Nya hadn’t expected him to stop and she couldn’t see a thing. It was so black that she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face, let alone his form. So when he did stop, she walked right into him. As if he’d expected it, he brought their joined arms around to position her body in front of his. Instead of opening the door and pushing her in, he turned around, which seemed silly because it was so dark that they couldn’t make eye contact.
“He’s been here all night,” Archer said, keeping his volume low. “He’ll be dirty, he’ll be smelly, and he’ll be desperate. I know you want to be involved. My advice is to watch and learn.”
“I shouldn’t speak?” she asked.
“You can speak. Just keep your distance. Nothing is expected of you in here. You know I’ve got you.”
Rubbing a hand on his chest, she was reassured when it slid lower and she felt the ridges of his abdomen through his shirt. “I’d ask you to kiss me, but—”
Catching her chin in one large hand, he forced it up, and planted his mouth square on hers without hesitation. Visibility was so low that she considered it might have been luck, either that or his instinct knew where her mouth was at all times, even when his sight failed him.
“I’ve always got you, baby,” he murmured, brushing his lips side to side. “Let’s get this over with and go home, ok?”
Nya hadn’t realized he’d reached beyond her until the door opened. The echoing crack of his splitting the glow sticks startled her, and he tossed them past her into the room containing their captive to light up the space with dull neon light.
The room had smelled moldy and dirty when she’d been in here before and now the fetid aroma of stale urine almost made her gag as she turned around and stepped inside. She didn’t have the confidence she thought she would because here was a man coated in his own bodily fluids, hanging off the pipe they’d left him attached to last night. His knees didn’t quite reach the floor and his arms were now above his head.
It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t nice. On a human level, she felt a twinge of compassion, but she tried to damp it down.
“Still with us, Tulio?” Archer declared, slamming the door so hard behind them that it made the room shake. Nya was still inching forward, Archer strode past her. He didn’t have the same hesitation that she did, but then he’d seen all this before, probably many times. “Not nice is it? When someone takes away your basic human rights.” Archer kept on going and unwrapped his knives at the side, where they’d been before. “You’ve made a mess.” He took out one knife and then the other.
Watching him being so methodical, she realized that this part of the process was as much about intimidation and psychological torture as it was about actually selecting a knife he planned to use.
“Come on, man, speak. Are you still with us?” Archer asked the question, but it didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other.
With the longest knife from his stash, Archer turned around and went towards Tulio, his face covered in disgust. Touching his blade to the bottom of Tulio’s chin, he forced the man’s head up and around. “Tired?” Archer asked. “Sore? How many little girls have begged you for mercy? You put them through worse shit than this.”
Her compassion faded, in fact, it vanished, poof, just like that. This wasn’t a human being exhausted and in pain, this was a monster. A thug who beat people for money and was complicit in rape, even if he didn’t take part in the act himself.
Archer would know everything there was to know about Tulio and she was about to find out how far his knowledge extended. “You’re in a sorry state,” Archer sneered, flattening the long blade against Tulio’s cheek and dragging it downward to split the duct tape, freeing it from his mouth.
It was only when the man yelped in agony that she found out he was still alive. “Let me go, man.” As Archer had said, Tulio hadn’t even been here for twenty-four hours. So although he was no doubt hungry and thirsty, he wouldn’t be on the verge of death. “Let me go. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Archer said, hunkering down beside Tulio, while avoiding the dirty wet stain on the concrete.
Maybe this was part of the reason he’d left Tulio naked, because although he’d urinated, the bacteria-ridden fluid wouldn’t be festering in fabric and creases. Tulio didn’t seem like the modest type, so he probably didn’t see nakedness in itself as torture.
“You don’t show mercy, why should I?” Archer said.
Moving around in a similar curved route to the one she’d gone before, Nya got closer while still maintaining enough of a distance that she could observe the scene without feeling like she had to participate in it.
“Sad state of affairs, you here, trussed up like this, what would your buddies think?”
“You got me, man. Yeah, you got me. I know it. Please, you’ve proved your point. Let me go.”
“I don’t think you know what my point is,” Archer said. “But if you’ve got it, man, I’m all ears. You tell me, what’s my point?”
“You’re pissed,” Tulio said. “About the girl, the one they offed.”
His casual attitude sent a surge of anger through her. “They didn’t just off her,” Nya snapped and took three involuntary strides towards the two men. Even Archer hadn’t expected her to speak, but he stayed in his crouch and twisted his upper body toward her.
“You tell him, Sweets, is that our point? Are we pissed about that?”
“No, that’s not our point,” she said, happy to clarify it for him and for the slime ball who seemed to think he was better than those he tortured. “Our point is that he doesn’t deserve to live. He doesn’t deserve to breathe. He has no compassion. No understanding of what it is to be decent to other human beings. Our point is that karma fucking works, and if he can go around treating everybody else like a piece of shit, like his own personal toys then that’s how he should be treated. Why does he think he’s better than—”
“I don’t!” Tulio cried out and he was lucky that his head went back when it did.
Archer got to his feet, and with one swift kick, got the guy in the gut. “You interrupt her again, the next one will be to your skull,” Archer said, prodding the tip of his blade into Tulio’s thrown back head. “Get to your feet!” Archer turned his back on the man who was coughing and whimpering to come over to her with that cold, blank look in his eyes. He tossed an arm around her shoulder. “Anything you want, Sweets. You want me to cut him open?”
She didn’t know if he was asking her aloud to scare the guy, or if she was supposed to be the pressure valve, a failsafe, that would prevent him from doing something permanent. At that moment, Nya understood his detachment because her own compassion had fled.
“I want to know who pulled the trigger on the men outside Sizzle,” she said. “I want to know how many men he’s killed.”
“That would be an interesting fact,” Archer said, redirecting himself so that he could face Tulio, though his arm never left her shoulders. “Answer the lady.”
“I don’t…” Tulio said, coughing again, but trying to get to his feet to hold himself against the pipe that was his only support, using his arms that had to be in agony. “I don’t kill people, man, that’s not my gig.”
“So it’s just rape you’re hired for?”
“I didn’t touch her. It was those other fuckers who killed her.”
“Blame everybody else,” Archer said. “You’re just lucky, I know enough about you to know exactly what you do and who you do it with.”
Archer held the knife toward her, flipping it around to present her with the handle. Nya took it, though she didn’t know why she needed it. Maybe Archer just wanted rid of it because he started towards Tulio again.
Clearing his throat, Archer projected his voice when he spoke again, “I know what your big secret is, my girl here told me there were ways to kill a man without murdering him. And the only way we let you live is if we know you know you’re our bitch now.”
“Whatever you want,” Tulio said with hope bur
sting into his tone. “Whatever you want.” He tried to scramble around further so that he could see Archer who was staying just out of their captive’s eye line. Tulio had to twist all the way around at an awkward angle to even attempt to get a look at the couple. “You want me to work for you? I’ll do it. I’ll round up bastards and bring ‘em to you. I’ll beat ‘em for you.”
Her man wasn’t impressed or tempted. “I do all our dirty work. It’s the only way I can be sure it’s done right and that my lady is protected,” Archer said. “The most I’ll need from you is information, which you’ll give me any damn time I ask.”
“Yes, yes, sure, I’ll be your ears, I’ll be your eyes. I’ll tell you everything I see. Everything I hear.”
It was funny how a man’s morals went out the window, how his integrity dwindled when he feared for his life.
Nya had a gun pointed at her head once, but she’d held onto what was important to her. Archer had told her, in no uncertain terms that he’d sacrifice himself for her, and here was this sniveling fool promising to sell his soul for just the vague possibility he might be allowed to live.
“But see it’s not enough for me,” Archer said and she was in awe of how he took all of this in his stride. He spoke to Tulio in his calm, condescending tone, like he could’ve been talking to someone in a coffee shop or at a ballgame, not like he was talking to a piss-covered, blood-stained cretin tethered to a metal pipe. “Letting you walk away isn’t enough of a guarantee. I don’t need you scared that this will happen again, ‘cause I know you’ll be looking over your shoulder and to be honest, I can’t be bothered chasing you down. You’re a fucking pain in the ass, and that’s how you lost your finger. Every day you see that stub, you’re gonna remember what happened here.”
“Yes, yes,” Tulio said. “I’ll remember. Now let me go.”
“Usually that’s enough for me,” Archer said, stopping about four feet away from Tulio to link his hands at his back and widen his stance. “Usually it’s enough for me to scare a guy shitless and send him on his way. They never screw me over again. They never want payback because they know they’re lucky to get away.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Tulio said. “Lucky. Lucky. Now please…” He tried to shift around further and the chain scraped on the pipe, and he winced, so she figured the mark Archer had left on him the previous day had to be rubbing against the rusted metal he hung from. The bloody line on his cheek was new and blood still trickled down from his cheekbone over the stubble on his jaw.
“But we’re not here for me,” Archer said. “You want to know what I found out now, Sweets?” Though he called to her, he measured his gaze on Tulio. “You want your surprise? You told me there are ways to kill a guy slow, baby, and I know how we can make this guy dance for us. Tulio here is married to a beautiful Italian woman who has a couple a big-ass brothers, a huge family, they’re a great bunch of people who welcomed him in, a sad pathetic orphan with no family of his own. How long you been married now? Ten years? Twenty?”
“Twelve,” Tulio said.
Nya wondered why he was so eager to offer that information when clearly Archer wasn’t about to buy him an anniversary gift. “Twelve years is a long time. You must love her a whole lot.”
“Don’t threaten my wife,” Tulio said. Nya found a smidgen of respect for the way he jumped to his wife’s defense. “You kill me now, man, before you go near her.”
Is that what Archer thought she wanted? Another innocent woman hurt because of this man’s mistakes? “I wouldn’t touch a hair on her head,” Archer said and Nya breathed an internal sigh of relief. “No, I wouldn’t. But I would have a conversation with her.” Tulio’s chain scratched again when he dropped some of the tension from his arms.
“A conversation about what?”
“Anything that comes up,” Archer said and she recognized his wry tone. “Maybe about that little blonde thing, way across town, you know the one I mean, Tatiana, is it?”
“You leave her alone too!”
“Defend your women? Yet, others are fair game? Doesn’t seem like an even playing field to me,” Archer said.
“You leave them the fuck alone, both of them. You don’t touch either—”
“Doesn’t look to me like you’re a man in a position to be giving orders,” Archer said. “I know plenty of guys who would do more than hurt your beautiful women. But you’ve missed the point again; we’re not here for me. I need an ironclad guarantee for my lady, that you won’t ever hurt another woman again in your life and if I hear so much as a whisper that you have, or you do anything that upsets my lady, I’ll make sure, not only to talk to both of your women, but to make sure they talk to each other. Married for twelve years, do you know her brothers well? They are scary motherfuckers… I’m wondering how they’d feel finding out you’ve been screwing around with Tatiana for going on four years. And Tatiana doesn’t even know that you’re married, does she?”
There were more ways to hurt a man than by putting a knife in his back, Nya was pleased with this surprise. Archer’s ability to ferret out information had proved useful. While it was nice to see this man in physical pain, what was more important, was the lesson he learned. And that was, that he wasn’t invincible.
Archer knew Tulio’s weak point and from Tulio’s reaction, she knew he cared about both of these women. If one didn’t know about the other, then he’d been stringing them along, lying, cheating. He wasn’t a nice human being. Archer was right; Tulio was their bitch because he cared about the women enough to offer his own life in place of theirs, even if it was just in a snap of anger. So if Tulio stepped out of line, Archer could bring these women together and Tulio’s world would implode before he was confronted by his wife’s formidable family.
Archer turned around and their gazes locked. “Now, honeybun, if you want me to slit him open…”
She shook her head, but wouldn’t make the same promise for the others they were going to track down. Tulio only got a pass because he hadn’t laid hands on Jamie and he knew now that he was on borrowed time. If the need arose later, Archer could finish him off. But for now she quite liked the idea of him living in fear, looking over his shoulder, aware every time he touched one of his women that they could be snatched away at Nya’s unpredictable discretion.
“Then you’re in luck, Tulio.”
Archer came over to take the roll of duct tape from her arm. Despite Tulio’s protests, Archer wrapped it around their captive’s mouth and around over his eyes. He taped the guy’s feet together managing to avoid touching flesh or fluid. Then Archer stood up and unlocked one wrist, which sent Tulio onto the floor on his back.
The man couldn’t fight, he didn’t have the strength and his arms were basically dead. So all he could do was grumble behind the duct tape gag and buck as Archer stood astride him and bent to wrap duct tape round his wrists. Archer retrieved the rope. Tossing it over his shoulder again, he rolled up his knives and presented the bundle to her.
“Go out the door and up the alley,” he said, handing her the car keys. “Just keep going forward, the light will find you. Do you need me to—”
“No,” she said. Coming down here, facing the unknown was difficult, now all she had to do was depart and run.
“Take everything out the trunk,” he said. “And leave it open.”
She nodded, understanding what he meant. She grabbed his arm when he took a step backward. “Wait,” she said.
The faded florescent light made his features appear haunted, and although he was focused on what needed to be done, she could see his love for her behind the mask. “Change your mind?” he asked. “It’s not too late. I’ll slit the prick stem to stern for you, it’s really nothing.”
“You’re amazing,” she said and hooked a hand around the back of his neck, to pull him down so she could plunge her tongue into his mouth.
He hummed in surprised pleasure, which might have been for Tulio’s benefit because she’d never heard the sound before. But she didn�
�t care if Archer was performing because he was returning her kiss like it was their first.
His splayed hands snaked around her waist and their span reached from her ribs to her hips. Sliding them down, he cupped her ass and rocked her against him. “Save it for later, Sweets,” he said after sucking his kiss away from her lower lip.
Nya stood, watching as he went over to Tulio who was trying to wriggle his way toward the door. Archer put a boot on his ass to stop him and bent to tie the rope around their victim’s ankles. Archer wasn’t going to carry the man who was covered in his own filth.
When he gave her the nod, she went for the door and ran up the passage, just as he’d instructed her to do. Tulio’s moans echoed through the corridor a few seconds after she’d entered it and were joined by the sound of his body being dragged at quite a pace along the concrete shaft.
She kept on going, thinking only of the task Archer had given her, and she’d fulfilled it by the time Archer came out of the building.
“Get in the car,” he called.
Nya went straight into her seat, so she didn’t have to see Archer transfer the man into the trunk. There was a thump and some kicking, and then the lid went down. Archer got into the driver’s seat, but before he started the engine, he reached over to the glove box to pull out a bottle of antibacterial liquid. Rubbing some on his own hands and then on hers, he tossed it back in and took a breath as he started the car.
“Do you want me to take you home before I dump him?” Archer asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve never shied from going all the way with you.”
He got them moving, accepting her statement without acknowledging it. They could’ve turned Tulio loose right here. But if Archer used this location on a regular basis, they wouldn’t want it to be revealed to outside parties.
Staying quiet as they drove, she was overwhelmed with such gratitude that she found herself touching him frequently. His arm, his shoulder, his leg, she leaned over and pressed her lips to his bicep and appreciated him offering his hand from the wheel.
“There’s still time if you want me to—”
Scarred (Branded Book 2) Page 10