Page 136 of His Pretty Little Duet

They are like fucking animals.

The casualties will be immense.

Dustin knows this, too.

Joe's impatient, his growl ripping me from my thoughts. They are all edgy the first time they are knuckled. Eager to see what a thick piece of metal can do to the skull of a man. He thrusts forward towards my face. I duck to the side, and whenhis shiny brass fingers slice past my ear, I drive my bare fist into his nose bone.

His head snaps backwards.

Louis barks something from behind me while Joe's groans fill the empty boxing gym. The old man squeezes his eyes shut, trying to find purchase.

I wait for him to regain his vision, and when he does, he roars, rushing me, so I jab him again, sending him backwards into the rope. He bounces on the bungee like a sack of meat, folding down the centre.

He's old…

It's not a fair fight.

But no less fair than slicing his throat open with a wire from the backseat of a car or shooting him on the sidewalk, or slinging him up and cutting pieces from his bones.

Herlife hasn't been fair.

Dustin's trashy daughter?—

And he took pictures of my property, of the most beautiful fucking images of a sad girl who has been through too much. None of it isfair, but this life will be more than that to her from now on. The life I give her…

My body creates a shadow over him, a creeping blanket that covers the light cast from overhead. I drop to my knees, hearing the word"boy"echoing in my mind.

"Hit me," I hiss at him, lowering my arms, unguarded, and welcoming, "hit me, my friend."

He lifts up with a throaty growl. Charged, he implants the brass below my right eye, opening my flesh. Blood pours down my face and into my mouth. I smile around the hot, thick fluid.

Then I lay into him.

It is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but—Dustin's trashy daughter—I want all his fucking teeth!

I slam my fist into his mouth, ramming several shards of white teeth down his throat, provoking him to raise his hands to protect his face. I break the bone in his forearm.

Crack!

Another hit to the mouth.

I deliver punch after punch.

The next one harder than the last, hearing his disrespectful tone talking about my father, and thinking about the warehouse. The bullshit. The disloyalty.

Fucker.

His blood begins to spray my face as I slowly cave the bones into the soft tissue within, but I keep jabbing. Even as the blood gushes from him like a fountain, as it drenches my shirt, my face.

My knuckles shift around under the pressure, once broken and having never completely healed. I ignore it. And I keep jabbing even as he stops moving, as the silence hangs ominously between each time my fist deepens the cavity now in his skull.

I keep jabbing.

Then I stop, lean back on my heels, and pant.

Still staring down at him, the unseeing glaze of death creeps across his wide eyes.

Boy.

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