by J Bree
"Mon Monstre! You're early!" She calls out from her cocoon on the couch.
I grin at her, loving the excitement in her, and I shuck my jacket off. A quick check of my clothes says I'm blood and dirt free so I stalk right over to her on the couch. She looks warm and safe, happy and fucking pliant.
Perfect.
That's exactly how my girl should always be.
"I got you something, baby girl."
She straightens, carefully and slowly, but her eyes dance in excitement. The fucking joy in her... fuck, maybe killing her last buyer herself was the last piece of the puzzle. The puzzle of putting her back together, not to be the same girl she was before... nah, she's something else entirely now. Strong, confident, assured.
Worshiped like the goddess she is.
"What is it, mon Monstre? You coming home early is enough for me." She murmurs but she's grinning so wide I know I did the right thing stopping off.
My baby girl needed a little something.
I hand over the brown paper bag and wait while she slowly opens it up, carefully sliding her finger underneath the tape like it's a precious resource and not just something the art shop does.
She gasps and my dick stands at a-fucking-ttention.
I'm really fucking into those sounds coming out of her.
Fuck, I need to get my ass into the shower and wash the night off of me because I need to eat her out on the coffee table until she's gasping and clenching around my tongue.
"Mon Monstre! It's beautiful! How- how did you know this is something I wanted? I love it!"
She turns the art journal over in her hands, stroking at the embossed leather.
"Come on now, you know I always know what you need, baby girl. This way you can keep all of your sketches in one place and you don’t need to worry about me seeing your shit before you’re ready or losing anything.”
Her eyes fill with tears but I know they're the right kind. The kind where I've done exactly what she needs and there’s too much going on in that perfect head of hers so it's gotta come out somewhere.
I still don't love them but I don't rage out over it either.
She smiles at me and then her eyes shift but to the TV and the smile slides off of her face, a little frown starting up on her brow instead.
I shift to look over at the news and see it.
Another lily corpse.
"Why would someone do that?" she murmurs, the frown deepening.
I shrug. "People are sick, baby girl."
I don't mention that I've seen one of the victims up close, not even when her face flashes up on the screen. Fuck, she looks different on the big screen.
She's a senator's wife.
I mean, I knew she had to be a big deal when I got an eyeful of the shoes but fuck... serial killers usually stick to lower profile prey.
They show a press conference with the senator, the grief on his face a real thing. Fuck man.
"He doesn't look like he's done it. Usually they say it's the husband," Odie murmurs, and I grin at her.
"I can tell you for fucking certain it's almost always the husband, baby girl, but you're right. That's real grief, he’s not the serial killer. Change the channel, you don't need to be watching this shit."
I don't want her nightmares starting up again. They always make me feel like a fucking failure but I never speak a word of that to her, I just hold her though it all.
I set the pizza down on the kitchen table as I walk through to the bathroom to clean up.
The alarm stops me.
Odie doesn’t panic but she gets up from the couch and walks into the bedroom behind me. “Are you expecting someone?”
“No. Grab your gun and wait on the other side of the bed, baby, I’ll take care of it.”
She nods and pulls up the sweater she’s draped in, grabbing her piece from the holster on her thigh. I don’t even get the chance to appreciate how fucking hot the move is as I stalk out of the apartment, locking the door and taking the stairs three at a time to go rip the guts out of whichever dickheads just showed up at my fucking door.
I see the Bentley and curse under my breath.
What the fuck is the Crow doing on the south side of the Bay for anything other than a Twelve meeting, let alone showing up at my fucking door?
The driver parks up and gets out to open the back door as if the Crow is some sort of fucking god and not a crime lord in the slums of the Bay.
I could fucking choke.
The Crow looks out of place here in his fucking suit as he steps out, walking over to me like he isn’t in danger of losing his fucking intestines for showing up here without an invite. “I have a job for you."
I scoff and cross my arms. I don't need work from the Crow, the secretive fuck who wouldn't know what struggle is. He's a prince playing a pauper and I'm not about to help some rich boy playing gangster out.
"I have information you need. I have the whereabouts of Alcatron."
I pause with my hand on the car door. Well fuck. I've run out of fucking leads on the cartel, I need every bit of help I can get now and this is the last fucking piece. "What's the job?"
"I need a man brought to me. He has a lot of security, plenty of men you'll have to kill to get to him, but I need him alive and unharmed."
It's an easy enough job. Doesn't matter how many guys he has, I can get through them all, one way or another. "If the information you give me leads me to Alcatron I’ll do it. I'm paying on delivery, I've been fucked over with this too many times."
The Crow shrugs. "I trust you'll do it. Now you're out from under the Jackal I’m sure you’ll be true to your word. If you do it for me before the end of the week, I’ll throw in a hundred grand for the job."
It kills me not to shoot him for this disrespect. D'Ardo might have been a deceitful fuck but I've always followed through. I've never bailed on a job, even when it wasn't my style, and to have him say that shit to me, fuck I want to bleed him out for it. I want to bathe in his blood.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and he jerks his head in the direction of the sound. "The information is there, for your job and mine. Contact me once you're finished with your work with the cartel and we can arrange a time and place for the pick up. I need him alive, Butcher."
I nod and step back into the warehouse, checking the security cams until I see the car disappear into the night and then checking that the alarms are set.
Then I walk upstairs to my girl and forget about all the shit I have left to get done. There’s dinner hot on the table and a new painting to admire.
That’s all I need.
--
The cul-de-sac is exactly what Odie described to me.
The neighbors all look away at the sight of my Mustang and all of the bikers driving up behind me as we pull up to the address. The place looks like a normal house on the inside but I’m expecting a fucking nightmare on the inside.
I brought fresh steaks for the dogs.
I get out of the car and palm both of my guns, ready to shoot my way through and get it over with. I’d texted through the photos of Odie’s paintings to be sure everyone knows which men I need alive.
No one gets their deaths but me.
The front door bursts open and three armed cartel men walk out, guns in their hands as they shout in Spanish at us. Harbin’s face splits into an evil grin, the one he wears when shit is personal and it’s then that I’m reminded that he knew Mike well and the brutal death by savage dogs of his Unseen brother had not gone unnoticed.
He pulls out a knife and Roxas whoops with excitement, fucking thrilled that his brother is ready to spill blood like his name suggests.
The yelling gets louder as Harbin approaches then finally one of them fires at him, hitting him square in the chest but with the Kevlar on and the rage pumping through him he barely registers the shot, his feet still moving and his own war cry tearing out of his chest.
He takes down the guy in the middle, a knife to his throat as he blows out his
carotid artery in one move. The other two are struck dumb by the sight of their friend’s blood pumping out of his neck like a fucking firehose, covering them all in the shower of hot, red spatters. He slices them both open at the backs of their knees, their screams loudly echoing through the night air of the neighborhood.
No one comes to help them.
You reap what you motherfucking sow.
I watch as he takes his time carving them up, stabbing them so fucking hard I can hear as their bones snap underneath the blows, and finally I turn to Roxas. “I think he has some shit to work through.”
He gives me a lopsided grin back. “You think? He’s been holding it all in, saving it up for tonight. We both want these guys dead for what they did to that idiot Mike but for what they did to your angel with those big sad eyes? Nah, we want them screaming.”
The other bikers shift on their feet, clearly less into the blood-soaked plan but that’s why they’re the Boar’s bitches and not my friends. Bitches who only use bullets aren’t real fucking men in my opinion. The hot spray of blood on your face when you carve a man up is true fucking joy.
I stop fantasizing about killing men and move forward to actually do it.
There’s men everywhere as we enter and even the maids that my girl warned me about who start screaming the second Harbin walks in like some fucking nightmare. I deal with them quickly, trying not to think about which fucking one of them held Odie’s motherfucking chain while Alcatron raped her because that might just set me the fuck off and butchering women isn’t really my style.
Bullets between their eyes is though.
We clear the place in twenty minutes and we only find three of the six rapists. I get them naked and hog-tied, kneeling on the floor in the dining room. The entire fucking room has my blood boiling in rage, every detail of it exactly how my girl described.
Even the salivating dogs.
I get Harbin to clean up his mess at the front door a little, just enough that when Alcatron and the other two get back they won’t just high tail it out of here.
Then we wait.
I would wait here all fucking fucking night if I have to but luckily it only takes an hour for the last of the Alcatron cartel to arrive home.
The door opens and they walk in, faltering and swearing in Spanish at the blood. I keep the smirk off of my face at the sound of their shock and fury.
I want them pissed off. I want them fucking seething because it’ll only make this that much sweeter.
I stick the cigarette between my lips and light it, sucking in a deep lungful of smoke and holding it in my chest so I feel the burn. The smell wafts through this hellhole and I know the second the cartel smell it. It calls to them, leading them straight to where I’m sitting at the head of the table, right in Alcatron’s seat. I’m the fucking picture of relaxed, my arms loose and my feet planted in the carpets like there aren’t twelve men armed to their teeth stalking into the room in anger at the carnage that’s been left for them.
The dogs chained to the wall behind me growl, but I lean down to pick up the severed hand at my feet, tossing it over for them to fight over. They downed the steaks in a matter of seconds when we arrived and now I’m getting them to start the clean up.
“¿Quien fregados eres, y que estas haciendo en mi casa?”
I don’t speak a lick of Spanish so I ignore him, sucking on my cigarette like I couldn’t give less of a fuck about them all.
It’s half-true.
I care a helluva lot about their sins and the penance they’ll pay. I care about their screaming, blood-soaked deaths, and their hearts sitting in my jars. My hands itch for my cleavers, for the bone saw and the fucking filet knife I have waiting for them but I wait. Patience is key and their deaths are going to be worth every fucking second of searching and all of the favors I’ve called in. Fuck, I’d have bankrupted myself just to get this fucking moment.
I don’t care about their weapons and the threat that they pose… not at all, because I have everything I fucking need right here. I have my own weapons and enough surprises waiting for them.
Alcatron speaks again but I shake my head at him.
“We both know you speak English, Alcatron. Now is the time to start pleading for your worthless life.”
His nostrils flare at me and when he speaks spit comes flying out of his mouth, “My life? Pendejo, you are forgetting you are in my house, surrounded by my men, sitting in my motherfucking chair. You are the one who is about to die.”
He moves like he’s going for the gun strapped to his hip but the cold barrel of Roxas’s gun pressing against the base of his skull stops him.
The smirk on my face only gets wider.
“You think I’d spend fucking months looking for this little rock of yours, the one you hide under, just to show up here and let you kill me? Nah, that’s not my style.”
Harbin and Roxas move to disarm all of the men, the other Unseen moving without orders to strip the cartel until all six of the rapists are on their knees without a fucking stitch of clothing between them.
The Unseen kill the rest, bullets in their brains executioner style.
“All of this over some puta? Only weak men fall in line over a woman.”
Maybe I’ll carve his tongue out with his heart to give to my girl, hand over that organ in his head that just keeps stoking the flames of my rage higher and higher.
“You rapists keep saying that shit to me but I’m sitting here, clothed and in control, while you’re over there with your pencil dick out and your knees shaking because you know you’re about to die. Lemme tell you, Alcatron, you’re not afraid enough yet.”
Harbin smirks and uses his boot to shove Alcatron face-first onto the ground. “Crawl, cunt.”
He shoves himself back up to his kneeling position and sneers at me, “Just fucking do it then! Be a fucking man and kill me, pendejo”
I lean forward in his chair. “She told me everything, you know. I know what you made her do. Crawl your ass over here or I’ll set your own dogs onto you. They answer to me now, cunt.”
He lifts his chin at me in defiance, the type I don’t want to see out of him right now and I finally lose my cool a little.
I pull my gun out and aim it at his head. He smirks, happy with the quick and easy death he thinks he’s about to get, and the smirk I give him back is laced with poisons and sharp blades. I lower the gun until it’s aimed over his heart, pausing long enough that the smirk falters a little and then I aim lower. He blanches but I don’t give him time to argue.
I shoot him in the dick.
Correction: I shoot his filthy, rapist, pin-dick right off.
The screams he gives out are like fucking ecstasy hitting my bloodstream, the type of high that can only come from destroying the men that hurt my girl.
The other men all clutch at their own dicks, gasping and murmuring to each other in Spanish as the blood from their boss’s mangled genitals seeps into the carpet and the pool begins to spread out towards them.
“Crawl, Alcatron. Crawl to me and accept your death.”
When the screams from him finally dry up the color is gone from his face. His skin looking waxy and the sweat pouring from his face mixing with the tears streaming from his eyes. I stare down at him with the grim satisfaction of a man who has seen the depths of hell to make it out on the other side with a gun in one hand and a list of men to die in the other.
My girl deserves every fucking cartel heart in this room. She deserves them all and more.
By the end of the torture and their deaths I have six new hearts in jars and the Unseen have a whole new appreciation for the Butcher of the Bay.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Odie
I paint all night and by dawn mon Monstre still isn’t home. I feel the fingers of dread up my spine but after I shower to wash off the paint I find a text message from him on my phone.
Everything is fine baby girl. I’ll be home late, don’t wait up.
I know
what he went out tonight to do so I’m not shocked he’s going to be late but I know how dangerous the streets of the Bay really are, so there will always be that underlying fear bubbling in my gut when he goes out.
I triple-check the locks and the security system before I head back to our bedroom. I leave my gun on the nightstand and I tuck one of the switchblades under my pillow, the unease of knowing all of the evil in the world always present. The sheets are cold without him in the bed with me, so I cover myself in his clothes and tuck my face into his pillow until I’m surrounded by his scent. The tension in me slowly eases out until I drift off, the blackout curtains on the window rendering the room into complete darkness.
I’m woken hours later by the stroke of fingers across my face and the low murmur of his voice, a calming balm on my soul.
“What a fucking sight to come home to. You look like an angel spread out on my pillow like that, baby girl.”
I smile before I open my eyes, stretching out my back and giggling as his eyes roam over my chest. I’m completely covered but the way he looks at me… you’d think I was wearing the finest of silks and lace. He strips the blankets away from my body and slowly inches the sweater up my body. I finally get a good look at him and my breath catches in my throat.
He’s standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still wet from the shower and little droplets are working their way down his heavily tattooed chest.
“How was your day, mon Monstre?” I murmur, my voice heavy and slurred a little with sleep. My accent is stronger when I first wake up and the slow smirk over his face has him looking like the devil, here to consume my soul for a favor.
“Baby girl, you sound like a wet fucking dream. How about you teach me some more of that language of yours, have me talking to you in those smooth words?”
He urges me to sit up enough for him to strip the sweater off, and he groans at the lush swell of my breasts as I lay back down. I smile back at him, pushing the sweatpants off and leaving my entire body bared to him.