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PROLOGUE
Daniel—Eighteen years old
“Tick, tock, fucker. Today you will enter hell where you will remain for the rest of your existence.”
“You’ll pay… for this,” the bastard said as blood dripped from his mouth. He coughed, spewing spittle. “La vendetta non ha tempistiche.”
I laughed, the old Italian saying something I’d heard my own father use. Revenge has no timeframe. He was right about that.
The goddamn Italian mafia prince thought he was going to shadow in his daddy’s footsteps, daring to take my sister as a prize. He had another think coming. Maybe I’d send his ring finger to his bastard of a father, the brutal man acting as if Powers Thorn was nothing important when he owned all of Kansas City. Yeah, I would do that.
I brought the knife down two more times before standing to my full height, grinning like some fucking Cheshire cat. My breathing labored from excitement, I wiped blood and sweat from my face as I stared down at him, the need to slice and dice him overpowering.
Wait. Take your time. Make him suffer.
They were words I’d repeated to myself several times, cackling afterwards. I took a step away, regrouping as a memory from a few years before slithered into my evil mind.
Quiet psychopath.
The term had been used more than once by professionals supposedly in a learned position. My parents had been warned I was a fuse, a bomb waiting to explode. That had been after a single violent incident, a moment when I’d snapped after being bullied for so long. I’d broken Bart Martin’s wrist, breaking the chubby kid’s bones as if they’d been nothing but twigs. The rush had been more incredible than anything I’d ever experienced in my life.
I’d never felt such tremendous, delicious power, the glory of watching the faces of the other boys as they stared in disbelief almost as good.
Poor Bart. From what I’d heard, he’d never fully regained use of his fingers. Not that it bothered me in the least. Meanwhile, I’d been labeled a sociopath, the designation left on my school record for all eternity. My mother had driven me from one psychiatrist to another, determined to heal her son. I’d even seen a look of fear in her eyes when she’d heard me repeating the same tale of joyful reckoning to the various doctors. My own mother had been afraid of me.
After every doctor had told my parents I would end up in prison or worse, my father had patted me on the back, telling me he was proud of me. But my mother had begged me to turn my life around, days spent crying her eyes out as if in doing so, my behavior would change.
Strangely enough, the phase had passed, the good boy I’d once been returning. All was right with the world, at least according to my mother.
I’d been eleven when I’d destroyed a portion of Bart’s childhood. Now, seven years later, I was reminded my father had recently called me the weak link of the family, spitting on me because I’d grown soft.
Well, not any longer.
The psychopath had returned and he wasn’t going anywhere.
If only Bart could see me in all my glory now.
Experts said monsters weren’t born, they were bred from experiences and society, but I knew better. The need to kill flowed through my veins. As my pulse continued to race, the rush of red-hot adrenaline tearing through my system, it wasn’t enough. I wanted the full exhilaration my father had told me occurred every time he’d ended someone’s life. Now it was my turn to bask in the glory of revenge.
Crimson strings of blood splattered the walls of the room, the wooden floor stained a dull red while a brighter color adorned his skin for now. Nothing could hide the man’s suffering or the look of panic in his eyes, orbs I’d considered gouging out early on. I’d left them alone, wanting the worthless piece of flesh to see everything I was about to do to him.
He’d dared make the mistake of touching my sister, stripping her of a feeling of protection as well as her innocence. I’d walked in just in time to see the bastard driving his fingers deep into her cunt, ignoring her pleas while he’d laughed. His dick had been out, hard as a rock as he prepared to rape her. His two bodyguards had stood in the shadows, the thugs unprepared for the level of violence I unleashed the moment I burst into the room.
Now they lay dead, their vacant eyes and gaping mouths highlighting the shock of my attack. Did I feel a single bit of remorse or guilt for cutting them to ribbons? Not a tiny bit. My only regret was that I should have made them suffer like I was doing to their illustrious leader.
I didn’t remember much after hearing her cries and coming to her rescue except I’d barked at her to run home. My belt remained around the leader’s throat, his purple skin and bulging eyes a beautiful work of art in my mind. He continued to struggle, as if there was any possibility he could escape the big, bad wolf.
Now that the fucker had barely minutes to live, I yanked the mask off, allowing him to see who his judge and jury had been, the same person now becoming his executioner.
“You,” he managed, although the sound was barely recognizable.
“Only the good die young,” I hissed in return.
A rapist.
My sister hadn’t been the only woman he’d attacked, but she would be the last.
Maybe there would be a statue erected in my honor for saving countless others from enduring his worthless attempt at proving he was a man. My sister deserved justice, but there wasn’t as much satisfaction as I’d hoped.
