Page 157 of Mason

The scream that tears from his throat echoes off the barn walls.

The sound satisfies something inside me.

Something black. Something cold, dark, and sinister.

“You know what’s funny?” Brando says casually, picking up the crowbar. “You shot those two men. Tied off your loose ends. Thought you were cleaning house.”

He rests the metal against Sloane’s knee.

“But you left one loose.”

With a sudden crunch, Brando brings the crowbar down. His kneecap snaps like porcelain. Sloane convulses in the chair, howling, spittle flying from his mouth.

I stand there, calm. Quiet. Watching.

“You left Shelby for dead,” I say, pacing slowly around him. “But she didn’t die.”

I grab the jumper cables and clip them to his ankles.

“You thought you’d disappear back into your little swamp, bury the bodies, collect your paycheck.”

I pick up the car battery, already wired. Flip the switch.

Sloane screams again, whole body jerking. Smoke curls from his boots.

“But instead,” I whisper, kneeling beside him, “you woke me up.”

We let him rest between rounds. Let him feel the weight of what’s coming.

Brando hums softly as he sharpens a blade on a whetstone. He’s not in a rush. Neither of us are.

This is ritual. A cleansing.

“You touched her,” I say suddenly, crouching again.

Sloane is breathing like a dying dog, eyes half-lidded with pain. “She was begging for it.”

Wrong answer.

I stab the blade into the meat of his thigh.

Slow.

Twist.

Salt follows. He chokes on his own breath.

We cut pieces from him. Carve truth from flesh. Etch the wordTHIEFinto his chest, because that’s what he is—he tried to steal something from me. Something precious.

And now he’ll wear that brand into the afterlife.

Eventually, he’s whimpering.

Begging.

Crying like a child.

Good.

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