Page 99 of Iron Blade

Morelli blinked, his eyes still not coming away from my hand as it moved in front of his face, the knuckles sitting beside it.

Then he did something I did not expect. He started laughing.

At first, it was a laughter from shock. But then it turned into something else. Something sinister and cruel, until his eyes shut. When they opened again, I swear, they were black all the way around, though it was probably just the burst blood vessels from the beating we’d given him.

“You think that marrying her will keep her safe?” He shook against his manacles like a man possessed. “You’ve just doomed her! Not even Cosima’s protection will be of any help! You foolish, foolish child!”

Rage split my ears like the sound of a high wail, mixed with nails on a chalkboard. I struck him with the knuckles, and watched as spittle flew from his mouth, mixed with the soft, pink mist of blood. His face began to swell, as the bare knuckles of my left hand came up into his gut, smashing into his sternum and knocking the wind from him.

He wheezed, his eyes going blank with pain, until his shoulder snapped from its socket under the weight of his swaying body.

I hit him in the face again, across the mouth and a tooth came flying out, skittering across the ground like the button of an over-stressed blouse.

“You think that you can tell me what to do with my wife?” I bellowed, as I hit him again in the ribs, feeling the satisfying crunch of bone. “She is mine. You bastards cannot take her from me.”

He screamed, as I grabbed his collar again, pulling down, until we were face to face, our noses almost touching.

“Her name will not leave your lips again, or I will cut your tongue out.”

I hit him again, and his other arm snapped.

I hit his gut again, feeling the tension of his defined abs give in to the hard brass on my fists. It began to swell fast, turning red, then blue.

“You have doomed her,” he gasped out. “I only cared because of Cosa, but now? She will have no allies to save her when they break her like the whore she is!”

My vision turned red, as I struck him with the brass knuckles again and again. I hit him until bones cracked, and organs burst. I hit him until he passed out, a bloody, leaking sack of oozing humanity.

I inflicted pain for the sake of it. I derived pleasure in his moans, and the small ways his body betrayed him. The way his skin went soft, and swollen, the way his eyes closed under the bruises…

I struck him again and again, until my arms were exhausted and limp.

Then, like he had a few minutes ago, I began to laugh. The cruel laughter of a man who enjoyed the pain of others.

“You’ve doomed yourself,” I said, chuckling, as I took the brass knuckles off my hand.

I felt like a different person. I wasn’t the same man I was when I entered this room. I wasn’t the man I was before I gained a wife. This sadism was… disturbing. Like a different spirit had taken my body and I was a madman, like my own father.

“You see,” I said, licking my lips and tasting the copper of blood - Morelli’s blood - which must have coated my face like a menacing sight. “I was going to beat you until my father was satisfied and would let you die. But now?”

I took a single finger and pushed him, until he swung like a hung pig in a butcher shop, back and forth, in a sad little pendulum.

“I think I’ll keep you alive until I am done.” I stripped off my now bloodied shirt, picking up a fresh pair of clothes that was protected beneath a plastic covering on the table of instruments made for my delight - a skinning knife, plyers, an ice pick, bone saw and other fun things.

As I donned the fresh shirt, I looked up at him and grinned.

“I think you and I will be having brunch together for a long while, until I feel like I can send you to the afterworld, when you’ve learned not to mess with Mrs. Eoghan Green.”

Chapter thirty-five

Bread

Kira

Iwas feeling an incredible craving for saltines. I don’t know why. My stomach roiled with a strange kind of nausea I had never had before. It felt a bit like the unsettled gut you get from a beer hangover. My stomach was empty, but full, my skin felt like it was drawn thin with water weight, and I was exhausted.

It was the crack of dawn and Eoghan was up again, getting dressed into sweats and a t-shirt.

Every morning, he left me to go for some kind of jog, or workout around the property.

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