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I made sure to give him my best smile. “You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are, Owen Ward.” With the tip of my knife, I peeled apart the sides of his collared shirt, spotting the Saint Patrick pendant on a silver necklace. Fallon said she remembered this—like the image had been branded into her memories with a hot iron. Sliding the metal beneath the silver chain, I yanked it off his neck and pocketed the medallion.
He moaned, unable to form coherent words since I’d cut his tongue out as soon as he’d regained consciousness. Blood dripped from his mouth, the ragged stump of flesh left behind flapping uselessly against the back of his teeth.
“Now, you may be wondering,Why me? What have I done wrong?Well, I’m going to tell you what you did wrong.” I crouched in front of him so he could see my face clearly. “You touched something that belongs to me.” His sky-blue eyes widened, and I nodded. “You and four of your buddies touched her,usedher, and then left her. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
I could see the whites completely around his irises now, and the stark horror in them made the monster chuckle.
“I know the other four men have already died for their crimes, but it was you,” I punctuated my statement by tapping on his bared sternum, “who should’ve been thrown into jail and gang raped daily. Do you think you would’ve liked that? I know Fallon didn’t enjoy it very much.”
Owen began to wrestle against his bonds, trying his best to free himself from the confinement. I let him do it, knowing that even if he did get free, there was no way he was walking out of there. I wouldn’t let it happen.
As he struggled, I went to the workbench and grabbed the sledgehammer from its hook. The thing must’ve weighed at least twenty pounds and had enough force to break a grown man’s thigh bone. I had no interest in breaking bone today though.
Walking back to face him, I showed him the thick iron head of the hammer, smiling when his eyes started to dart around the warehouse, looking for an escape he was never going to find. Today was about giving Fallon the justice she deserved.
I kicked at the chair he was sitting on, breaking one of the legs and splintering another. The wood gave way to his weight, and he collapsed backward onto the ground. The bottom of the chair fell out, and I grinned as the universe delivered on my plans.
While he struggled to get to his feet, I brought the knife to the edge of his jeans. As soon as he felt the kiss of steel against his ankle, he stopped moving. I ran the blade against the thick fabric, watching the seam split to reveal his calf, his knee, his thigh. I ran the steel all the way up to the waistband of the jeans, then removed them from his body. The fucker wasn’t wearing anything underneath, but that only made my job easier.
“Don’t move, Owen,” I said to him. “I know you did this to Fallon while she was drugged and couldn’t fight back, but today, we’re going to do it my way.”
His hoarse scream was muffled as I shoved the handle of the sledgehammer up his ass. Sodomy wasn’t my thing, but I could see the poetic justice in this. I fucked him with the hammer until blood pooled on the floor beneath him, but I didn’t stop. I continued until he passed out from the pain, then slapped his face to wake him up once more.
He blinked up at me, dazed for a moment until the pain hit him full force and his eyes began to water. I brought the bloody handle up for him to see, then discarded it like I’d discarded his tongue earlier. “How do you like being fucked against your wishes?”
I laughed darkly when he moaned, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. My gaze darted to the large tattoo that spanned the width of his paunchy stomach. The ink depicted a gun with a bullet being fired from it, but his burgeoning waistline had stretched it—morphed it—so any menace it may have once held was now gone. Pulling out my knife, I placed the razor-sharp edge against the tip of the bullet. The steel was hungry for his blood, gliding through the first few layers of tissue effortlessly. He screamed, but he was too weak to move away as I filleted the flesh from his body.
With a grim smile, I held out the apron of skin for him to see. His blue eyes were bloodshot from his strained screaming, but I saw the flicker of relief that I was done.
“You think this is over?” I asked in a murderous voice. “You think I’m done with you?” I leaned in closer and whispered, “Not even fucking close.”
* * *
I was cleaningup in the bathroom, watching the pink water gurgle down the drain and waiting for the rush of endorphins I usually felt when I killed, but the sensation was conspicuously absent. I wasn’t getting the sense of calm. I wasn’t getting the powerful feeling of control. All I had was a sense of foreboding that Fallon wouldn’t approve of all this if she knew.
Keir had spoken to me about opening up to Fallon about my dark past—not that the bastard knew a lot. He knew enough to know that I was not the kind of man you wanted to fuck with, but not the filthy debauched details of my childhood. Nobody did. Those secrets died with Ava when I shoved a blade through her heart.
But what if I could tell Fallon? What if I told her, and she didn’t turn away from me in disgust? What if she could accept me for who I am and what I’ve done? I shook my head as soon as the thoughts coalesced. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to risk her looking at me any differently.
I wandered back into the main part of the warehouse, my distant gaze landing on the mass of meat and blood piled against the floor. Strips of skin were missing, muscle and bone exposed to the air. The whole cavernous space smelled of copper and spilled bowels, and as fucked up as that was, it brought me a sense of peace.
Drying off my hands on a rag, I leaned against the steel workbench where I had laid out my tools and pulled out my phone. I had to go away—to leave Fallon under Keir’s watch—while I took care of business, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to know what the fuck was going on while I was gone.
As soon as the call connected, I demanded, “Where is she?”
Keir let out a sigh. “In class.”
“How is she?”
“Fine. Nothing is going to happen to the lass.”
I ground my molars. Keir wasn’t exactly my first choice to leave as lookout, but Fallon and he had formed a tentative bond in the time she was at Oranmore. If there were another man she trusted—even a little bit—it was him. I knew the bastard thought she was gorgeous, but Fallon was destined for only one man, and that fucker was me.
“So,” he started, “Are you ready to pull your head out of your arse?”
“Fuck you, Keir.” He didn’t know how much was riding on this.
“I know it’s not what you want to do, but, man, this girl? She’s worth it, don’t you think?” When I didn’t reply, he continued, “Or maybe you don’t say a fucking thing then I can have a crack with her.”
