Page 68 of Craving Sin

It’s why I took the ankle monitor off him once he was asleep, and when I slipped out of his house in the middle of the night, I decided that’s the end of it. I can’t let him see me again.

My cell rings.

“Yeah?” I answer.

“I have a surprise for you. Come to the warehouse,” Conan says.

A smile stretches across my face. There’s only one reason he would be asking me to go there, and it’s exactly the distraction I need. “I’ll be right there.”

I don’t bother changing, just tuck my phone into my pocket, grab my keys, and head out. Forty minutes later, I’m pulling into our warehouse outside of the city. A lot of people have died and been tortured behind these walls, dating back to the days when my father ran our family. So much of what we do, of how we do it, and who we are is steeped in tradition, only I try to do better by Cillian, Tiernan, and the younger generation than was done by us. I don’t know if I’m succeeding since my son is a killer like me, and my nephew leads this family with me, but that’s why it was so important to me that Cillian knew he had a choice. If walking away with Ollie was best for him, I would have made that happen.

Blain, another of my men, is standing guard outside the door when I walk up.

“They’re already crying like a bunch of little bitches.” Blain gives me a grin.

“Did they get started without me?” The fucking bastards. I know they did.

“Just a little, Boss. It was too fun not to.”

“Assholes.” I playfully nudge him with my arm before going inside. Sure enough, three men are strung up to bars hanging above, ropes around each of their wrists, feet just barely touching the floor. There’s a drain beneath them, which we had installed a few years back for easy cleanup.

They’re slightly bloody and bruised, but nothing too bad, and I can’t blame the guys for having some fun before I arrived.

“Looks like I didn’t kill one of them at the hospital that day,” I say.

“Guess not,” Conan replies—he, Flynn, Finan, and Torin, all standing around them.

“We’ve been dying waiting for you,” Finan says.

“I don’t think you did.” I pull my suit jacket off, and Torin takes it, laying it over a table, while I begin rolling up the sleeves on my shirt. “Vivaldi—‘Summer’ from Four Seasons,” I say, and Torin turns the music on. There are many things I like to do to classical music, and torture and murder are two of them.

Flynn points to each man as he says their names, “Frankie, Donny, Pete.”

“We didn’t do nothin’!” Frankie says. “You’re the one who killed Joey. It should be you tied up right now.”

“It could be,” I say as I walk closer. “The problem is, you’re not as good as we are. You tried to come at me, but you missed. We don’t miss.”

“We didn’t come after you!” Donny yells as I slip the brass knuckles on that Conan hands me.

“Ask me why I don’t believe you,” I say, taking a swing that lands right across his jaw. His head snaps back, his jaw already crooked as he screams.

“Shit. You made of fucking glass or what?” Flynn taunts.

“Fuck you!” Pete says before I swing on him next, breaking his nose, blood gushing out of it and down his chest.

I hate that something inside me relaxes with this, that it reaches corners of my mind, of my whole fucking being, that shouldn’t be there. The ones that crave violence, enjoy power…hurting people, that have always enjoyed these things, no matter how wrong it is.

The shrill yelling is like a woodpecker beating against my head, so I say, “Gag them. I need to concentrate while I continue.”

Torin and Finan take care of them as I move over to stand beside Conan. “I’m going to drag this out a while,” I tell him.

“As you should,” he replies, and I do. I break fingers on each of their hands, smash others with a hammer, pull out teeth, punch, burn, and brand them.

What I really love is the knife though, making cuts into their chests, thighs, stomachs, enough to make them bleed and hurt, but not enough to kill them.

All three piss and shit on themselves. Frankie pukes on himself more than once.

I let them pass out—something they did when I used the branding iron—then eventually we wake them up and give them something to drink to keep them hydrated, only to start all over again.