Page 101 of Savage Saint

Sweat builds across his temple, and he fidgets, trying to subtly reach for his phone on the table. I shoot two fingers clean off. His scream rends the air as Rizos steps in behind him. Montalvo’s arms are grabbed and pinned back, while the backs of his knees are pushed into the chair next to his fallen friend, forcing him to sit.

I place my gun back inside the holster, pick up his fingers from the floor, and place them at eye level.

“Enrique, you disappoint me.” Gripping the handle of my tri-blade, I pull it out and bring the tip to his right cheek. I leave the first cut across it, from nose to ear. The blade slides through his flesh like butter, a thin filet.

“Hijo de puta,” he cries out, trying to thrash to escape Rizos’s hold but can’t. “I’m going to kill you. You and that little nurse you’re fucking are dead.”

My response: I add another cut. This time from his left eyebrow down to his jaw. It bleeds a little more than the first one, and I decide two more are needed. I slice one ear off and place it beside his finger before taking a chunk from his nose. Just the tip.

“Stop! Fucking hell, stop!” I don’t. Instead, I add another slice, this time to his collarbone, then the side of his neck, and a nipple ends up on the desk as well. It’s a collection at this point.

“What do you want?” Enrique’s voice is low, still full of pain and anger. “I’ll talk, just stop.”

His defiance—the fact he thinks I’ll stop just because he’ll talk—doesn’t sit well with me.

It irks. Irritates me.

So I add two more cuts. To his shoulders, and these aren’t shallow. I leave a hand-sized filet hanging by a thread of his skin. It’s a clean strip, too. I can see the bone.

My nose wrinkles as the scent of piss hits me. So nasty. I’ll have to pay extra to have the carpet redone.

“Kirill is in Santo Domingo waiting on me.” That makes me pause, and I tilt my head for him to continue. “He’s going to buy this port and bypass you. The owner’s already agreed to the deal. You’re done here. You and the little motorcycle gang will pay for this.”

How stupid do you have to be to threaten the man butchering you a single cut at a time?

“Where are the women you took for the test run?”

“I don’t know…fuck!”

“Try again.” I stab his thigh and twist the handle, tearing through flesh.

“There was a hiccup,” he whimpers, his eyes on the seeping wound. Drops fall from his face, too, onto what used to be a light blue dress shirt.

“Don’t stop,” I threaten. The tip of my bloody knife is pressed to his abdomen.

“I can pay you,” Montalvo yells, trying to move away from the knife, but Rizos’s grip and the chair make it impossible. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Name your price to stop.”

“There is no stopping.” That’s the moment it clicks with him; I’m not playing their game. The club will never be for sale. “Now, I want to know where the shipment is. What was the hiccup? And why mention my female?”

“Why should I?” he asks, and it’s the wrong answer. This time, the blade pierces through his side, right beneath his ribs. I immediately pull it out and stab him again, smirking at him as a little more of his miserable life drains onto the office floor.

“Kirill is pissed you took Klara. The nurse is to force your hand.” His words are low; Montalvo is close to passing out from the shock or maybe the blood loss, not that it matters. One sharp smack to the face wakes him. The look on my face isn’t compassionate. “He…” Montalvo licks his lips, his breathing getting heavier “…he wants to trade the two women, but after he uses the nurse. A snuff film.”

It takes everything in me not to snap his neck.

“Is he watching her?”

“Not fully. Your house isn’t as clean as you think. You have whore problems.”

Janelle.

“And what happened to the women you moved from my port?”

That catches his attention. The my wasn’t implied because the Royal Bastards are strong-arming the people who run this place, much less buying them off, but because I am in charge.

The port here isn’t owned by the government. It’s the beauty of capitalism.

Private entities can purchase and lease the use of their services to anyone, including the president. Or whoever is in charge of a country’s import and export department at a governmental level.