Without a warning, Blake reached over the table, jabbed the needle into Vincent’s neck, and released the poison into his body. It didn’t take too long for Vincent to start feeling the effects of it coursing through his veins. He began to lose the ability to move his body parts. Within minutes, the only thing Vincent was able to move were his eyes, and Blake set the syringe down to grab the meat cleaver. His anger got the best of him, and he kicked the table between them out of the way. With a loud clank, the silver tray hit the ground, and Blake got in Vincent’s face.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out that you’ve been stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from me for years? After Diablo brought this shit to my attention, I had my accountant check all of my numbers—and lo and behold, it turns out that almost half a million dollars has gone missing from right under my nose! I never questioned giving you any of the codes to any of my safes or access to any of my bank accounts because I trusted you. We were raised like brothers!”
Blake brought the cleaver down so hard on Vincent’s knee that everyone in the garage heard the bone crack upon impact. Vincent had no choice but to stomach the pain. He clenched his eyes shut, and a pained groan erupted from his throat. When he opened his eyes, tears spilled from them, and they fell on his limp leg. Blake hit the broken bone again with just as much force, and Vincent screamed like a tortured animal through his sealed lips trying to catch his breath. Blake backed away and went to the shelve in the garage that had all of the tools. Vincent used that time to gather his wits and glare once more at Diablo. He couldn’t believe this was happening. His chest was heaving, and he wanted to do nothing but to pass out, although he was sure Blake wouldn’t allow that. What had just started was only the beginning of Blake’s torture. He knew how his cousin operated. He was able to take another breath just before he heard the sound of chains dragging on the ground. He looked up in time to see a metal chain being hurdled toward his face right before he felt the pain.
Unknown to all of the men in the garage, their every move was being watched by a set of tiny eyes. Nine-year-old Tiara Rogers stared at the horrendous act her father was performing from behind a tall trash bin. Her lips quivered and shook as she bit down to keep her whimper from coming up. She had been asleep for a while until she had heard suspicious sounds coming from the garage of their raised two-story, ranch-style, five-bedroom home. It hadn’t been the first time she had heard noises of pain and suffering coming from the garage, but that night, something made her get up from the bed. Her mother would have a fit if she knew that her baby girl was sneaking around spying, which was why Tiara knew she would have to be as silent and quick as possible. She swore that her mother had eyes in the back of her head and bionic hearing.
Tiara wrapped the silk robe that her grandmother had given her for her last birthday around her petite body and hurried out of her room. When she passed her parents’ bedroom, she peeked in to see what her mother was doing, but quickly saw that she was fast asleep with plugs positioned snugly in her ears. Tiara knew what that meant. Whenever her father thought that it might get a little noisy at night, he told her mother to wear them to sleep. Knowing that the coast was clear, Tiara walked fast through the house until she got to the spacious kitchen of their home. There, the door leading to the garage was open just a slit, enough for her to slide through the opening without having to touch it and be seen. She ducked down and got on all fours so that she could crawl behind the family’s tall black garbage bin. The horrible smell suddenly reminded her that she was supposed to take it to the curb. The trash men would be there in the wee hours of the morning. Tiara made a mental note to do that before her mother found out that she had forgotten to do one of her chores.
Tiara heard her father speaking to her cousin Vincent, and her heart beat fast at the accusations she was hearing being directed at him. She peeked around the bin to look at the gruesome scene beginning to unravel itself, and she looked helplessly at Vincent, who she loved dearly, almost as much as she loved her own father.
“Stop, Daddy,” Tiara whispered to herself trying to will her father to stop the attack, but he did the exact opposite.
Tiara put her shaking fingers to her mouth trying to decide what to do. She knew that if she made her presence known, she would be in big trouble with her father. But he needed to know that the man who had betrayed his trust was indeed in the garage, but it was not the man who he had strapped to the chair. Tiara knew for a fact that it was not Vincent who had stolen Blake’s money from the safe in his office. She remembered the day perfectly.
She was dropped off early from soccer practice by one of the neighboring parents and nobody important was home yet, only the maids. They were doing what they always did when they thought nobody was
