Chapter 26

26

Nick

Ispun a bullet, with the words fuck you etched into its broadside, against the wooden table as I sprawled in a chair across the room from a strung out, drunken black guy—Jalen Wallace—trying to pick up the waitress. The bar, one of those offbeat venues along Vernor Highway, had long been notorious as a hotspot for shootings and illegal dealings. Fuckin place stank like cheap beer and grease.

Hidden in the back of the bar, out of plain sight, I’d been staring at him for the last hour.

Jalen slapped the woman’s ass, and she stumbled forward two steps, catching herself on the side of the table before breaking out in giggles. As his hand slid beneath the table, cleavage blocked my view, lots of it.

“Hey, darlin’.” The way the busty redhead bent over my table and snapped her gum left me wanting to reach into her mouth and smash it into her painted-on face. “My, you look good enough to eat.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d found people got uncomfortable quicker by my staying quiet while holding a deadpan stare. Like a natural predatory response. Just as I suspected, she slithered back from the table, eyes cowering in submission.

Once she’d walked away, my attention swung back to Jalen.

Thing about street gangs was they had nothing to bind them together. No loyalties. No single mission that tied them to each other. They were fragile, easily broken. As the Seven Mile Crew had gained some traction, built up some power, they’d begun to crumble, break off into their own pursuits.

Jalen ‘Babyface’ Wallace was a fine example of that. Of all the Crew, he’d been the most difficult to track down. A few bad deals had landed him on a lot of shit lists, and many of his customers were the kind of gangs that did bind together for a reason. Religious. Political. They took any act of mistrust as a reason to kill, and Jalen had been forced to hit the underground as a result. His ties to the Seven Mile Crew were severed when he didn’t deliver on a large order of semi-automatics to a few infamous crime bosses. The leader of the Crew, Brandon Malone, couldn’t risk the chance he’d become the target of a larger fish in the ocean, so he’d distanced himself from Jalen, eliminating that cozy layer of protection Jalen once enjoyed.

At a tug on her wrist, the waitress bent forward, and Jalen put his lips to her ear. Sickening giggles followed. With his arm draped over her shoulders, he shot up from his chair and guided her out of the bar.

And the hunt begins.

Why I smiled every fucking time I was about to rain hell on their little picnics, I’d never understand. I left some cash on the table before following the two outside.

Jalen led her to a rusted, early model Tahoe, parked in the far corner of the lot, where both climbed in the backseat. Once they’d closed the door behind them, dark tinted windows made it nearly impossible to see, aside from the occasional abrupt movement.

I took a moment to slip the black ski mask down over my face.

Within earshot of the vehicle, I heard a smack followed by the woman’s outcry, and Jalen’s shouts of, “Stupid bitch! Nasty ass whore!”

Tugging my hoodie over my head, I checked my weapons. The guy’s bare ass might’ve been hanging out in the air, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t fucking her with a gun in his hands.

Without so much as a courtesy knock, I threw the door open, my lip curling at the sloshing sounds that ceased the second both of them caught sight of me.

The female screamed, as expected.

“What … the … fuck?” Jalen reached for his gun, but stopped the moment I lifted my blade in the air.

An exceptional blade, serrated on one side with a mean looking gut hook. Couldn’t help but imagine the damage it’d do if it happened to get lodged beneath the skin—a thought that must’ve passed through Jalen’s mind, because he settled back against the seat.

“Get out,” I said to the woman quaking beneath him, my gaze shooting straight back to Jalen.

Without skipping a beat, she scrambled out from under him with her gathered clothes into her arms and, eyes on the blade, took off.

To Jalen, I said, “Get in the driver’s seat.”

In an asinine move, he tugged his gun loose from its holster, but I sliced the knife across the back of his calf, yanking the hook to dislodge a nice chunk of flesh from the wound.

“Motherfucker!” He grabbed for his mutilated leg, and I raised the blade again. “No! No! Okay, okay, okay!” Dragging himself between the two seats, he fell into the driver’s chair.

I opened the passenger door and took a seat beside him, as Jalen’s trembling, blood-coated hand turned the key and the vehicle fired up to a roar. “Old Boblo Dock.” I propped the blade at his balls, smiling as Jalen pulled out of the parking spot.

Blondie ripped through the bar door, flanked by two burly men, and pointed at us as we passed. For good measure, I lifted the blade higher, sneering at the whimper that escaped Jalen.

It pained me to think that, if I’d only had the training, the conditioning, the sense of calm I’d come to possess— so many things I could’ve done with that. I stuffed the thought aside—plenty of time to ruin myself later. For then, it was a celebration—before moving on to bigger and better kills.

“Who are you?” He kept stealing glances as I half-heartedly propped the knife to his nuts.

“In time,” was all I said, watching the city pass through the window.

“Y-y-you want money? Drugs? I-I-I got connections. Whatever you need.”

“Your connections want to kill you as much as I do, Jalen.” I tipped my head back and, smirking, directed my attention back his way. “Thought I’d put your dick in a jar to set on my mantle.”

There was a quiver in his laugh, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw his head whip between me and the road. “You’re a funny guy, eh? Jokester.”

“No. Not a jokester.”

Within minutes, we reached the dock, where I’d already taken care of the lock on the fence. He pulled in where I directed him, alongside the abandoned building. Much as the city had turned its shit around, Detroit still boasted a good share of abandonment.

“Park here.” I pointed to a spot where grass had grown up through the cracks in the pavement, beside my Mustang. I’d walked from the dock to the bar, planning to switch out his sore thumb of a ride that would have assholes chasing us through the streets. “Get out. And don’t bother to run.”

He slid out of the driver’s seat and yanked his loosened pants up as he hobbled along toward the fence in a pathetic break for it—exactly as I’d anticipated he would.

Idiot. Gun cocked, I shot him in the ankle, blowing bits of bone onto the pavement.

He collapsed, clutching his leg. “Fuck! Awww, fuck!”

“I told you.” I shook my head as I approached him. “No running.”

Gripping his collar, I dragged him back across the parking lot, against the kicking of his good foot and his screaming. No one could hear him. Even if they could, no one would care.

I opened the passenger door on my Mustang and tossed him into the seat, hating the idea that I’d have blood to clean later. After rounding the vehicle, I plopped in the driver’s seat and drove the Mustang out of the parking lot.

His sobbing beside me, trembling as he clutched his mangled ankle, had me about two seconds from knocking the bastard out. “You wouldn’t happen to be diabetic, would you? That wound looks like it’s gonna be a nasty one.”

“Fuck … you.” I couldn’t help but smile at the shaky threat in his voice. More sobbing, and goddamn if my hands didn’t instinctively ball into fists. “What … did I do … to you?”

I glanced across to see him hunched over his legs, hand supporting his head. “Funny you should ask.”

He lifted his gaze to mine, and his brows pinched. “What?” He scanned the interior. “Do I know you, man?”

“I wouldn’t say you know me. I wouldn’t say any of you fucks knew me. Or my wife. Or my son.” Instinctively, my lip curled at the mention of them. “But it’s better that way, isn’t it? You can kill indiscriminately without care or conscience.” I rested my elbow on the back of the seat, casually, as if we were having a normal conversation that wouldn’t ultimately end in death. “Nasty thing, a conscience, isn’t it? Keeps us aware of what’s right and wrong.” I patted his back, and he flinched. “Good thing I no longer have one.”

He rocked in the seat beside me, rubbing his skull back and forth, back and forth, while Detroit’s cityscape passed beside him in a blur. Didn’t take long for him to contemplate his next predictable move. He grappled for the door handle, but it broke off in his hands. He whimpered when it tumbled out of his opened palm.

“Broken on the inside.” I sighed. “I know the feeling.”

He screamed. Like a bitch.

In what must’ve been a moment of insanity, he leapt across the console, fumbling at the holster hugging my hunting blade.

I gripped his wrist and elbowed him square in his cheekbone, knocking his nose along the way.

He fell backward into his seat. “You bwoke my fuckin’ nose!”

“My apologies, if I’ve given you the impression that I don’t plan to hurt you.”

Within a couple of minutes, we arrived at the metal stamping factory. Taking my time, I dragged my finger across the hood of the car as I rounded the vehicle and opened the passenger door. “I have a surprise for you.” Squeezing his nape, I yanked him from the seat, and he fell in a heap on the ground. Fuck if I was gonna carry him. Instead, I cocked the hammer back with a click and pointed the gun at his good ankle, smirking when he squirmed like a worm caught on a hook.

“C’mon, man! C’mon!”

“Get up. Or I’ll make you crawl with two blown out ankles.”

Wheezes of panic ended on a long sob, but he dropped forward and pushed, propping himself on his good foot. Once upright, he pogo’d in front of me, and I gripped his arm, guided him over the rubble with my gun pressed into his skull. With some effort, he climbed over the charred brick and debris piled outside of a back entrance, while I easily stepped behind him.

I’d already taken the liberty of setting up a chair beside the huge hydraulic press in the back of the factory, and with a nudge, he collapsed onto it. His bloodied hands trembled when I chained them behind his back, and he bucked as I wrestled secure a blindfold over his eyes.

“How does that bullet feel?” I knelt down and examined the hole in his tennis shoe, slapped his shin. I laughed when he curled his foot up under the chair.

“Don’t touch it!”

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I pushed to a stand. “Man, wait till you see what one feels like lodged inside your skull.”

His cheeks lifted, as if he cringed behind the blindfold. “Look, whatever … whatever I did …”

“If you think you’re going to win me over with your useless, artificial apologies, you’re wrong.” I shrugged. “You’re lucky. We’re just here to … mutilate you mercilessly until you die. No talking.”

He let out a long and drawn out scream that echoed into the surroundings, reverberating off of the cement walls.

Through a black haze, I hear Lena screaming, but I can’t see her. I don’t know if I’m passed out, blindfolded, or on the verge of death, with a ticket to hell where my suffering will be hearing her pain for eternity.

“God, please no!”

The crackle is followed by the smell of burning flesh.

Wake up, wake up! I can’t move my limbs. Like being buried alive. Lena! Lena!

“Nick! Please!” She screams for me, and it’s in those moments that shards of agony rake across my heart, threatening to pull me into madness.

“He can’t hear you.” A male’s voice taunts. “Scream, little piggy, scream!”

Knuckles to my temples, I paced in front of Jalen, coming to a stop when the screaming finally ended. Flames of fury rocketed through my body, leaving a wake of adrenaline, a need for violence and pain. Jalen’s pain.

“Scream, little piggy. Scream.” I drove my fists into his face, cracking my knuckles against his cheekbone with a spray of blood, sending his head kicking to the side. Another hit snapped teeth from his mouth. Picking one up from the floor, I turned the yellowing tooth in my hand and flicked it at his face.

His muscles twitched with my every step.

“Are you scared?” I asked.

“Fuck … you.”

Cartilage cracked beneath the fist I drove into his nose. “Are you scared?”

“Yes!” He spat blood toward my boot. “You sick fuck!” The nasally words brought a smile to my face.

I yanked his blindfold away from his eyes and tugged my mask up, revealing my face.

His gaze popped. Always amusing, that moment when realization finally kicked in. Sometimes, I wished I could’ve recorded the shit to play over and over for laughs.

“Y-y-you. I shot … we killed … and burned the house.”

Against my better judgment and, likely, the advisement of my therapist, I asked, “Do you remember what you did to her?”

He sank into the chair and frantically shook his head, as if he was on the verge of sobbing. “I’m sorry, man. I’m … sorry.”

“I didn’t ask you what you’re feeling now. Frankly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck how sorry you are. I asked if you remember what you did to her.”

Rolling his head against his shoulders, he whimpered. “It … wasn’t what you … think. I didn’t do … anything. She fuckin’ taunted us, man. She was … a stripper, right? Took her robe … off. Offered to suck—”

Rage erupted in my veins like flaming bullets of fury, and I hammered his face, over and over, until his eye swelled with my punches.

Stop. Stop.I could hear Alec’s words as if he stood there beside me, and I had to coax myself to quit hitting the sorry bastard.

He’s supposed to die slow. Mercilessly. In truth, I already knew what he’d done. I knew that Jalen raped her, not only with his dick, but with the barrel of his gun. I knew they burned her with cigars. Cut her. Beat her. Until, at last, they finally shot her. All while I lay bleeding, half-conscious, right there in the fucking room.

Those images alone had landed me in the hospital for overdosing. Had I not been a coward, I’d have injected my own veins with sulphuric acid to burn the memory right out of me from the inside. Except, that’d leave the asshole in front of me running free.

I still had a job to do.

Rocking my head side to side, I cracked my neck, and took deep breaths.

“I’m … I’m sorry. For what I did.” His words arrived on a snort, as though the blood had backed up into his throat.

“I’m not your fucking priest. Everyone’s sorry just before they die. How many times did she ask you for mercy? How many times did she apologize?”

His lip quivered. “I’m sorry, man.”

Curls of anger tore through my body like a hurricane, and I gripped his face with a snarl and removed my blade. With a wave of adrenaline surging through my veins, I sliced his ear away, my muscles tight as he jerked and fought my grasp. I wished I could’ve said that the kills moved me somehow. That the tortures touched some part of my soul—however dark it may be. They didn’t. I’d disconnected myself, watching the kills through the eyes of an impassive assassin. There was nothing but a hollow inside of me, and the sooner he was dead, the quicker I could fill that hollow with the alcohol I so desperately needed.

How quickly a man could be reduced to an animal. A psychopath, disconnecting all sense of morals.

With some wrangling, his ear came loose, and I held it up like a trophy, while his guttural cries reverberated throughout the building. “Perhaps you’re not hearing me, Jalen. I don’t give a fuck how sorry you are.”

Coughing and choking broke his screams, and I tossed his bloody ear in his face. Three years ago, I’d have been appalled by such a crime. Sickened.

Right then, I felt nothing. Except raw.

I couldn’t look at the guy without seeing my wife—the tears streaming down her face. Begging them to stop. The helplessness knotted my stomach, and my hands balled into fists at my sides.

I took deep breaths. Tamp it down. His death was supposed to be slow and merciless, like the many hours he’d tortured her.

Can’t. I’d clamped my teeth so hard it felt as if they’d crumble in my mouth.

I unchained then lifted his hands, keeping the cuffs attached to his wrists, and strung his arms across the flat surface, as I rounded the hydraulic press to the side opposite of where he sat. “Ever watch how bullets are made?”

My question was met by the increasing intensity of his whimpers.

“I always thought they melted the lead to mold a bullet." A good tug on the chain killed his pathetic mewling. "They don’t! A heavy billet of lead is loaded into a press, and using a shit ton of pressure, they form it by compressing the metal together.” I slapped my hands together, and as the chains rattled, he flinched, before his lips quivered then soured with his sobbing. “Interesting shit.”

Returning to his side, I knelt to the floor. “So, you’re an arms dealer, huh? Ever wonder what they’d call you if you didn’t have arms?” At the reverberating pitch of his scream, I smiled, reveling in his obvious fear—the same horrific sound that had torn from my chest just moments before the bullet hit my wife and son. “The fucking irony, right? You might want to go by arms broker after this.” My laughter bounced off the walls.

“Please don’t … do this, man. Whatever you want … I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“The night you broke into my house, you had a choice. Of right and wrong.” I gripped the lever of the press. “You chose wrong.”

Closing my eyes summoned the blackness from the dark shadows of my mind. His screams jarred my muscles to flip the switch.