by Marni Mann
My silence makes them nervous, I think.
’Cause I’m not stupid.
I know that.
But then why can’t I figure out your last letter?
You said all you had to do was kidnap my mom before anyone else found her. Then, you did, and you gave her a gift, which was me. So, what happened to the baby that was already in her belly, the one you said was Beard’s kid? The one who couldn’t be me because I’m your kid.
Do I have a brother or a sister that I don’t know about?
Shank
Before
With each letter the kid sent, I learned he had more things in common with me than he probably realized. Like I had also been the quiet one in school. That I’d been called plenty of fucking names, and stupid was one. Those younger years were the loudest because I’d done the least amount of talking. They were also the strongest because it was when I’d learned how to read people. I would study their body language, the small signals showing me their mood and if they were lying.
I called them my research years.
Then, I’d opened the prison and used those skills while I tortured.
Now, I was a goddamn expert.
If I could ever get out of this place, I’d teach the kid everything I knew. Even if he didn’t want to get into the business, I’d still show him how to pinpoint a liar. He should have that skill if he hadn’t already inherited it from me. Fuck, everyone should.
It had only been two weeks since I sent him my last letter. I hadn’t expected him to write back so fast.
That was something else we had in common.
Persistence.
And it made me fucking smile.
Like I explained in my last note, your mother was in a small apartment on the East Coast. The prison was real busy around that time, so I wasn’t able to get to her for a few months. But, when I finally got there, I found her place, and I stalked her for a couple of days to learn her patterns. She’d lock the door when she took out the trash, she’d only leave the house during the day, and she always wore a hat and large sunglasses even if it was overcast. She spoke to no one outside—not a neighbor, no one in the grocery store, not even the homeless man who asked her for change.
Not that much time had passed since she faked her death, so I suspected that was her way of keeping a low profile.
On the third night of my visit, I picked the lock of her back door and bypassed the security alarm. Then, I went up to her bedroom. While she was sleeping, I injected her foot with a sedative. The amount I gave her wouldn’t put her to sleep even though that was what she was already doing. It wouldn’t make her unconscious either. It was only enough for her to be completely relaxed and very compliant.
Just the way I needed her to be.
The prick of the needle woke her up, and she yelled, “What the fuck?” Her hair was all wild from sleeping, and her expression matched it.
Within seconds, the drug kicked in. Her eyes turned less terrified, her voice lowered and slurred, her mouth went slack as she lost a little control over it. Just in case it didn’t keep her that way, I bound her hands to the headboard.
“I’m not The Achurdy,” I told her.
Since she’d never seen my face before, I assumed she thought I was part of that organization. That Mina, the woman who was in charge of all The Achurdy girls, had realized Tyler was still alive and had sent me here to kill her.
I stood next to the bed and stared down at her. “You should wish I were them…” I put my face directly over hers and held her nose between my teeth. I bit down hard enough until I felt the skin start to break, and then I pulled away. If I tasted her blood, she wouldn’t survive the night. “Because I’m so much fucking worse than them.”
If she hadn’t been so drugged, she would have started crying and begging for her life. That was the thing I hated about sedatives; they took away almost all emotion. So, Tyler didn’t have the kind of reaction I liked. Especially not the kind I got from my prisoners.
One of my favorite parts in the killing process was when the inmate woke up and saw my face, and I told them what I was going to do to them. Their first response was so beautiful. So animalistic. Terrified. Hysterical.
I wouldn’t get that from Tyler until the drugs wore off.
“Who-o…” she slurred.
I released her nose and laughed. I took a seat on the bed, pulling down the blanket so that I could place my hand on her stomach. In the pictures, there had been a small bump. I couldn’t feel it now, even as I rubbed my hand in a circle.
“Jae’s baby is in here.”
“No.” She shook her head hard enough that I knew it would make her dizzy. “It’s gooone.”
This was another thing I fucking hated about the drugs. It sometimes made people act like damn fools.
I squeezed her cheeks between my fingers. “What do you mean, it’s gone?”
She became still. “Just gone. Poof. Bye-bye.”
“You fucking killed it?”
The gasping noise got stuck in her throat, and she slurred, “Nooo.” She lifted her legs in the air and moved them like she was riding a bike. “Lost it.”
She had lost the goddamn baby?
“I don’t fucking believe you,” I told her, not letting her cheeks go. Even though my voice didn’t rise, I spit the words in her face.
Her legs finally stopped moving. “In drawer.” She giggled. “Next to the oven.”
I stood from the bed and went into the kitchen. When I found the drawer, I yanked on the handle, and it came all the way out, straight off the hinges, and slammed onto the ground. Two pieces of paper were on top with a hospital logo printed in the corner. It was a detailed report of the procedure that had been done, lab work, and the results of the final test.
She’d really lost the fucking baby.
The date showed it had happened almost two months ago, which was right after the PI had taken those photos of her.
I walked back into the bedroom and sat in the same spot. I leaned down, so my mouth was inches above hers. “Did you do that on purpose? Stick something up your cunt that would kill that baby?”
“Nooo.” She held on to that word for far too long. “Loved him. Him and baby.”
She was talking about Beard.
But that cunt didn’t love him.
If she had, she wouldn’t have put his life in danger by continuing to date him. If The Achurdy had found out about their relationship, they would have hired me to kill him. Then, things would have gotten real messy between my best friend and one of my biggest clients.
Tyler was a selfish whore.
“It was all I had left.” She turned her head to the side, and a small bit of drool formed on her bottom lip. “Now…nothing.”
She’d lost the only thing she had of Beard’s. I had a feeling she’d want to replace it with something else. Possibly even the real thing.
Fuck that.
Since she’d come into his life, Beard hadn’t been the same person. I needed him to be the hard-ass he had been before. I had no time for the pussy he’d turned into. We had a job to do and our clients needed to stay happy, so they would keep sending us business.
Beard had helped me build this prison.
He wasn’t going to be the one who destroyed it.
Tyler had to fucking go.
But I couldn’t do it in this bed or anywhere in this town. I’d vowed to never kill in the States again after I murdered Beard’s mother. That meant, I had to bring Tyler to the prison, and I’d end her life there.
I pulled out my phone and hit the number for Diego’s cell. “Listen to me,” I said as he answered. “In a few minutes, I’m going to text you an address. I want you to plug that into our system and find the nearest airport where our plane can land. Schedule the flight, and text me the time the plane is due to arrive. I want this trip off the books—make the log and the time flown disappear.”
“No problem,” Diego said. “Is that it?”
Ty
ler was making bubbles with her spit. If I didn’t move to the other side of the room, those bubbles would soon be dark red. I got up and paced to the window.
“I need you to empty cell twelve and keep it reserved for me. Whoever’s in there, get rid of them. I don’t want the audio or the video to show on our monitor, but I want all of it saved on a separate server. Rig our monitor to make it show a double feed from one of the other cells, so there isn’t a cell missing. Do you understand?”
“Yeah. Do I want to know?”
I glanced in Tyler’s direction. Her position caused the ropes to strain around her wrists. I was sure they were leaving a mark. A mark that was raw. Raw enough to almost cause blood.
Fuck.
“Nah,” I said.
“You need anything else?”
I turned to face the window. “When I’m on the boat, exactly fifteen minutes away from our dock, I’m going to text you. If Beard’s in the prison, you have that much time to get him upstairs. Keep him busy, feed him, do whatever you have to do, but he can’t be down there.”
“He’s in rough shape, man. Toy’s been filling in as guard while you’ve been gone.”
That meant, Beard was drugged the fuck up, just how I needed him to be.
“Diego, he cannot be in the prison when I arrive. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
Diego never asked many questions. He did whatever I told him to do. More people should be like him.
“Wait for my text,” I said and disconnected the call.
I returned to Tyler’s side. Since I’d been gone, a pool of drool had formed on her pillow. It was much smaller than the pools of blood that drained from my inmates, but it was the same shape.
When I killed this cunt, I was going to have so much fucking fun.
“Take me to Beard.”
I sighed. “Is that what you want?”
“Mmhmm.”
I loved it when I was right.
This bitch definitely had to die.
Diego’s text came in and said he wasn’t able to get the pilots here until the following evening, so I continued to pump her with sedatives all through the night and the next day. When it was time, I brought her to the airport and injected her with a different cocktail that would make her sleep through the flight. Once we arrived in Venezuela, I carried her off the plane and into our boat where Toy was waiting. When we were fifteen minutes away from the prison, I texted Diego a reminder that he needed to keep Beard out of the basement. He replied immediately and told me things were all set.
At the dock, Toy tied up the boat, and I slung your mother over my shoulder and brought her to cell twelve. I tossed her in the corner, and she came to when she hit the ground. I hadn’t been gentle. There was no reason to. Death came whether there were bruises on your ass or not.
I could tell she was still groggy from her last injection, and I watched her slowly crawl over to the toilet and cling to it with both hands.
“Where am I?”
I backed out of the room and stood at the entrance. “I’ve taken you to my playground.”
She looked around the cell. “Your what?” She released the toilet to rub her eye. “This looks more like a prison.”
“It is. I just like to call it my playground.” I grabbed one of the bars and slid my hand up and down the metal. “Here, we don’t have general population. We only have death row. There is no parole. No release dates. When you’re sent to this prison, you die here.”
“No. No. Nooo.”
Fuck, I loved the sound of her cries.
She leaned her face over the toilet bowl and dry-heaved. She had nothing in her body to puke up. Not even spit came out of her lips. It didn’t stop her from trying, her face turning red, lips spread as wide as she could make them.
When she finally looked back at me, she was resting her face on the side of the bowl. “You said you weren’t part of The Achurdy, so why am I here? Who else would do this to me?”
“Me.”
She shook her head, like she was seeing me for the first time. “Who are you?”
“I’m the person who’s going to kill you.”
I walked halfway inside the cell and knelt, so she could see directly into my eyes. Hers were full of panic and anxiety, and I fucking loved it.
“When I leave, I want you to be quiet. If you make a sound, your death will be the most painful, excruciating torture I’ve ever committed. I won’t bother sticking a knife through your skin. That’s too easy, and it wouldn’t hurt you enough. I’ll kill you from the inside out. And do you know how I’ll get inside you? I’ll go in through your cunt. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, and tears started dripping down her eyes so fucking fast.
But I’d had enough of those and of her drool.
I was ready to see her goddamn blood.
I locked the cell behind me and went into The Eyes—the room where all the guards hung out when we were on duty, where the monitors showed the activity in each cell and the three operating rooms. Diego was sitting at the desk, and I walked over to him to see the screens he was looking at. You had to stare at it closely, but the feed from cell twelve had been replaced with cell three. Beard would never catch on.
Diego had done everything I’d asked.
I dropped my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Good man.”
When I glanced down, I saw Demon sitting on Diego’s lap. I scooped up the little fucker and placed him just to the side of my neck. I’d missed him while I was gone.
“How’s Beard?” I asked.
Diego turned toward me. “He wandered down here for a little bit, and I took him back upstairs. His speech was all slurred, eyelids barely open. He’s fucking gone, man.”
“He won’t be for too much longer.”
“You got a way to help him?”
I ran my hand across Demon and down his long tail. “Not yet.” I needed to find a way to replace Tyler and to give Beard what he was missing, so we could have him back. “But I will,” I told him.
My pen hit the bottom of the page, and when I went to reach for a blank one, I realized I was all out of paper. There was still so much story to tell, but it would take me at least a week to get more sheets. I’d have to bribe one of the guards with a blow job for him to let me into the cell that was four doors down. Then, the inmate who lived there would want my ass in exchange for supplies. He wouldn’t just fuck me once. He’d want my hole again and again over a period of several days.
Ah, fuck it.
I stuck what I had written into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the kid’s address on the front.
He’d just have to wait a little longer to hear the rest.
Huck
Arin needed me.
It showed all over her goddamn face.
Now, my lips were pressed against hers, and they were sucking all the air out of me. I couldn’t get enough of her. So, I wrapped her legs around my waist and carried her up the stairs while trying not to break her with my grip. I was so fucking turned on.
With her body straddled around mine, I could feel Bangkok’s air on her skin. I could smell the saltiness of her sweat. I suspected she was sore, too. Some hot water and steam would relax her muscles. But I didn’t want her to use her last bit of energy by standing in the shower. I wanted her to be able to sit. The guest bath wasn’t designed for that, but the one in my room was. I’d built a stone bench along one of the sides, so I brought her in there and set her on top of it.
“Why am I in here?” she asked.
I pulled away from her, and she took a quick glance around.
I backed up a few steps toward the entrance of the shower and almost laughed at how she was dressed. I’d asked Lawan to put her in the largest pair of scrubs we had because, if any of the clients saw her, I wanted it to be clear that she wasn’t for sale. I’d lose my fucking mind if one of them tried something with her, if they so much as breathed near her. But, now that I was lo
oking at her from the front, the outfit was so big that I couldn’t even see the outline of her body. She wouldn’t get anyone’s dick hard from wearing that.
“So, you can sit and take a shower,” I told her.
She glanced at the handheld showerhead that was in the corner and the one built into the ceiling overhead. “Where are you going?”
Her mouth was the only thing she’d given me. Had it been her cunt, I would have torn off her clothes with my fucking teeth. But, for now, it was safest that I got out of this room.
“Outside.”
“Why?”
“Because, if I watch you get naked, I won’t be able to stop myself from touching you.”
“Huck, I don’t want you to go outside.” Her voice trailed off as she grabbed the bottom of her shirt and lifted it above her navel and tits and finally over her head. “I want you to watch me.” She threw it in the corner of the shower and took off her bra next. Then, she leaned up on her legs, so she could pull her pants down. Her panties came off, too, and she kicked it all into the corner along with her sneakers.
She was fucking gorgeous.
Her messy dark hair hung around her face, and those ice-blue eyes were fixed on me, silently begging me to make her feel good.
She didn’t have to beg.
My cock was already throbbing.
My hands were fucking twitching to feel her skin.
I looked down a little further where her tits sat in the middle of her chest, nipples hard and waiting for my teeth. My gaze dropped again, and I moaned. Her pussy was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.
Hairless.
Tight.
Two small lips covering a thin clit.
My tongue watered as I thought about licking her from her ass to her cunt.
I could have stared at her pussy forever. But Arin was in my shower, naked, waiting to get even wetter. So, I twisted the handle and gave her a medium heat. The spray shot out of the ceiling, and I hit a second dial for the handheld to turn on.
As steam began to fill the room, she slowly rose from the bench and moved under the ceiling head.
“Sit,” I ordered.
She smirked in the most mischievous way as she ran her hands over her soaked tits, turning so that the back of her was now underneath the spray. And then she turned again, so the droplets slid down her face, disappearing as they reached her pussy. Her eyes locked with mine as she walked to the bench and sat down. “Can you hand me the shampoo?”