Page 45 of Layne Closure Ahead

The lights illuminated the room exposing its dark secrets. Along the walls were all the tools of the trade of a sadist’s dream torture chamber. Various sharp-edged weapons, blunt objects, bindings and restraints, pliers, thumbscrews, choke pears, stun batons, and some items that she couldn’t fathom their use. The tiled floor even had a few drains installed for easy cleaning.

Despite the violent decor along the walls, it almost looked like he put enough effort into dressing it up with fancy blackout curtains, several framed pieces of artwork, and elegant light fixtures. Her brain tried to comprehend to what extent this man was so sick that he went from wanting to devour her to proudly showing off this macabre part of his life.

When she looked in the center of the room, her lungs stopped after a short gasp as she held her breath. A man with his back to her was on his knees, hands restrained behind his back and chained to the floor with his head hanging down. A black hood was over his head, keeping the man and his identity in the dark.

She pressed her teeth into her tongue in an attempt to control her facial reactions despite an overwhelming sense of dread washing over her.

“Well? Why don’t you go take a look at what I got you?” Eric’s voice startled her as he moved up directly behind her. His hand pressed lightly against her lower back to urge her to approach the man.

Swallowing down the saliva pooling in her mouth along with her greatest fears of who she should expect to see underneath that hood, she slowly approached. Her beige heels quietly tapped against the floor with each step.

Her eyes glanced down at the hands bound behind the man’s back and she slowly released the breath she had been terrified to let go of. There was not a single tattoo to be seen on his hands or fingers.

Layne stopped in front of the man, glancing up to see Eric waiting patiently for the big reveal. Looking down at the poor soul before her, she reached down and slowly lifted the hood from his head.

The man squinted at the light with weary eyes that had fresh bruises and swelling around them.

“Andrew?” Layne questioned as she saw her former income source on his knees before her. The very same Andrew Corelli that had been poached by Russ Spencer. She hadn’t been able to hide her surprise from her face and it prompted a wide grin beaming with pride from Eric.

“Since things are official now, I wanted to make it clear to everybody that disloyalty will not be tolerated. Andrew, here, has made very poor choices and now will be suffering the consequences.” Eric gestured to the various wall decor at her disposal.

She dropped the black hood onto the floor and stepped away from the man who was now looking at her with eyes pleading for mercy and forgiveness. Layne walked back over to Eric, keeping her voice low to spare Andrew from overhearing. “Eric, this wasn’t needed.” It sure as hell wasn’t wanted either.

The back of his finger stroked across her cheek. “This is just the beginning. After seeing the way you asserted yourself at the Brass Mirror, it is only fitting that we can consider this a little foreplay before we proceed with our evening.” His finger trailed down over her skin beyond her jaw and dragged over the bare skin of her shoulder skimming past the scar on her left shoulder and down her arm.

To further reiterate his point, his lips brushed against her ear as he whispered to her. “I’m getting hard just thinking about watching you work. Don’t insult me by not accepting this gift I have given to you.”

Her eyes closed to try and force her mind into a disconnected frame where she could get through this. Joey’s words echoed in her mind as a reminder.

“Do you even know what type of monster Eric Ellis is?”

She recounted all the things she knew that Andrew was tied up in. The way he watched little girls with too keen of an eye and too evil of a hand. She reminded herself that the world would be better off without him. Andrew was owed a world of pain and suffering. Eric wasn’t wrong in pointing out that disloyalty couldn’t be tolerated if her family’s reputation were to be restored. All of these things could easily justify what needed to be done.

When she opened her eyes, she felt nothing but a dissociative numbness as she nodded at Eric. “This was very thoughtful, thank you.”

She gave him a gentle kiss of appreciation before she stepped away to review her options on how to punish and execute the pervert on his knees before her. He didn’t deserve a quick death, but she didn’t want to have highlight reels of his torture on repeat in her head for the next year.

Layne opted for one aggressively serrated blade with one hand and a rusty hammer with the other. This was going to get messy and she wished she had known to dress for a little torture with her fancy evening out.

As for Andrew, his eyes reflected the rising panic inside of him when she approached with both objects in her grasp. “Layne, please, I’m sorry.” Here came the begging for his life, the part that she cared for the least and the reason why she kept torture short and sweet just to avoid listening to it.

She squatted down and leaned in to whisper to him. “Andrew, there is nothing more I would love to do than to shove one or both of these up your ass knowing what you like to do in your free time. However, I’m going to need you to man up and be fucking grateful that it’s me you’re dealing with and not him.” Her eyes flicked to Eric who was watching with a smirk tugging at his mouth in anticipation of what was to come.

Then, it was down to business. Using the hammer, she inflicted blows to fracture his ribs one at a time. The only reprieve she gave him was when she slid the razorlike edge of the blade across his body leaving one shallow cut after another on his body. The forked nail-puller part of the hammer was used to dig into his open wounds every so often. Andrew’s howls of pain echoed in her ears while he begged for death.

When her eyes tore away from the bloody broken mess before her, she saw Eric enjoying the show. No, he wasn’t just enjoying the show, he was enjoying the violence. He stood there with his pants undone and his stiff cock in his hand. Slow and long strokes over himself at the sight of her inflicting pain on Andrew. Fuck, she was going to need to stock up on more ways to mentally escape her nightmares after this.

Not breaking eye contact with Eric, she tossed the hammer to the side leaving her with just the jagged and blood-stained knife at the ready. Her hand grabbed the back of the whimpering man’s neck to steady his writhing body. She plunged the blade into his chest giving it an extra twist to make sure she thoroughly ripped into his heart.

Eric moaned out seeing how Layne put an abrupt stop to the man’s suffering. “Mmm, that’s my bad little harpy.”

She let go of the knife along with Andrew and pushed down the urge to re-experience her dinner that briefly threatened to make a second showing. There may have been one less predator in the world, but the one left watching her wasn’t going to make her rest any easier at night.

She walked over to Eric, glancing down at the blood on her hands and then up at him. “Where can I go clean up?”

He released his hold on his still throbbing dick. “Don’t bother.” Eric grabbed her by the arms and pinned her against the wall as his mouth latched onto her like a rabid dog. The unexpected advance left her struggling against him before she succumbed and grabbed onto his sides to keep him close.

His hands roughly grabbed at every part of her in a lust-filled frenzy. His erection jabbed at her lower stomach. Layne returned the rough play as her nails dug into his chest. She shoved his jacket from his upper body, balling it up before pitching it to the side leaving it a little lighter in weight before she did so. While his affections smothered over her, the weight she removed from his jacket dropped down into the pocket of her pants.

---