still see it lurking in the depths of her eyes. Cat has never been weak in any way, but seeing the fight and determination on her face right now reminds me of the woman I married. I'm so goddamn proud of her.

Twisting the knob, I push open the door. The putrid smell of sweat and piss hit us first, the stench so strong that it makes my eyes water. Cat coughs beside me.

Across the room, Jimmy sits on an old wood chair. I refuse to call him Nico. We may have the same blood running through our veins, but he's not family. He's Jimmy Simons, the sick bastard who stole my kids and tortured my wife. Nothing more, nothing less.

I haven't seen him since he was carted out of my house a week ago. The anger that's been slowly brewing inside me slams back tenfold.

Behind me and Cat, I feel another presence step into the room, and I know it's Silas. He asked to be here, and I wasn't going to deny him.

Slowly, my eyes take in Jimmy. He's been stripped down to nothing but an undershirt and a pair of silk boxers. He looks fitter than I expected when I thought he was homeless for ten years. However, after sitting in this room for days, rotting, and getting only the bare minimum to survive, he's lost weight.

His arms aren't tied to the arms of the chair. They don't need to be. With thick nails anchored to the back of his hands and buried in the wood, he won't be going anywhere. However, rope is wrapped around his ankles and the chair's legs. His torso is also held in place by rope.

When we entered the room, his head was lying limply on his chest, but now it's slowly rising. His face looks gaunt. His eye is slightly swollen with a cut on his brow, and he has a line of dried blood from the corner of his mouth. He sees me first, his expression blank, but then he notices Cat beside me. A creepy as fuck smile splits his lips.

"Cat," he rasps, his voice scratchy from either not talking or screaming. "I see you've missed me as much as I've missed you. I'm glad you came."

Cat stiffens, out of fear or hatred, I'm not sure which.

She takes a step forward. "I'm here because I won't miss the opportunity to watch you suffer. To see your life drain from your eyes."

Jimmy chuckles, the sound rusty. "I guess you're saying the time we spent together wasn't enjoyable for you?" He licks his cracked lips. "I have to admit, it wasn't as pleasurable for me either, since I didn't get a chance to shove my dick into your pussy like my boys did. That's my biggest regret."

My feet are moving before the last syllable leaves his filthy fucking mouth. I swing my arm back and strike him in the jaw with my fist. My knuckles split from the tooth that flies across the room. His head whips around, but he brings it back. An evil smile splits his lips, showing off a gap where the tooth used to be in the front.

"You can hit me, stab me, torture me as much as you want, Hunter, but I still won. I took from you something precious that you'll never get back. Your two perfect little children were my son's and his friend's play things. They ripped them to shreds and gobbled up the delicious pieces. But that's not the most exciting part. What makes this so enjoyable and ensures I'll always win is that you'll never be rid of me. Your pretty little Cat will always think of me and my boys. I'll always be in the back of both of your heads, taunting you, reminding you of what you had and what you lost." He laughs like a mad man because that's what he is. A fucking lunatic. "You can kill me, but you'll never be rid of me."

The more he talks, the higher my blood pressure rises and the darker the red seeps into my vision.

It's obvious what he's doing. He wants me angry. Enraged. He wants me to lose control and end his life fast. To remove the option of making him suffer. He knows he's not leaving this room alive. He believes that if he can control the situation, shit will go his way.

A rabid scream comes from my left, followed by a flash of black hair. Before I can stop her, Cat has buried a knife in Jimmy's thigh. He howls in pain. Her chest heaves as she twists the blade, digging it deeper.

I let her have her moment before stepping up and wrapping my arms around her waist. I pry her fingers away from the knife handle. "Let go, baby. This is what he wants. For us to put him out of his misery quickly."

She blinks, the enraged scowl slowly fading from her face. She looks down at my hand covering hers which is still wrapped around the knife. Slowly, her fingers relax and she lets go. Her eyes move to Jimmy, who's trying his best to hide the pain he's currently experiencing. By the time I'm done with him, he'll be begging for death.

What he said was true though. Neither Cat nor I will ever forget what he did. It will always loom over our heads, haunting us. But he's also wrong. Jimmy may have changed our lives forever, but we'll use it to strengthen ourselves. We will use it to ensure that something like this never happens again. What Jimmy took hasn't made us weaker. It's made us stronger and wiser. In time, he will fade from our memories and be replaced by the beauty we had before he came along. The children we had will be remembered for who they were during their time with us, not for who Jimmy made them.

Cat straightens, and I pull her back across the room. She'll remain close enough to witness what's coming, but far enough away so she doesn't get dirty.

I turn back to Jimmy. Sweat pours down his temples and his cheeks are flushed red.

"How's Presley doing?" he asks with a toothless grin and dribbles of blood sliding down his chin.

Ignoring his taunts, I glance at Silas, who's standing silently off to the side, his eyes blazing with his own anger on Cat's and my behalf. "Wheel that cart over here, will you?" I ask him.

He immediately moves to the cart with a single gas burner. A pot sits on the burner with the temperature set as high as it'll go. Kurt came in earlier to set it up so it was ready when we arrived.

Silas maneuvers the cart across the smooth concrete floor, careful not to spill the contents in the pot. He stops the cart beside Jimmy's chair. Jimmy eyes the pot and his throat convulses when he sees what's inside.

His eyes jerk back to me. He tries to hide it, but it's not easy to fake bravery when everything in you is quaking in fear.

"No matter what you do to me, it'll never match the pain I've caused you," he says, his last ditch effort to force my hand prematurely.

"You're right." I grab a rubber oven mitt and slip my hand inside. "Nothing I or anyone else could do to you will ever give you even a small glimpse of what I feel every fucking day for what you did." Picking up a ladle, I dip it into the boiling oil. Carefully, I lift it out and hold it over the knife still buried inside his thigh. His breathing, which was already labored from Cat stabbing him, becomes erratic. His eyes widen and his legs try to move beneath the tight bindings of the rope. He can't move even an inch. "But I'll fucking enjoy trying my best."

His screams of pain rent the air when I start pouring the boiling oil over his bare thigh. I don't keep it in one spot because the nerves die after a few seconds. I want him to feel as much as possible, so I make sure to coat his entire leg. After dipping the ladle in the pot again, I repeat the process on the other. He's panting, and if I'm not careful, he'll pass out from shock.

Dropping the ladle back in the pot, I look over at Cat. She's leaning back against the wall, her face pale. If it wasn't for the hard look in her eyes as she glares at Jimmy, I'd say this is too much for her. My first instinct is to get her out of here, but I decide against it. She'll tell me if it becomes too much.

Turning back to Jimmy, I find his incensed stare on me. His jaw is tight as he clenches his teeth against the pain. His greasy hair is drenched in sweat, and his once red cheeks have turned ghostly white. Still, he's fighting it. I want him scared and begging. Only when he's a broken, slobbering mess will I finish him off.

I grab a small box from the table by the wall. It opens like a match box. Pinching one of the small three-inch sticks inside, I examine it as I slowly walk toward Jimmy.

"Bamboo torture was perfected by the Japanese," I say absently as I twirl one of the sticks between my fingers. "They used it on American Prisoners of War in World War II. Bamboo grows fast. Up to several feet a day, and it can pierce through the toughest materials. Even concrete."

I stop in front of Jimmy, his wary eyes fixed on the stick in my hand. He's a smart guy. I'm sure he already knows what I'm telling him, which makes this more enjoyable because he knows what's coming.

"It's rumored that one method the Japanese used was tying a person down over growing bamboo. The sharp ends of the bamboo would slowly pierce through the person until it came out the other side. The torture was extremely painful and slow."

Jimmy instantly starts wriggling in his seat, his grunts of pain filling the room from the pain of the nails pounded through his hands. His fingers are already spread out on the flat arms of the chair and he can't ball them inward because the fat head of the nail was hammered all the way down.

"Fuck," he hisses, knowing there's not a thing he can do to stop what's about to happen.

Holding his middle finger still, I press the bamboo tip under his fingernail. I push it in a quarter inch and hear his grunt of pain.

"Unfortunately, I don't have the time or inclination to sit and watch that particular form of torture," I continue, "so I'll improvise." Leaving him, I turn to grab a small hammer from the table and walk back. "Not as torturous, but still just as effective."

I lightly tap the bamboo stick under his nail and it moves a centimeter deeper. Jimmy grunts louder. When only an inch remains on the outside, I stop tapping the stick. Plucking out another from the box, I set the tip under his ring fingernail and push until it stays when I let go. Likewise, that one is tapped in further. As I reach Jimmy's thumb, having completed the other four fingers, his face has lost all its color, and his undershirt is drenched with sweat. Little rivulets of blood seep from the tips of his fingers and the pungent smell of piss intensifies.

"How am I doing so far?" I ask, pausing to look up at him. "Do you think I've come even close to the pain you've caused me and Cat?"

"Fuck you," he spits through his heavy panting.

I chuckle, digging the stick beneath his thumb nail and start tapping. "Doesn't matter. Everyone eventually breaks."

"I'll never fucking break."

I shrug. "We'll see."

* * *

Jimmy lastedfor another thirty minutes before he was howling and pleading. Tears ran rivers down his ruddy face, while snot oozed from his nose, mixing with the slobber and blood seeping out of his mouth. He withstood all ten fingers being impaled with bamboo sticks, which was longer than I expected.

It was when I started stripping off layers of skin on his chest that he broke. His screams of agony filled my ears and it was fucking glorious.

Cat stayed throughout. After the first layer of skin hit the floor, I went to her and made her sit in a chair. She looked sick to her stomach, but when I asked her if she was ready to leave, she kept her eyes on Jimmy and shook her head. I let her stay. When Jimmy finally broke, the look on Cat's face was serene. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted back, an almost smile on her face. She looked like she got just as much enjoyment out of hearing Jimmy's agony as I did. I didn't doubt that she did.

In the end, I didn't kill Jimmy. He's still in the basement of Slate. To suffer until he dies, which should take only a few days at most. Afterward, he'll be taken to the same pig farm that Henry was sent to.

At the moment, I'm driving Cat and myself home. She hasn't spoken since we left Slate. I've allowed the silence because I know she's still processing what happened. I have never hidden this dark part of myself from her, but I've kept her away from it. This is the first time she's actually witnessed it. She's seen the ugly the world has to offer through Jimmy and those boys, but she hasn't seen it from me. It makes me wonder if she views me differently now.

We enter the house through the garage door. I drop my wallet and keys on the kitchen counter. While torturing Jimmy, I managed to keep most of the blood off of me, but I have a few splatters on my dress shirt and pants. Cat doesn't have a speck of blood on her, but regardless, we both need a shower. First, I need to make sure she's okay.

When I turn around, I see her standing at the bar, her hands resting on the granite top. She stares across the room with unfocused eyes. Unease trickles through me as I wonder what she's thinking.

Walking around the island, I approach her slowly until I'm right behind her. A small part of me wonders if she'll flinch away if I touch her.

I reach out with both hands, wrapping my fingers around her slim waist. Stepping forward, I press my front against her back. She doesn't move or acknowledge that I'm there and my apprehension grows.

"Cat," I say quietly, watching the side of her face.

She blinks and a rush of relief flows through me when her body relaxes back against mine.

"Does it make me a bad person to have enjoyed that?" she asks, her voice small, like she's afraid to even ask the question. "I feel like it should."

I turn her around and use one hand to tip her chin until she's looking up at me. "It makes you human," I tell her.

"It doesn't feel like it." Her tongue runs across her bottom lip. "It makes me feel less than what I should be."

I tuck her closer against my chest and slide my fingers through her hair to the back of her head. "Would you have felt safe if he had been taken to jail? Even if he was convicted and spent the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, would you have felt safe?"

She immediately shakes her head. "No."

"If he's alive, there's a chance he could be set free. And if that happened, he would come after us both and possibly hurt someone else. After everything he's done, do you think he deserves to live?"

She shakes her head again.

"Do you think what I did to him tonight was justified?"

This time she nods. "Every. Single. Bit of it."

Her answer almost makes me smile.

"If he had done this to someone else's family, the exact same thing, and he was punished in the same way, would you fault the woman for watching and enjoying it? Would you blame the husband for ensuring he never touched his family again?"

This time, she takes a moment to answer. Her eyes move to the specks of blood on my shirt, and instead of disgust, her expression turns pensive. Slowly, she returns her gaze to mine.

"I could never blame you for what you did to Jimmy. You protected me from someone who was a threat, and would always be a threat, so long as he breathed." Her hands move to my sides where she curls her fingers into the material of my shirt.

"It's okay to have enjoyed what happened, Cat." I run my thumb across her cheek. "It doesn't make you a lesser person. He's hurt us in unimaginable ways. To watch him suffer, knowing he'll never get another chance to do more damage, is normal, because you know the threat of him is gone forever. It's a step to moving forward."

"Thank you."

My brows pinch. "For what?"

"For being the man you are. For loving me as much as you do. For staying by my side, even when I know it had to be difficult at times."

I dip my knees, bringing my face closer to hers, lowering my voice. "Loving you is the easiest thing I'll ever do in my life. Staying by your side is the only place I'll ever be. And I'm the man I am today only because of you."