Page 76 of The Torturer's Target

Jacob Blake glanced over at the alarm on the other side of the bed, and the intruder noticed the movement. Her eyes narrowed, and she took a step closer, her hand inching towards the knife she had hidden in her pocket.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said with chilling composure. “Because I’ll kill you before they get here.”

Jacob Blake was rattled by the intruder’s calm response. It had been a long time since anyone had managed to scare him. He was used to terrorizing others, not the other way around.

The intruder ordered his merchandise to leave the bedroom and not come back, and the girl quickly fled, naked. He glared at the intruder. How dare she!?

“We meet finally, Jacob Blake,” she said, her voice low and menacing.

He glared at her. “Who the hell are you? You won’t get out of this place alive!”

Tesiera merely shrugged. “I will. But you won’t.”

Jacob Blake realized that he might have underestimated this intruder. He stepped back, uncertain of how to proceed.

“Why are you here? Who sent you?” he asked, his smugness slipping away.

“I’m here to kill you because I want you dead,” Tesiera said as though she were discussing the weather.

Her words sunk deep into his chest, and he caught a glimpse of the knives strapped to her body. His gaze lifted to meet her cold eyes and then downward to see her gloved hand wrapped around a sharp knife.

“I’ll triple whatever you were paid if you let me go.” He watched her as she remained silent. “I’ll give you four times the money; how about that?” he asked.

“No amount of money can save you from me,” she said at last, advancing toward him, her knife pointed toward him. He began to back away. “Twenty years ago, you and your friends murdered a man in front of his eight-year-old daughter. Do you remember?”

Jacob Blake cocked his head, then snorted. “I’m sorry, but I’ve killed so many people. It’s hard to keep track of them all, especially one of such insignificance.”

Tesiera froze in her tracks. Her body shook with a raw anger that threatened to consume her. How dare he dismiss the death of her father as insignificant?

All the pain, all the tears, all the years of suffering, and this bastard had the audacity to dismiss it with a laugh. The event that had ruined her life and haunted her dreams for the past twenty years?

She lowered her head and laughed. It sounded empty and mirthless to her own ears, and as she laughed, her eyes watered. That more than anything snapped her out of her daze. She would not cry for this bastard. She would not shed a tear in front of this monster.

She raised her head and looked at him. “You killed my father.” She said in monotone. “You destroyed my family and my life, and you have the nerve to call it insignificant? I’ll make you suffer like you’ve never suffered before.”

And she did.

Thirty minutes later, Jacob Blake was unrecognizable. She had dragged him to the adjoining bathroom, tied his hands behind his back, and stuffed his mouth with a sponge. She’d beaten him mercilessly before carving him up like a chicken. His muffled screams were music to her ears. Parts of his body dangled at odd angles.

“The name of the man you killed was Roman Anderson. I want you to know his name as your life bleeds out of you. This face”—She removed her mask then—”will be the last face you ever see. May you rot in hell knowing that all the ‘significant’ people you killed weren’t your demise, but one of those which you had no memory of,” she said before taking two steps away from him.

Then Tesiera put a bullet through the base of his skull.

She put her mask back on and reached for the door handle. As she opened the door, she was startled to find the young woman still in the bedroom.

She couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 years old. Tesiera knew she had wasted too much time and needed to leave before Blake’s men discovered their employer was in trouble. She ignored the girl and rushed for the exit, but the girl grabbed her arm.

“Please, take me with you! I want to go home,” the girl begged, her English heavily accented.

Tesiera shook her head. “I can’t. I need to go now before it’s too late.”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears as she tightened her grip on Tesiera’s arm. “Please. Don’t leave me here, please!”

Tesiera hesitated for a moment before relenting. “Okay. Let’s go.”

A deafening alarm blared through the house. “INTRUDER ALERT!” The power was back on and Tesiera could hear the heavy steps of guards running towards the bedroom.

CHAPTER 31. ALONE IN DARKNESS

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