Page 24 of Redemption

“No, nothing. He’s tight-lipped, that one. I hope you can get more out of him.” Kay dries his hands on a nearby towel. “You want me to stay?”

I shake my head. I’ve always preferred to work alone on these things.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Good luck.” Kay pats me on the back. “Chicken legs,” he adds and winks at me. I know he’s referring to my Mr. Darcy outfit.

“Call me that again, and you’ll be next in the chair.”

He walks off laughing and doing a waltz.

We may take the piss out of each other constantly, but I’d be lost without them.

I do a few stretches to ease my body out. It can be physically demanding work, torturing someone, and it’s been a couple of weeks since I last did it. When I’ve limbered up enough, I unlock the door to the cell and enter. Stopping dead, the eyes that stare back at me from the bloodied face match my own. My breathing stops, momentarily, before continuing in ragged breaths. It can’t be. I’ve not seen him in twenty years, not since the night he had someone hold a gun to my head while forcing me to lose my virginity. My father sits before me with his lip split, and one eye already swollen shut.

“I wondered if Arthur would call you in.” He spits blood on the floor at my feet. The moment of compassion I saw in Arthur’s eyes was for his sister, my mother. The hands will be a message not to mess with him and his family in future. It’s my uncle’s way. “So, Son, have you finally got the balls to kill your old man or do you need someone to hold a gun to your head?”

I stomp furiously across the room and send three quick punches into his face. His nose breaks, and blood splatters across my clean t-shirt.

“What happened to the girl?” My tone is laced with venom. I’m a melting pot of emotions, at the moment, and it’s threatening to boil over.

“Sold her. Her purchaser came back a year later. He’d had a little accident, and she’d died. He needed a new one, so I obliged.”

My father is chained to a chair in the center of the room. Wrapping my hands around his throat and squeezing tightly, I push him and the chair all the way to the side. He gasps for air as I tighten the grip I have on his neck.

“Name.”

He laughs.

“Name,” I shout with more force this time and stomp down on his foot. He hasn’t got any shoes on, so the bones crack.

“Never.” I let go of him and whip around. My Glock, which is tucked into the back of my trousers is in my hand in an instant and aimed at his knee cap. I pull the trigger, and his cry of agony fills the room.

“Name?” I ask one final time with my gun pointed at his other knee.

“I gave it to the other man. I’m sure Arthur will send you after him at some point.”

Putting the gun down out of his reach, I place my finger over what’s left of his knee and dig into the wound. My father’s eye roll back in his head. He’s in so much pain, but I’ve lost any ability to show him compassion. He ceased to be someone I cared for when he forced me to do what I did to that girl.

“I’ll make sure Arthur does. And for every girl he’s broken, I’ll take a piece of flesh a bit at a time and burn it before his eyes, starting with his dick.”

I remove my finger from the wound and drag my father back into the middle of the room.

“Twenty years at least, that I know of, you’ve been abusing women. How many pieces would that be for you? Would you have any flesh left?” There’s a knife on the table. I pick it up and in a swift movement sever his left ear from his body. “You don’t need this. Any pleas from the girls you abused, fell on deaf ears.” I chuck the bloody flesh on the floor.

“Son.” My father leans forward and vomits all over himself. The pain he’s in must be so intense, but he doesn’t pass out. I’ll wake him up if he does.

“Don’t call me that. I ceased to be your son on my sixteenth birthday.”

“No, you became one of Arthur’s whipping boys instead.”

“No,” I shout and pick up my Glock again. “I became one of his assassins. Doing what’s needed to save people from men like you.” I fire a bullet into his other knee, and for the first time ever, I get why people like Lance enjoy this part of the job. Why they get hard from it. The man before me is pure evil, and I’m ending him in the most painful way. His blood is part mine, but as they say…nurture versus nature breeds respect. Arthur commands my respect, not the man in front of me slowly bleeding to death.

My father’s screams turn into an eerie laugh, which fills the room.

“People like Megan,” he taunts me. “M told me it was you who saved her. He’s looking forward to getting her back.”

“He’ll never touch her again,” I reply adamantly.

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