Page 6 of The Game

“Can I peel his toenails off first?”

“Fucking A, Tristan, just do whatever the fuck you want. He’s going to die from the pain first.”

Shucking off his smelly ass boot, I press my knife to the top of his big toe, and if his screams are any indication, Jameson’s already slicing through muscle and possibly bone. By the time blood pools crimson and thick across the pavement, and the rapist is left a twitching, half-alive mess, Jameson gives him a final jab in the intestines, poisoning his blood to ensure maximum suffering in his final moments.

Stalking to the mouth of the alley without a word, I follow his phantom-like form, the urge to spill blood dulled enough for now.

* * *

“Where are you taking us?” I grumble.

“I told you five fucking times already. To Ballard Bay. Nick said his motion cameras in his warehouse keep going off.”

“And how is that a fucking lead on Alice?”

His eyes snap to mine so fast, I worry his neck is broken and he just doesn’t know it yet. The world blurs by as we wind down the quiet streets to the docks. Fordson had made us a deal; we help him find Ellie, he tells us the last known location for Alice. We’ve scoured her campus and all of Seattle to no avail, and I cannot decide if that pisses me off more or worries me to the point of admitting I give a fuck.

“Ellie,” he hisses in correction, eyes glinting dangerously. I should know better than to say her name aloud. I’m not entirely sure if he wants her back, or if he wants to kill her for what she did to us. Duping us into signing over her inheritance, then leaving the next day, calling us deplorable names, telling us to stay away and she’d stay quiet?

Had that been her plan all along?

There is something undeniable, though; I know, if given the chance, we’d both take her back in a heartbeat. Would we find creative ways to punish her? Fuck, the very thought has my cock swelling in my jeans.

“Freak,” Jameson simpers, turning his face back to the road. I smirk at his sentiment, for it doesn’t bother me. He must know I've drifted off into my sick fantasies about her again, each one ending with her and I covered in blood and cum and panting like rabid animals. I want to carve her up, etch my name so deeply into her skin that no man alive will ever question to whom she belongs. I am a fucking freak, twisted in a way that is incomprehensible to most. But so is he. “What do you imagine, when you think of her?”

He says it so softly, voice tinged with uncharacteristic gentleness. It pulls me up short, makes my insides clench to hear the pain he buries so deeply every day. Who knew that such a tiny thing could ruin two of the most fearsome men on this planet? But we’d given one another everything—our darkest secrets, our blackest sins, our hopes and fears. To have someone hold your metaphorical heart in their hands and squeeze until every last drop of blood runs between their fingers?

It’s decimated us in ways I doubt we ever thought it had the capacity to. So as we near the edge of Ballard Bay, as the air in the cab of Jameson’s new mid-life crisis-purchase stills and thickens, I consider his question carefully.

“I want to fucking kill her.”

His soft snort tells me he knows there’s more, and so I continue, baring my soul to the only human on this planet that understands me without question or hesitation. At least we’re both fucked up. I saw something about that in one of Alice’s psych books, too. Folie à Deux; the madness of two.

“I want to end her to end my own pain. But…I also see a dirty little liar. How can she fool us for that long?” I twist in my leather seat, his Lamborghini pretty fucking uncomfortable for men as tall as us. His mouth twists down into a frown, brows slanted low over his steely eyes as he glares at the undulating, sparkling bay and rolls to a stop, one of Fordson’s many warehouses within sight. The full moon is heavy and casts the water in an eerie glow, a gentle fog like cotton choking the dim, sputtering lights along the empty road. Not even a rat is brave enough to set their feet upon this ground; evil, evil things have happened here, things that arouse me as much as they torment my dark soul.

Up ahead, Nick’s car is visible, along with another I do not recognize. Although we both just brutally murdered a man, the impulse is upon me in a flash. Nothing curbs it anymore, hence my vigilante killing sprees. It pisses Jameson off, for even I admit I can be sloppy, but when the police are faced with scouring the city to charge someone for the murder of another murderer, they tend to slack off and let nature run its course.

“People change, Tristan. We cannot control that.”

“But aren’t you fucking livid?”

It takes a moment of him staring out the window, fingers playing at his lips, before he turns his hardened gaze to me and shrugs.

“I am more used to it than you.”

I snort.

“Fucking liar.”

A rare flash of a grin tugs up his lips. I know this has been equally as difficult for him to bear, this decision to be angry or sad or both. We promised to protect her, cherish her, love her for eternity, and there is a deep sorrow that accompanies a betrayal of that kind of love. Just as equally, the fury is alive and burning, and every day is a battle between the two, a war that’s been waged since the dawn of time.

Before I can press a little deeper, feel the solace only my twin can bring, he turns sharply and reaches for his hip. Under the halo of light a few yards ahead, a giant has materialized, the fog swirling around his dark build, his belt thick with an array of weapons, two lethal canines quivering in anticipation at his side. As soon as Jameson cracks open his door, another shadow joins Nick’s, this one slimmer in build and shorter but no less a giant; Nick is just a freak of nature.

“Fuck.Me,” Jameson hisses, exiting. The new shadow combs his tatted hand through inky black hair, and as I hop out and narrow my eyes, my stomach writhes as well. The crunch of gravel and glass beneath our boots signals our approach, and though I’d normally crack a MILF joke about Nick’s mom, I keep my tongue behind my teeth this time.

The only man in the world I fear stands before us, the pale light giving his angular face an even more gaunt look. His lips curl up into a wicked smile, one that does nothing to warm his steely eyes—eyes that see everything, eyes that cut you through to your marrow with one glance. The only reason I think he hasn’t killed us yet is because we’re related. Nick is just fucking lucky.

“Privet, Maks,” Jameson says, bowing his head in respect to the man who we answer to, usually from a distance. His reasoning for being here is mysterious, but I fight the urge to ask him why.

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