That point comes after I use the tip of my knife to cut a few of his teeth out.
One nod is all it takes for him to let me know that I’ve won.
I’m almost sad to be done with my work. This son of a bitch deserves more pain than he can handle.
I pull my knife out of him, swipe my blade clean on his jeans.
“You ready to talk?”
He nods again.
I take the gag off.
He’s panting and pale, exhausted and broken from my work and from losing blood.
“Please, no more,” he says.
“Then tell me where your brother and your uncle are hiding. Tell me where our fucking guns are.”
There’s a time that passes where he stares at the floor, a look of forlorn pain on his broken face, a struggle in his beaten eyes, and it looks like loyalty is at war with his desire for self-preservation and a quick death.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“That’s not a good answer. How much of your tongue do you think I could cut off before you lose the ability to talk? Do you want to find out?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t fucking know.”
“I don’t believe you. Time for more cutting, Silas.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t know. My uncle’s smart. He doesn’t tell us any more than where we need to be and when. He’s got my brother staying at a different place, I don’t even know where, and I don’t have a way to get in contact with either of them. When he needs to send me a message, he fucking calls the room from an anonymous fucking number. It’s operational fucking security, you fucking psychopath.”
There’s not a hint of a lie in his story — I’ve bled all the deceit out of him.
“You know where he’s keeping the guns?”
“No, I don’t know shit. Slade was the one who went after the guns. Hell, if I had to guess, I think my mission to grab your president’s wife and daughter was just a fucking distraction. My uncle knows how close Stone is to those two and how he’d drop everything to rescue those bitches.”
His words cut short as I slice a long gash down his thigh.
“You watch your fucking mouth when you talk about those women.”
“Fuck off. You think I give a shit? Think I’m afraid? If you don’t do as my uncle tells you and take care of those FBI agents, losing some guns will be the least of your fucking problems. Hell, you better give that girl one last goodbye fuck, because she sure as shit ain’t going to be around much longer.”
I belt him across the face. Once, twice, so hard his head snaps backwards and crashes into the tiled wall of the bathroom, leaves a streak of blood and skin on the dingy tiles. Then, still burning with rage, I put my knife away, grab him by the throat, and punch him until he’s spitting his remaining teeth at my feet.
“Mention her one more time and you will suffer.”
“Just fucking kill me. I ain’t giving you anything more, and we both got better shit to do.”
I put a second slice into his other thigh, just to even things out and watch him squirm a some more. It’s the least he deserves for what he did to my Addie. I care for that woman; she sees the decent man inside me I thought died a long time ago. I don’t enjoy bringing out the darkness inside, but I’ll be as dark as it takes to protect her.
“You don’t die until Stone says so. Sit tight, Silas,” I say, then I shove the gag back in his mouth and get up from the tub. Heading to the door, I open it.
Stone’s waiting right outside, arms crossed, fury in his eyes.
“What’d he tell you?”
“Bastard doesn’t know shit. Bowen Dale knows his fucking OpSec. Contacts him through secure channels, keeps them in the dark except for the shit he needs to know. With a guy like Silas, he ain’t the type that needs to know much beyond ‘shoot this’ and ‘hit that.’ Son of a bitch is useless to us.”
“He was fucking useless to begin with.”
“How do you want to handle it?” I say, nodding toward the open door to the bathroom.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Without another word, he heads into the bathroom. He doesn’t shut the door; doing so would take time away from meting out vengeance on Silas Cooper. Soon, the room fills with the sounds of a brutal beating. Fists, knees, elbows, all come to bear against the bound man. They cut his flesh, spill his blood. Bones break, joints twists in every unnatural way. Stone delivers a beating that turns Silas into a groaning, mewling wreck.
In that dank and dirty room, Stone lets free the part of him that comes out anytime someone threatens his family; lets free a ruthless monster that will maim and kill to protect the ones he loves.
It chills my blood, listening to Silas beg for mercy; chills my blood to know this is the fate that awaits anyone who puts Stone’s family in danger.
Even me, if I’m not careful.
Then, with his calloused hands around Silas’ throat, he chokes the life from him.
“This is what you get,” he growls as he stares into Silas’ bugged-out eyes as the man’s last breath of life leaves his body. “And this is better than you fucking deserve. You worthless fucking maggot. Rot in hell.”
When he expires, Stone releases him, and the man’s ruined body falls back flat into the tub. Stone stands up straight, calmly washes his hands clean in the sink, then walks back to me.
The all-encompassing menace that radiates from him
