Page 59 of The Oath We Take

“Fuck you,” he says, lifting his head up a little from the ground.

I put my boot on his cheek, forcing his face back down to the ground. “You’re going to die in the next five minutes.”

“Again. Fuck. You.” The words are muffled as my boot presses down harder on his cheek, then I shove hard. With Taco kneeling on his back and his hands tight in zip ties, there is nothing he can do to retaliate.

“Caleb, watch the door,” I say as I crouch down next to the man. “What do you want with my town?”

The man tries to look away, but I grab his jaw.

“You have no idea who we are,” he says.

“Because that isn’t remotely relevant. Because no one gets our town. So, who you are doesn’t matter to me at all.”

He spits blood onto the floor and laughs. “Your club, your town—all small.”

“Bit like your dick, I suppose. Roll him over,” I say to Taco.

Within seconds, he’s on his back, his tied hands beneath him, and I’m standing over him, my weapon pointed right at his genitals.

He scrambles, pushing his feet into the floor and slithering away like the fucking snake he is. “Yeah, it’s easy to be the bad guy in front of an unarmed woman, isn’t it? Bit tougher to be facing someone bigger than you, better armed than you.”

I let off a shot, aiming for his cock, but at the last minute, he moves, and the bullet goes straight through his upper thigh.

All attempts at bravado flee, and he screams in agony. Sweat prickles on his brow as his face morphs into a look of terror.

“Shit,” I say mockingly. “Bet that hit your femoral artery. So, you got a minute or two left. Why do you want my town?”

He licks his lips, trying to get some moisture in his mouth as he watches blood pump from the wound and pool by his leg.

“Please,” he says. “A tourniquet. Something.”

I shake my head. “Sorry. You didn’t think there would be consequences for threatening Butcher Deeks’s daughter?”

I see no harm in using his name. After all, they knew it already when they came for her.

He manages to shunt his way up the wall a little bit. “It’s business.”

I drop in front of him. “Not in my fucking town, it’s not!” The words come out on a roar. “Tell me why you want it.”

His face goes gray, his eyes shocked. “Whoever said…it was about the town?”

“There are two more men coming,” Caleb shouts.

I look to Taco. “Go, the two of you. Deal with them.”

He runs out of the door with Caleb, and I grab my knife. “If it’s not about the town, what is it about?”

“Fuck you,” he says. He tries to grin at me, but blood fills the gap between his teeth and bubbles over down his chin. His skin turns a musty gray pallor. “As I said. I’m a dead man, anyway. You can’t hurt me more than that.”

“No?” I say, placing my knife blade near his eye.

He tucks his chin and pushes his head as far back against the wall as it will go.

“You dared to look at my woman,” I whisper. “So, I’m going to send you to your maker without your eyes so you can’t look at anything you’re not meant to, ever again.”

“No. Fuck. No… I’m…dying, anyway.”

I grin as I pull his lower lash down. He shakes his head from left to right, trying to avoid me. Never done an evisceration before, but the satisfaction I feel when his eyeballs rest on his cheeks, and he sits in his own vomit and piss, says it was worth it.

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