Page 142 of Devilish Ink

Blood splattered my face, tasting like copper in my mouth as he screamed.

“Go on,” I said through my teeth, repeating the vile words he’d said to Ry. “‘Scream for daddy’.”

Rian had grabbed his own weapon, the metal plug from the floor. When he struck, the crunch of bones reached my ears as if through water, muffled and muted. So did Balor’s gagged screaming, his incoherent pleas, and cries for mercy, and finally for death.

As I’d learned on the farm, animals had their own law.

Perhaps I should have felt a seed of remorse.

But I didn’t.

Perhaps this made me a bad man.

But like I’d told Ryleigh, I never claimed to be a good one.

A dark righteous pleasure filled my crooked little heart with every violent strike, with every one of his sobs. I didn’t stop when I’d matched cut for cut, I gave him tenfold for what she’d suffered.

Rian’s hand gripped my arm. “That’s enough, Liam.”

I lowered my hand, the knife clattering to the ground.

Balor’s face was nearly unrecognisable. Slices of skin replaced his cheeks. Only the glimmer of an eye peeked through bruised and swollen skin.

“End it,” Rian said on a hiss.

“You won’t kill me,” Balor said. “You don’t have the balls.”

Rian started toward him but I held out a hand.

It had to be me.

I winced as I lowered myself to the bed beside Balor, as if I were sitting beside an elderly relative. A weariness deeper than any I’d ever experienced made my bones ache.

I did feel pity for him at that moment.

He really thought we would leave him alive. He actually had the arrogance to think we’d leave him to the police. That the world still worked for him. His money. His power. He really sawin his future a trial, slick-suited attorneys, a paid-off judge declaring not guilty.

He really, truly believed that nothing could touch him.

I smiled at that slice of eye. That last remaining hint of a human.

I closed my hands around his throat and squeezed, wrapped justice and judgement around his neck until I felt his hyoid bone break in my palm, and then I held.

I leaned in close. I wanted the last thing this monster to see was the face of his judge, jury and executioner,myface.

I saw the panic in his eyes when it dawned in on him that I was no longer afraid to be evil. That if it took evil to kill evil, I would be evil. That I would turn into Satan himself if that’s what it took to protect Ryleigh and our baby.

“You willnevertouch her again.”

He gave one last futile gasp for air, then he stilled.

I could still hear the roar of flames behind as I drove us away from the warehouse. Soon the glare of fire trucks would add to the orchestra of death, but not yet.

We sat in clean clothes, showered in the onsite bathroom Balor had installed in the warehouse, all evidence left behind to burn into ash.

My brother and I sat in silence, the violent pact now tying us both together.

It wasn’t until the glare of fire upon the horizon was gone from the rearview mirror that he spoke.

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