Page 111 of Laila Manning
We fucking won.
Walking out of my apartment, I exited the building out into the dark night. Torches burned across the lawn, the crew and their families still partied, and the firelight danced in my vision as I walked across the blacktop, still hot from the sun that set hours ago.
I probably looked like a deranged monster, barefoot, wearing a pair of black shorts and ink as I marched toward the shop in the midst of a party. I caught Ryker’s eye across the lawn, and he paused mid-sentence with someone as he stared at me. He looked behind me, and I followed his gaze to Laila standing in the doorway of the barracks, arms crossed over her chest as she watched me walk away. The flames of the torches swayed in her bottomless eyes, and she had never looked more regal than she did in that very moment.
Ryker stood up from his seat and silently joined me on my way down the path. Jed was next, his silent presence joining in on my other side as we walked toward the shop.
Tonight wasn’t about justice or righting a wrong.
Tonight was about revenge.
The debts of men, earned from pain of others, would be paid in full.
And my family would be freer by the morning sunrise.
The screams echoed around the room, vibrating off the walls around us and singing a tune in my mind like a siren song. A melody of pain feeding the demon inside my chest, desperate and starving for the bloodshed of those who hurt Kade and Laila.
Body parts littered the floor, blood flowed like a river down the drains, and it coated my skin like war paint.
Fingers, toes and noses were first.
One by one, Charles and Clarissa Lupold were unburdened of those parts, and as expected, Charles tried to die twice from those twenty-one cuts alone. Pussy.
Normally, I would go for the tongue next, and on Clarissa I did. Her nasally voice grated on my last nerve, and taking away her ability to beg, borrow and then threaten for her life, pleased me.
The drugs pumping into their bodies through their IV lines kept their hearts beating even after their other organs shut down from malnutrition, shock, sepsis and blood loss.
And now, they both hung, missing pieces, unable to die yet begging for it to a room of monsters. They thought they were the biggest and baddest out there, and then they messed with the wrong crew.
“So, we’re going to try this one more time.” Jed spun his knife around between his fingers like a menace as I chugged from a bottle of water. “Do you know the muffin man?”
Clarissa gurgled instead of screaming as her cut-off tongue bled into her mouth.
“That’s a shame.” Ryker mused, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned on the table next to me. “It’s a simple answer.”
“Okay, throw a dart.” Jed flipped his hands with a shrug. “She loses a point for not playing my game.”
“Got it.” I picked up the needlepoint darts off the table and chucked one at her, hitting my mark perfectly. Her scream made my blood pump faster as the dart stuck out of her eyeball. “Bullseye.”
Jed chuckled and plucked it out, digging her eyeball out with it. “Pun intended.”
He held the dart up with the eyeball attached and then threw it at the wall, pinning it to the wall to hang there.
“Well,” Jed stopped in front of Charles, who hung limply in his chains with piss and shit covering his legs. At least his wife had some balls and fight in her, he, on the other hand was a worthless piece of shit who earned every single thing he had gotten so far. “What do you say, Chuck?” Jed asked. “Dick or balls first?”
Ryker scoffed and walked up to stand at Jed’s side, “Do you think you could even cut his dick off? It’s almost a vagina at this point, it’s so shriveled up.”
“I could make it happen.” Jed shrugged. “You could always hold it out for me with pliers.”
“Mmh,” Ryker nodded, “That would work. So, Chucky, pick. Which goes first?”
“Please.” Charles whined uselessly, “I’m sorry!”
I rolled my eyes, tired of his bullshit for the hundredth time. From the moment we unblindfolded him in the shop, he had begged nonstop. Pathetic. “I vote for flame.”
“Ooh,” Jed rubbed his hands together. “Melty.”
I picked the blow torch up off the table and stopped right in front of the man who raped, and tortured Laila, before forcing a hysterectomy on her, aborting the baby he left behind in the wake of his torture, and stealing her dreams of ever being a mother.
