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She’s wrong. Amethyst said she would come. The only reason she isn’t here is because of sabotage.
“That’s enough,” Jynxson yells.
My vision blurs. I fall on the floor on my side and welcome the darkness. I’ve made my point. It’s time to stop before I jeopardize the contingency plan.
Much later, I wake up in the infirmary with my body bound by thick belts. Handcuffs restrain my wrists, and leg cuffs hold together my ankles. Both are connected by a chain around my waist. And it feels like I’ve cracked at least one rib.
One or more of those asshole guards must have kicked my side while I was unconscious. That’s the trouble with ordinary men. Only brave in numbers and invincible with compromised targets who can’t fight back.
I glance to the left, finding the cot beside me empty. To the right is someone familiar. He’s only known here as John Doe. The last time I saw that bastard, I was smashing his head into a urinal. I only recognize him through the swelling of his face because of the family resemblance around his jaw and mouth.
John’s unconscious. They keep him that way on my orders.
Harassing my sisters wasn’t enough for my freak brother. The year my sisters moved into the academy, he snuck into the housekeeper’s bedroom, beat her unconscious, and raped her.
Father paid her off and made her leave town, but when the same happened to my stepmother, Father sent him to a facility. When the bills stopped being paid, they turfed my brother into the street. A few attacks on women later, the police picked him up and hauled him off to prison.
Turns out that Father doesn’t officially exist, and neither do my brothers. The only reason I’m in the system is because Mom registered me for doctors, and I originally went to school outside Victoria Gardens.
Jynxson appears at my side. “Awake now?”
“You punch like a kitten,” I mutter.
He flashes me a grin. “And you kick like a foal.” He turns to the medic. “Leave us.”
The nurse who haunts the prison infirmary is a gray-haired scarecrow of a man whose bowl cut dates back to 1974. He holds out a hand to accept a pile of bills and shuffles out without a backward glance.
Thank fuck for the prison industrial complex underpaying their workers. Fair wages would have made it difficult to bribe guards to ignore John Doe getting beaten and shanked in the showers, and to isolate him here in the infirmary.
I study John’s features while Jynxson takes his time untying my shackles.
“Did you bring the hair bleach?” I ask.
“We’re going to shave his head,” Jynxson replies.
“Doesn’t matter.” I rise off the cot and roll my shoulders. “He needs to be platinum.”
“Fine.”
Jynxson walks to the sink and picks up the bleaching kit. After taking off my jumpsuit, I help him strip John down to his underwear. While Jynxson applies the bleach to my brother’s hair, I change into a prison uniform and apply hair color wax to turn me into a brunet.
Our biggest concerns are making sure he doesn’t say anything when he’s finally out of sedation, which is why I weave stainless steel threads between his teeth, making sure to wire his jaws shut. It’s dirty, detailed work, but the most poetic way to wipe out the last of Father’s bloodline and to rid the world of another predator.
Pulling his lips aside, I give Jynxson the space he needs to secure the wiring with copious amounts of dental cement.
“You sure this will work?” he asks.
“I could cut off and cauterize his tongue, but that kind of unnecessary surgery leaves too many traces.”
He snickers.
A knock sounds on the door as we’re rinsing off the bleach and drying his hair.
“Give us five minutes,” Jynxson bellows.
“Hurry,” the medic hisses.
We change my brother into my old uniform, move him to my cot, and reattach the restraints.
