Page 216 of Never Fall for an Angel

Snap

Another finger falls to the floor, and blood splatters my jeans and boots.

Collin’s wails echo around the room, but I’m so far gone I barely hear them.

He hurt my wife. Tried to take her away from me. That’s not something I can stand by and let go unpunished. Collin’s going to die soon. It’ll just be as slow and painful as I can make it.

“Try again.”

“I told you, I don’t fucking know!” Collin thrashes in the chair, and Levi circles behind him, holding his head in place. Collin spits, but it drips down his chin, staining his torn shirt below while I line up for a third finger.

“I think you do,” I smile wickedly, closing the cutters around the digit.

“Fuck!” he screams, trying to break the ties that bind his legs to the bottom of the chair but failing miserably.

“One more time, dear Collin,” Levi chimes from beside me. “We can do this around the clock. Slowly cutting off more and more until you’re nothing but a rolling torso and a useless head.”

“Please,” he croaks around Levi’s arm, cutting off his airway. “Please stop . . .”

“I don’t think you’re being truthful . . . are you?”

“You know more than you’re letting on,” Levi says with a smile. “This is your last chance. Give us a name, and we’ll stop. You don’t,” he shrugs with a smirk. “We’ll start peeling layers.” He flicks the knife in Collin’s leg, and he screams in anguish. His head falls forward, blood oozing from his mouth and dripping on his pants.

Defeat is a harsh fucking mistress.

“Your father.”

Fucking finally.

Snap.

“What the fuck!” he screeches, his face red and dripping with a mixture of his own sweat and tears. “I fucking told you everything.”

“And now you’re going to tell me more.” I fist the short strands of his hair at the front of his scalp and rip his head back to look at me. There’s real fear in his eyes. The same fear he put in Mila’s eyes. “What did he tell you to do to her? Kidnap her? Hurt her? Kill her?”

“Answer the question, dickhead,” Levi grits in his ear, tightening his hold.

I’ve got to say. Collin’s a ballsy little fucker. He has the audacity to smile cockily, blue eyes flashing with malice.

“Told me to finish what he already started,” he smirked, and my blood ran cold. “Do what should have been done in the first place. Listen to her little cries for help and carve her up real pretty for you to find. Only this time, I’d make sure you couldn’t even sew her back together with what I was going to do to your pretty little wife.”

Red clouds my vision, the hum of a thousand bees swarming at the edges of my brain.

My wife. My fucking wife.

Seizing him by the throat, I shove his head back, baring my teeth.

I don’t even think. Everything goes black.

I rear back, smashing the bolt cutters into the side of his face, and Levi falls back. I swing the bolt cutters as hard as I can, over and over, until the sounds of Collin’s faint cries of pain die.

Adrenaline courses through me, and the only thing that stops me is when there’s a crater in the top of Collin’s head, his eye gone and his face unrecognizable through the blood staining his skin.

I’m not nearly as satisfied as I want to be when I toss the bloodied bolt cutters to the floor, my chest heaving with each violent breath.

Levi and I lock eyes.

A phone rings, echoing in the silence of the room.

---