Reaper

by K. L. Savage

  He looks beaten and whipped. Welts are all over his body, and one eye is swollen shut. The chain rattles above him as he tugs on them weakly, staring at me with one good eye. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine. I feel fine. My head kind of hurts, but that’s it. What are you doing here? I thought you left.” I keep it out of my voice that I thought he left me.

  “I did,” he says, hurting me further. “I planned on coming back, but I got jumped from behind and brought here. He wanted information on you, but I wouldn’t give you up. I’d never give you up. I was ready to die, but he got you here somehow.”

  “I got your finger priority fucking mail. Of course, I’m here.”

  “Hey, did you put it on ice? Might be able to sew it back on.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about right now? We need to get out of here!” I hiss, tugging on the damn iron again.

  “I’ve been hanging here for a few days. I’ve had a lot of time to think, so yeah, I was curious about my finger.”

  “What does he want?” I jerk away when I hear the teeth clattering and light chirps of rats scurrying along the floor.

  “I’m not sure, but I know he is fascinated with you. I think after Moretti got into business with Reaper, the guy has been counting the days until he could get you alone. I think you know him, Sarah. You have to.”

  “It’s impossible. I don’t know a soul besides David.” My heart squeezes in my chest. “It’s not David is it?”

  “David wouldn’t be able to get the upper hand on me.” Boomer sounds offended by the accusation, but I’m not trying to have a pissing contest. “I don’t know who it is.”

  A door opens in the distance and echoes when it shuts, a loud bang sounding reminding me of a sawed-off shotgun. Footsteps get closer, and I can hear mumbling as well. Someone is talking to themselves. It’s too dark to tell where the person is, but when the red light in front of me becomes shadowed, and boots touch my bare feet, it doesn’t take long to figure out the person in question is right in front of me.

  “Long time no see, Sarah.” His voice his hoarse, sounding injured and broken. “Last time I saw you, you were little. My, my, you’ve grown up pretty.”

  “Stay away from her, you sick fuck! I’ll kill you if you touch her. I’ll fucking kill you!”

  “Shut up!” The man backhands Boomer, and the sound of something breaking snaps.

  “No! Leave him alone. What do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want, okay? Just let him go.”

  “I’m not letting either of you go. You have no idea how much you have ruined my life!”

  “I don’t know you,” I whimper. “Please, we have money. We will give you whatever you want.”

  “I want you to watch me torture him. He is your brother, right?”

  “Please, don’t hurt him,” I sob, watching Boomer spit out a wad of blood.

  “I wanted to be your brother, and you left me.” The cock of a gun grinds the barrel.” The red glow shines between the chains around Boomer’s arms, and the man holds it against Boomer’s shoulder.

  “Do it,” Boomer seethes. “Shoot me. It doesn’t matter. I’ll fucking kill you one way or another.”

  “Not if I kill you first.” A loud gunshot rings through the air.

  “No!” I scream. “No.”

  I have a feeling my world just came to an end.

  23

  Reaper

  “Wake him up!” I yell at the top of my lungs. Tool and Tongue are holding me back from murdering Doc. He won’t listen to me. “I swear to god, if you don’t do as I say, you won’t be able to walk for the rest of your life.”

  “I can’t wake him, not yet.”

  “Sarah’s life is in jeopardy! You’re not going to do this for her? You saved her all those years ago! Wake him up!” I strain against the arms holding me back, grunting and giving it everything I have to get free so I can kill him.

  “Sarah is important to all of us, but if I wake him, there is a good chance he will die. His body isn’t healed−”

  “I don’t give a fuck. If he is a casualty, then so be it. I don’t give a fuck.” Hot tears spring to my eyes when I think about Sarah being in danger. Who knows where she is at? All I know is when I walked out of the chapel, to see an empty main room and the front door wide open, I lost my fucking mind.

  Her necklace was on the steps, the clasp broken, and the diamond shining as beautiful as Sarah’s smile does. It took five men to restrain me, to stop me from getting on someone’s bike and going after her.

  Only I have no idea where she is.

  Someone took her, though, and I know it has to do with the package she got in the mail.

  Moretti’s goons point guns at us, and my men do the same. We stare each other down, barrels against barrels, the promise of death lingering in the air, and one of the goons has the nerve to cock his gun.

  “No one is getting near him,” he says in a thick Italian accent.

  “I will kill all of you if you don’t wake him up. Doc, Eric,” I say his name. I never say their names, but I’m desperate. “Please.”

  “One minute,” he says, holding up his index finger. “One minute, and that’s all you get, or his heart will fail. Do you understand that?”

  “One is all I need.” I finally calm and rip my arms free of Tool and Tongue. “I’m fine.” Tool goes to grab for me again, but I shove him away. “I said I was fine.” I’m not fine. I’m fucking losing it. “Tool, I want you to go search that box again, find any clues. There had to have been one, something other than that damn note.”

  “You got it, Prez.”

  “Take me downstairs. Wake him.”

  Eric is about to argue with me. I can tell. He opens his mouth and closes it again, snapping his jaw shut. “Alright, but if he dies—”

  “He won’t die.” One of the goons nudges the gun against Eric’s head. “Or you die.”

  “Ye better think real long and hard on that, mate,” Skirt says a bit too happily, holding two guns in his hands as he points them at two different people. There are only four of them, and the other two are downstairs.

  The man, Michael, isn’t too happy. He curves his lip and holsters his weapon, giving in to my demand. Eric shakes his head the entire way down the steps as I follow him. I really don’t care if he agrees with it or not. I need answers. Moretti has them.

  It’s as simple as that.

  “He might not wake up right away. It may take hours.” Doc opens the drawers next to the bed and pulls out a syringe, clear with medicine.

  “I don’t have hours.” I knock a pitcher over, and water flies everywhere. It doesn’t faze Doc. “She could be dying right now!”

  “I can’t control how long it takes for the medicine to work! You want shit done now, I understand, but I can only do so much! Be patient.” Doc inserts the needle in the IV, and I wait for any sign of life.

  Nothing happens.

  One minute.

  Five minutes.

  Fifteen minutes.

  Nothing.

  “Wake the fuck up, Moretti!” I wrap my hand around his throat, and one of his men puts a gun to my head.

  “Hands off.”

  I elbow him in the nose, the crunch of bone shattering against my arm. I smile, satisfied. “How about you fuck off?”

  “Reaper,” Doc says my name to get my attention, and when I look down, Moretti’s eyes are darting back and forth behind his lids. “One minute, remember.” Doc turns off the ventilator, and when Moretti wakes up, his heart starts to race, and he panics, screaming from the pain. Doc gives him morphine and he calms a bit, but screams are still screams, no matter the pain level.

  “Listen to me. Sarah and Boomer have been taken. She is my ol’ lady, and Boomer is my kid. Your stepson sent us his fucking finger. I need to know where he could have taken them and why he wants Sarah. I won’t let you go back under without telling me.”

  He stares at me through an eye that has no
eyelashes; they were burned off in the explosion. I bend down when he opens his mouth, his voice harsh, the sound of sandpaper. “Don’t know why,” he gasps. “Try warehouses. He loves warehouses. He moves drugs. Lots of drugs. I’m sorry…” His voice cuts off when another seizure takes him, and Doc pushes all of us out of the way, pissed off that he ended up being right.

  I might have killed the man.

  In a record amount of time, Doc has Moretti in a medically-induced coma again. Sweat drips from his brow, and his hands shake. He shoves by me, throwing his shoulder against mine. I hate that I had to do it, but it’s more information than I had before. Moretti said warehouses and that he runs drugs. I know one other gang that moves drugs like that, and those are the Vegas Vipers. Maybe they will have some answers.

  “Reaper!” Badge hurries down the steps. “I have something. I know how they’re connected. Come on.”

  I take three steps at a time, and when I get to the kitchen, all the brothers are there. Tongue is sitting at the table, sharpening his blade, his dead eyes glaring at the space in front of him where Sarah used to sit. She would help him sharpen all his blades; she was the only one who cared about his weird fascination, and now I couldn’t imagine not having him. If there is one thing I want Tongue to do, I want to make sure Moretti’s stepson never speaks again.

  Seeing all the support is emotional. I want to get on the road, though, and get to the Vipers. I don’t care who I have to kill, what I have to do, and how many bullets are used. I’ll find Sarah, and all who get in my way will be left as rotting corpses.

  “Talk to me.”

  Badge taps away on his computer, looking more like one of us than a cop these days. He has a long beard, short-clipped hair that is still military style, but the hard look in his eyes, I’ve seen that before. It’s a look a man gets when he doesn’t care much about the law anymore.

  “Sarah grew up in foster care, right?” he asks.

  “Yeah, why?” I cross my arms and lean against the washer and dryer.

  “Well, she bounced around a lot before she came here. Fifteen homes, to be exact. All of them sucked. They were the kind of parents who were only in it for the check. They had up to eight kids, most with records. When she finally landed at that last place, there was one kid who didn’t take it so well.”

  “What’s that mean? Moretti’s stepson was never in foster care. That would make no sense.”

  “It would if the woman he married had a drug problem and lost custody of him for fifteen years. She got her head on straight when she met Moretti, but the drugs ended up taking her in the end. Anyway, while the kid, Fabian Trullo, was in foster care, anytime Sarah got placed in a new home, he got placed there too. Out of fifteen homes, he was in thirteen of them with her. They basically grew up together. In some sick way, I think this guy looks at her as his sister. That’s why he has Boomer. That’s why he wants Sarah. In his head, it’s always been him and her.”

  “Then why hasn’t she ever said anything about him?” I wonder. The lingering doubt in the back of my mind makes me think that maybe this guy was her first love. It’s a sick thought, but I know horrible things happen in foster homes; what if he did them to her? What if she is so used to his manipulation, she does exactly what he says.

  “She has no idea this guy thinks of her that way. Most likely, this guy watched her from afar, became obsessed with her, stalked her, and got to know everything about her without her knowing a damn thing about him.”

  “So he wants vengeance.”

  “He wants Sarah. I’ve seen this before, unfortunately. It’s your typical, ‘If he can’t have her, no one can’ situation. He will kill anyone who gets in his way.”

  “Does Moretti know about this?” Because if he did, the man is dead, right now.

  “Most likely not. By the time his stepson came back home, he was practically grown, a stranger, and had the mindset of a sociopath. The hate had been there for years, building and building for Moretti. He had been plotting for years, and when he found out Moretti got into business with you”—Badge snaps his fingers—“that’s what pulled that mental trigger. It seemed no matter what, everyone got Sarah except him. He learned about Boomer, about you; probably still watched her in the distance, and you guys had no idea.”

  “Why now?” I ask. “Why wait until now? He had two years—”

  “Why not? She’s eighteen now.” He swallows, clearly uncomfortable with what he is about to say. “He waited.”

  “He waited…” I say dumbly. “Waited for what?”

  “The same thing you waited for, Prez. You waited until you could legally claim her.” Tongue licks his knife, eyes rolling back when he feels the cold steel. “He doesn’t look at her as his sister; it’s more than that. She’s his focus in life. He has a twisted delusion of her.” He slides his eyes to me. “He wants her for himself.”

  “Tongue is right,” Badge says. “Cases like this, it goes deeper than the bond between brother and sister, and that’s only one-sided. He is dependent on her. He probably thinks since she can think for herself, she’ll choose to be with him. He wants to be her father, brother, friend, lover; he wants to be all of it.”

  I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life but hearing this makes me want to be sick. The thought of her; no, no—I can’t think like that.

  Poodle pats my shoulder along with a few others, and I scrub my hands over my face, my tired eyes heavy from stress. “How many warehouses do the Vipers own?” I ask. I have a feeling I can find Moretti’s son there.

  “Five,” he says.

  “You can narrow that down to the ones that are most isolated,” Badge says. “He wants to keep them away from people.”

  There’s another meaning behind those words. Fabian took them somewhere that no one can hear their screams. Isolation. “Wait,” an idea is brewing. “What’s the most isolated thing in Vegas?”

  “The desert,” Badge says with a grin. “Fucking genius, Reaper.” The confidence fades along with the smile. “Never mind. No warehouses in the desert that the Vipers own. I can’t find it.”

  I snarl, slamming my fist down on the counter. “It’s there. I can guarantee you it isn’t in your system. Boys, wheels up. We have Vipers to see.”

  I plan to cut the head of every last one of them.

  24

  Reaper

  A herd of bikes roar down the loneliest road. Desert is on either side of us, no building in sight. The Vipers clubhouse is a few miles past the strip on the other side, a place we usually stay far away from because of what Moretti did to their president.

  Well, that truce is over.

  I’m going to dismantle that club one by one and make sure those damn snakes can’t poison me again. A piece of shit, rundown building comes into view on the side of the road. It looks like an old bar, something passersby usually stop at for a quick beer since it’s the only thing for miles until someone wants to drive all the way back to the strip. Twenty of us pull to a stop in front of the wooden piece of shit. I wish Boomer was here because he’d blow this shit to the ground.

  Fuck, I miss him.

  “Bullseye, Tool,” I call for my main two men. “Decide who stays and who comes with us inside. I want people out here just in case anyone unexpected pulls up.”

  “You got it,” Tool says the same thing he always does.

  “I want a minute alone in there.” I rub the handle of my gun under my vest, and Bullseye follows my hand. He nods, trusting me to take care of it.

  “One minute and then I’m coming in,” he says.

  Seems to be the new time limit these days.

  The porch creaks under my weight. I don’t bother knocking. I lift my leg and kick the door down, the rotten wood giving without a problem. Cut-sluts huddle in the corner and cry, screaming when they see me. A few of the Vipers are caught off guard, and one tries for his gun, only I’m quicker. I cock my gun and shoot him right between the eyes, just like something out of an old west movie.
<
br />   “Everyone better sit down and shut the fuck up, or you will all die. You’re outnumbered and outgunned.” I walk through the establishment. Whoever is in charge of this place should be ashamed of themselves. Flies swirl everywhere, and lines of uncut coke are on the table with stacks of cash. Hmm, I don’t like that shit in my city.

  The Vipers sit and put their hands in the air. Some are passed out from the drugs, and some even look dead. “I want to know who works with Fabian Trullo, Moretti’s stepson.” I place the warm barrel on the temple of the man who has the patch that says VP. That’s a damn joke. “I have a feeling you know.”

  “Nope,” he says.

  I laugh as Tongue walks through what used to be the door. Ah, just the man I want to see. “Tongue? This guy isn’t telling me what I need to know.”

  “Is that right?” he drawls, taking out his new shiny knife.

  The man stares at the long, curved blade with big eyes, and Tongue twists the steel in the air. “Pretty, isn’t she? I worked long and hard on her. Made her myself. She cuts through skin so softly. It’s beautiful. She’s the perfect work of art.” Tongue grips the man by the back of the head and then shoves his hand into the man’s mouth, pinching his tongue and pulling it out. “You might want to tell my President where Fabian is, or you won’t be able to ever lick pussy again.”

  The man whimpers and nods in quick beats. I give him a chance and give Tongue a silent nod to let him go. He does, but he shoves the steel into the man’s thigh, causing him to scream. A few Vipers try to get up and run, but my men stop them, guns pointed to their heads. The Vipers are way too high to try to defend themselves. They sit and shut up while their VP clutches his leg, whimpering like a little bitch.