Page 17 of Queen of Anarchy (Dirty Broken Savages 2)

River looks back to me and lifts an eyebrow. “Beating someone until they look like ground beef?”

I laugh again, tossing my head back because she’s got me dead to rights there. “Sometimes, yeah. But that’s not always on the table. Gage and his goals and whatnot. Sometimes shit has to be strategic and not just… I dunno, a fit of anger. When I can’t lash out like I want to, I like to clean and organize my shit, you know? My tools of the trade.” I draw the phrase out, making it sound lofty and pretentious, just to see if it gets a laugh out of her.

It doesn’t, but she lets out a slow breath and some of the tension eases in her shoulders, so I’ll take that.

“You wanna help?” I offer.

She glances over at me again, and I can see her considering it. Finally, she shrugs. “Sure. Whatever. Beats throwing sticks while the dog looks at me like I’m a fucking moron.”

I flash her a grin, and we head inside, Harry Potter trotting in after us. The dog goes to his favorite spot, and River and I head to the basement.

We haven’t been down here together since she killed Ivan, and I wonder if that’s on her mind as we step into the small space. If she remembers the way she killed him. If she still feels anything about it. She probably does, because something that big doesn’t just go away, but it’s been a long day already, and yesterday wasn’t any shorter. There’s probably a lot on her mind as it is, so I don’t bring up Ivan. She doesn’t say anything as I walk over to the cabinet where I keep everything and start pulling things out.

Scalpels, knives, the taser. The hot stick with the cord coiled around it. Pliers, tweezers, screws, clamps. Hammers and needles and pokers. Even some shit I don’t know the names of, but have invented uses for when it comes to causing enough pain to get what I want.

River watches me and then comes over as I lay stuff out on the counter. She starts sorting through it, putting all the sharp shit together on one side, running her fingers over the flat parts of the blades like she wants to test them.

Some of this, she’s seen before, when we were torturing Reggie together. My cock twitches at the memory of fucking her over this counter while he sagged in his chains. Some of it is new to her, more esoteric, and I can see her turning things over in her hands like she’s trying to work out what they might do.

“You just clamp shit with that,” I say as she squeezes the hinge on a clamp with wickedly sharp teeth.

“Anything?” she asks.

I shrug. “Sure. I usually go for like the tongue or some other sensitive place. Just to make them scream. There’s a humiliation in it, you know? A sharp clamp hanging from a delicate place. Adds to the sensation. Makes ’em squirm. Sometimes you gotta really drive home how helpless they are in the situation. How there’s nothing they can do, and if they try to fight me, it’s just gonna get worse. Stuff like that helps. Knocks them down a peg or five.”

River nods thoughtfully, like she can picture it, and I grin at her. It’s an expression that comes naturally to my face when we talk about shit like this.

“What about these?” She holds up another set of clamps, these ones smaller than the first set with wires running from them.

“Electric,” I tell her. I rummage through the cupboard and come up with the little box the clamps plug into, showing her how the whole thing fits together. “Sometimes it’s fun to give ’em a little shock when they’re being stubborn. And if you cut them deep enough, you can sometimes clamp the edges of the wound and then shock that. Judging from how they scream, that hurts like a motherfucker.”

A little more of the anger drops away from her as we talk. She touches or holds up various instruments, and I explain how I use them. How I twist or cut or burn or shock with them, until the person at my mercy is in so much pain they either pass out or tell me everything I want to know.

“They can’t be that useful if they’re unconscious, can they?” she asks.

I shrug. “Depends on what I’m going for. Sometimes I already know what I need to know, and I’m just punishing them. Making sure they’re not gonna fuck up again.”

“Like with Reggie at the end there?”

“Yeah, exactly. He’d already confessed to everything, so then it was just giving him what he deserved.”

“You’ve got a lot of stuff,” she murmurs.

She’s not wrong about that, and I shrug again. “I like to collect this shit. Sometimes I get bored with the same old, you know? Variety is the spice of life, or whatever people say. I don’t want to get predictable.”

She snorts. “I don’t think anyone would accuse you of that. Especially not when they’re down here chained to the wall, already on your shit list.”

“Probably not, but I like to make sure.”

“I wish you had shown me all of this before I had Ivan down here.”

I laugh and shake my head. “You did plenty well on your own with that one, little fox. You were clearly inspired.”

“Yeah, I was.” River glances at me, curiosity in those dark blue eyes as she shifts a lock of silver hair over her shoulder. “So what inspires you?”

“Huh.” It’s an interesting question. I turn a scalpel over and over in my hands while I think about it. “Different things, I guess. Sometimes it’s just keeping my brothers safe. They can all handle themselves in a fight, but if someone’s down here with me, it’s because they’re threatening things on the whole, and I have to nip that shit in the bud. Sometimes it’s deeper. More personal than that.” I flash her a smile. “I got the nickname ‘The Butcher of Seven Mile’ because I can find inspiration to hurt people pretty fucking easily.”

None of that seems to bother her at all, and I lean against the counter as I continue. “If I ever need more inspiration, I just think about how fucking helpless I felt when my uncle abused me when I was a little boy. That usually does the trick. I can summon up enough rage to murder a man pretty quickly.”

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