“And you want to know what’ll happen before you die? Just take a wild guess,” I taunted. When she didn’t say anything, I chuckled. “Come on. Take a guess.”
She ground her teeth and expelled a long breath. “What?” she finally said.
“You’re going to watch me fuck her and make her come. You know why? Because that’ll fuck with you more than any torture device I could create. How does it feel to know that you’ll spend your last moments watching me fuck the woman you want but you’re too much of a pussy to tell her?” I asked. Her body vibrated with anger, a single tear rolling down her cheek. I grinned at Sevyn. “You sure she’s not an emotional person?”
“There’s no telling what you said to her,” she replied, glaring at me. I gestured toward Rebecca.
“Then ask her yourself,” I suggested before looking to my guys. “While Rebecca decides whether or not she’s ready to reveal her true self, let’s get this shit cleaned up.”
They nodded and moved over to the wheel and carefully laid it back. Once we untied her from the wheel and moved her body over to the sheet of plastic that already held puddles of her blood, Tony moved toward her head.
“I want to remove the knife from her throat,” he mused. He put his booted foot on her forehead to keep her head from moving and reached down, grabbing the handle of the knife and pulling. Blood oozed out of the wound and I couldn’t help but to smile. Had to admit I was rather proud of this handiwork and was even more amused when the girls reacted in disgust with each knife we pulled out. By the time we’d removed all of them, Crystal had thrown up at least two more times.
The guys and I took the body outside to the concrete slab on the side of the house, where I gave Tony the honors of beheading her. Just when Tony raised the ax over his head, an even better idea came to me.
“Wait!” I bellowed. Tony frowned at me, all the other guys appearing confused. “I don’t think I want to do a simple beheading.”
Tony released a dramatic sigh. “Seriously, man? I was really looking forward to this,” he complained. I shook my head.
“You’ll still need the axe for what I’m going to request of you.” I grin planted itself on my lips just at the thought of it. With Jamie’s last words insulting my sister, I wanted to insult her in death also.
“What’re you thinking then?” Victor asked as he rubbed his hands together.
“I think she needs to be on display for everyone to see, not just her parents. I’m thinking….” I tapped a finger against my chin for a few moments, purposely leaving the guys in suspense. “I’m thinking I want to recreate Elizabeth Short’s crime scene.”
“Fuck yeah!” Tony roared. “I’m 100% down with recreating the Black Dahlia scene. Cutting her in half will be so much more fun than just cutting off her head.”
“I get dibs on creating her permanent smile,” Curtis stated as his hand shot up in the air.
“How are we going to transport the body?” Jake asked.
“I’ll put it in the bed of one of the pickup trucks and make sure I cover it with a bunch of disposable plastic. In the meantime, maybe we can store her in the glass box and just put it in the walk-in freezer once the blood drains? I mean a whole body won’t fit in the other freezer that we held Carrie’s head in.”
“Yeah, that’s fine, but you need to be meticulous about how you cover the bed of that truck. A strong gust of wind can blow your entire cover,” I warned. “You’ll also need to do this in the middle of the night.”
“Duh. I’m not going to just dump a severed body onto someone’s lawn in broad daylight,” Tony said, rolling his eyes.
My phone rang, ceasing all conversation around me. Pulling it out of my pocket, I saw Ryan’s picture and immediately picked up. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been tailing the mailman for a couple of streets now. Get ready to get the link to my body cam to view the package transfer,” he said and hung up. Seconds later, a link appeared in my texts.
“Looks like he also snuck a body cam into his disguise,” I said as I opened the link. The men all huddled around me and focused on my phone screen. We watched as Ryan got out of an old station wagon, pretending to hobble along toward a mailman that was returning to his truck.
“Excuse me, sir,” Ryan started, his voice raspy and light. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
“How can I help you, sir?” the cheerful postal worker asked.
“Well, you’re about to deliver mail on Canyon Street, right?”
“Sure am.” We saw him look at the box Ryan held.
“Well, you see, today’s my daughter’s birthday. We don’t have the best relationship these days and I know if she saw it was addressed from me, she wouldn’t accept it, so I can’t quite mail it to her,” he’d said. I chuckled. Ryan was definitely playing the hell out of his character. “I just…I wanted to give her something that her mother would’ve wanted her to have, but I don’t want her to throw it away before she actually gets it, you know?”
“I understand, sir, but I’m not really allowed to do something like that—”
“Please, sir? It’s so important to me. Here…” Ryan struggled for a moment before the mailman gave him a sympathetic look.
“Here, let me hold that for you,” the man said.
“Oh, thank you so much,” Ryan said, and we all snickered. Ryan rarely ever said thank you and never used a tone that would imply he was grateful for whatever he was thanking you for if he said it in the first place.
“This is a bit heavy,” the mailman joked, lifting the box up and down as if to test the weight.
“Yeah, it has my wife’s urn in it. The urn itself has a good bit of weight in it. It’s why my daughter and I were fighting. I feel like if she sees it, it may fix what’s broken between us before it’s my time too.”
“Man….I’m really sorry to hear that.”
Ryan suddenly pulled out a wallet full of cash and opened it, revealing it to the mailman. “If you can do this, you can have all the money in my wallet. I just need my daughter to get this. It’s really important,” he pleaded. I covered my mouth to stop myself from smiling. I wished I could see Ryan’s face as he said half of this shit. I’d have to make him reenact this when he got back here.
The mailman looked around to see if anyone was watching before turning to Ryan. “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone about this. I can lose my job.”
“You have my word, young man,” Ryan promised. The mailman looked around one more time before pulling the wad of cash from Ryan’s wallet. “I trust that you’ll keep your promise to deliver it. I need to get out of here so that she doesn’t see me or suspect anything.”
“That’s a good idea. And remember—our little secret, right?”
“Of course, young man,” Ryan said and hobbled back to the car. The mailman put the box in his truck and drove off, Ryan taking off the body cam when the truck was out of view. “And that, fellas, is how a pro works. Switching cars and then I’ll be on my way back.”
The camera went dark signaling that the feed was cut. “Bravo, bravo,” Paul said, clapping his hands. “I gotta hand it to him; the guy is good at what he does. All that training being a theater dork really paid off.”
“Indeed it did,” I said and put my phone back in my pocket. “Well, let’s get to work. It’s hot as fuck outside and now I’m actually getting hungry.”
The men and I all jumped into action, excitement coursing through me. With the package now being delivered, I knew I’d at least have something interesting to watch on the news soon.
An hour and a half later, the guys and I finally put the dismembered body in the glass box and put it in the walk-in freezer.
“You know, it was a good idea when you think of it as a whole, but fuck, that was a lot of work,” Paul panted, bending over to put his hands on his knees.
I had to agree with him there. Aside from cutting her in half, we also had to drain her blood and cut a permanent smile into her face. While it wasn’
t extremely difficult, the Florida sun beaming down on us the entire time definitely didn’t do us any favors. We all still stood in the freezer, trying to cool off. My black t-shirt was drenched in sweat, the wet fabric sending chills up my spine as the cold air of the freezer licked my skin.
“Now I’ve really worked up an appetite,” Victor said.
“Same. Kind of want pizza though,” Jake said.
“I second pizza,” Curtis panted.
Paul nodded, “Third.”
“And you can count me as the fourth,” Tony said.
I nodded in agreement. “I can do pizza, but…who’s going to pick it up?”
Tony raised his hand. “Since my girl is now dead, I can get it. Everyone want their usuals?”
“Yeah,” we all said in unison.
“Cool. I’ll order Ryan one just in case. Be back in a bit,” he said and took in a deep breath. “Fuck, I’m not ready to go back out in that heat, but my stomach won’t allow me to keep standing in here starving to death.”
“Then get moving,” Curtis chided. “Well, at least the hard part for the day is over with. Once I eat, I could use a nap.”
“Make that the both of us,” Victor said and focused on me. “Should we go ahead and feed the girls so we can lock them back up until tomorrow?”
“Probably best,” I said. We all filed out of the freezer and I closed and locked it when the last person exited. I could already taste the cheesy pizza loaded with toppings and the ice cold beer I’d enjoy with it, my stomach growling at the thought of it. The women all sat in silence by the time we returned to the living room. “On second thought, let’s take them downstairs. They can eat in their rooms.”
The men strolled over to the remaining women, only five pathetic wastes of space that I had left to deal with. Sevyn almost looked a little relieved to learn that we were taking them to their rooms, but she was about to be in for a rude awakening.
I made sure to put us at the back of the line as we made our way toward the basement. I could feel her eyes on me when we passed the small hallway that held my room.
“Wait, I thought—”
“You thought I was actually going to let you sleep in my bed?” I asked with a chuckle. “You make it so easy to manipulate you with how gullible you are.”
She bowed her head slightly and didn’t say another word as she limped alongside me. As we continued down the steps, so many thoughts crashed around in my mind about her. A part of me wondered if I pretended to care or made her think that I was softening around her, she’d tell me the truth behind why she did it. So far, killing her friends in front of her or even punishing her wasn’t doing much in the way of getting me closer to a confession. Ryan’s words bounced around in my head. I needed to get to the bottom of whatever was fucking going on with me or else I’d never achieve the feelings I’d wanted to experience once I’d gotten my revenge against her.
I just needed to figure out where the hell to start.
She was silent as I put the cuffs back around her wrist. I sat in the chair as she curled up in the corner again, her head resting against the wall as she drew her knees to her chest. I’d give her a tiny olive branch of false security until she gave me what I wanted. Maybe I couldn’t feel anything when I hurt her because I didn’t know the real reason behind her actions back then. It made me uneasy when she kept making it a point that I wasn’t innocent either. A breakup didn’t justify all the shit she and her friends put Logan through, so something else happened that was much bigger than the breakup.
I pulled my wet shirt off and draped it across the back of the chair. Sevyn cut her eyes to me before pulling her knees tighter to her chest. I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not going to touch you if that’s what you’re thinking,” I drawled, slouching down in the seat. “At least not yet.” She still didn’t respond. Her eyes darted from my tattoos and back to the wall when she thought I was looking at her. After a long bout of uncomfortable silence, she slowly shifted a little on the bed.
“When did you start getting tattoos?” she asked. Her voice was still hoarse and raspy when she spoke, her brown eyes studying me as she waited for me to answer.
“After Logan died.”
She nodded. “I didn’t think you were the type to cover yourself in tats like that.”
“Going under the needle was therapeutic for me,” I said with a shrug. “I didn’t take you to be the type to cut your thighs up in private, but yet, here you are.”
She lowered her eyes, shame shading her cheeks. “The pain was therapeutic for me, too,” she mumbled.
“Apparently so considering how many scars you have,” I mused.
She was quiet for a moment before she finally spoke. “What exactly do you do?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m just trying to make conversation since you’re just sitting there staring at me,” she said on a sigh.
“Mechanical engineer,” I finally answered.
“Sounds very ‘you.’” She sighed inwardly. “Though I don’t even know how true that is considering you aren’t the same person I remember.”
“I don’t think any of us are the same people we remembered,” I said. She narrowed her gaze at me and frowned.
“If you can come to that conclusion now, why is it so hard for you to believe that we’ve all changed from the immature teenagers we were back then? I know I have.”
I shook my head. “It’s the principle of it all, Sevyn,” I explained. “I’m more upset that you all got to carry on with your lives as if nothing happened. You guys have to be held accountable for what you’ve done in some way.”
“Killing won’t help; it won’t bring Logan back.”
“I’m not worried about whether or not it’ll help. We’re just evening the score. An eye for an eye and all of that.”
“What did you say to Rebecca?” Sevyn asked suddenly, shifting the conversation in another direction without warning.
I smirked, tipping the chair back onto its two back legs. “Just stuff.”
She rolled her eyes in a way that used to remind me of the old her. “I always hated when you’d say that,” she said and shook her head.
“Some things never changed,” I said.
“Do you live close to Miami then?”
“Something like that.”
“Then where’ve you been all this time?”
“Minding my business and planning for this week,” I said. Fear colored her features before she bowed her head. “Are you scared?”
“Of?”
“The inevitable.” I put the chair back on all fours and leaned forward on my elbows. “Are you afraid to die?” She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I’m surprised you’re not thinking of some kind of plan to try to convince me that you should live.”
She frowned, her brown eyes boring into me. “Why should I?”
“I’d think self-preservation should be kicking in now that you realize the danger you’re in,” I said and tsked.
She shook her head. “I won’t beg for something I don’t think I deserve,” she said. I raised an eyebrow, slightly confused by her statement.
“You don’t think you deserve to live?” I asked slowly.
“Why should I?” She rested her head back on the wall. “I had a dream about Logan last night. I don’t know how true it was, but she’d said that she never told you what my secret was.”
“Secret?” I thought back to the last conversation I’d had with Logan about Sevyn, but I don’t remember her telling me about any secret.
I walked through the door and let out a deep breath. Part of me felt bad that Sevyn was so upset. The visual of the way her face fell when I’d broke up with her was seared into my mind. I’d admit that I felt a little guilty for toying with her emotions just to sleep with her. How the fuck was I supposed to know that confident, self-absorbed Sevyn was a big softie when she fell in love? It was supposed to be a secret thing for the summer before we both went o
ur separate ways. I could tell that she’d wanted to talk about something, but with how giddy she was, I didn’t want it to be a conversation about us going public with our relationship. She’d hinted about it a few times, but I’d always shut down the conversation, occupying her with something else until she forgot about the topic entirely. Logan was on the couch when walked past the living room. She jumped up to her feet and followed me into the kitchen.
“So?” she asked.
I opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a canned soda. Cracking it open, I took a long sip before I met her curious gaze. “So what?”
“I mean you and Sevyn talked right? How do you feel about what she told you?”
I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion as I looked at my sister. Her body language was odd. She seemed…nervous as she stood before me, wringing her hands in front of myself as her curious eyes traveled along my face.
“What she told me? What was she supposed to be telling me? That she wanted to go public with our relationship?”
“What?” Logan shook her head. “So, she didn’t tell you? I thought you said you talked to her.”
“I did.”
“Okay, then what happened? Because I’m assuming that something bad must’ve happened if she didn’t tell you what she was supposed to.”
I shrugged. “Probably because I didn’t give her the chance to. I broke up with her,” I said nonchalantly and took another swallow from my can. Logan’s face paled.
“You did what? Luther, why would you do that?”
I scoffed. “What do you mean why’d I do that? I listened to what you said, and you were right.”
“I told you to stop screwing around with other girls, not break up with her! What’s wrong with you?” she all but screamed.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Logan. Besides, I’m about to go back to college. Having a high school girlfriend wouldn’t be a good idea when I’ll be surrounded by hot college girls.”
“Do you not know how to be a faithful boyfriend? Or do you only work in ‘douchebag’ mode?” she asked with a frown, folding her arms across her chest.
The Destruction of Sevyn (The Vengeance of Luther Book 1) Page 17