Being Arno Mackenzie’s “guest” comes with the perk of a fully furnished apartment above the pub. It’s small but clean, something I’ve learned to appreciate after the shared quarters of a maximum-security prison. It’s a rare luxury to have your own toilet to piss in. Even rarer to take a shower without jostling for a spigot with twenty other men.
Arno himself claims to have his own place close by, but after the first night, I’m in no mood to reminisce. I spend the first night alone. Back before, I’d troll the city, keeping an ear to the ground for information, or I’d scrounge up old allies who might not run at the sight of me. For what it’s worth, I avoid the bar, but I don’t have to for one fact to become crystal clear.
Arno wasn’t embellishing shit, for once. Espi doesn’t want to see me. He lives at Mulligans as well, from what Arno would tell me, but in twenty-four hours I have a better chance of forming a relationship with the roaches that scuttle in the corners than I do of reconnecting with my suddenly “adult” kid brother.
The brush-off leaves me antsy. Espi knew better than anyone that I hated to be ignored. I preferred a man to face me head-on rather than sulk in the fucking shadows. Van Hallen. Arno. They didn’t know shit. Espi was still the same punk kid I’d left behind, pouting in the corners.
I’d given him long enough. Impatient and restless, I head down to the bar, just after midnight, descending the single rickety staircase that separates the two levels. It opens onto a back room behind the bar counter, beside the kitchen.
On the previous night, I’d heard enough noise seep through the floors to know that Arno liked to keep a full house, but tonight, the pub itself is nearly deserted. Only Francisco and Arno sit at the counter. The latter rests his head in his hands, but I knew enough to suspect—despite how much he liked to knock back—the man wasn’t stupid or suicidal enough to get drunk out in the open.
“What’s wrong?”
Spotting me, Francisco rises to his feet. “Arno...”
“Leave him.” Arno raises his hand, slicing the air with it. Like a good dog, his man falls back, but not without fixing me with a hostile glare I graciously return.
“What the hell is going on?” It isn’t too often that a man went from a “brother’s” welcome to spooking the puppies overnight. Typically, that kind of swift change came on the heels of a murder or two. “Where’s Espi?”
“Espi.” Arno releases a harsh bark of laughter as he pulls himself upright. His eyes are red. Bloodshot. Even back in the day, he never sampled his own product. The only other explanation is that the bastard had been...crying. “Where’s Espi. Where’s Parish?” he growls.
“Parish?” I frown. Only twelve hours ago did the man kick his sister out on the street when she tried to ask me for money. “In an alley, somewhere?” I guess, taking a stab in the fucking dark. “Getting high? I don’t fucking know.”
Arno laughs again, but the sound comes out dangerously unsteady. He’s the mad-dog gnawing at his leash this time. “Getting high,” he snarls. In one smooth motion, he’s on his feet, facing me with his stance open, his hands clenching into fists. “You want to take that back, Dante.”
“Arno.” Francisco, the dog, has enough sense to step back. “Arno. Try to keep a clear head. You don’t—”
“The fuck if you know what I don’t want to do.” Fire gleams in the redhead’s eyes. He’s burning—itching—for a fight. To beat something or someone bloody with his fists. To bare his teeth. Growl. Bite.
Don’t I fucking know the feeling? My blood boils. My fingertips burn. They ache. I can’t stop flexing them. I’m hungry for a battle. Fuck that; I crave it.
But I’m not an idiot.
“Listen to him, Arno.” I jerk my head in Francisco’s direction. “Sit back down.”
“I will,” Arno growls, the muscles in his arms straining. “Just as soon as you take back that shit you just said about my goddamn sister.”
I don’t hesitate. “No.”
With an unrestrained roar, Arno lunges, and I’m ready for him. My fist tightens eagerly, and I let it fly into his stomach, driving every ounce of air from his lungs. The blow lands harder than I’d meant it to. Harsher. He wheezes and swipes at my head with an open palm. It’s child’s play to duck it, and I land another blow on the center of his chest that sends him backward, sprawling against the counter.
“Stop!” Francisco steps in between us. His stance isn’t hostile to me as he places a restraining hand on Arno’s shoulder, but it’s almost too hard to silence the lust that rises up so fierce and so hard that I can feel it taking shape around me. The buzzing begins at the back of my skull, swelling to a deafening hum that won’t be silenced until I beat Arno’s face into a pulp. Until I smash his fucking face into the counter. Until I feel his blood on my hands. They curl, hungry for that slick, intoxicating heat. And I want—need—to feed that itch.
“Dante.”
I shrug off the voice that battles with the steady pulse taking residence in my brain. It’s a chant, almost. Fight. Punch. Bleed. Kill.
“Dante.” It’s Arno calling me this time. There’s blood on his chin, but I’m not sure how or why. My knuckles ache. I’d only registered two punches, but the twinge in my shoulder warns me that it was several more. “Dante,” Arno tries again. He spits out a mouthful of blood onto the floor, which is dark enough to obscure the violent coloring. “Parish...she’s...fuck, Dante, she’s dead. Parish is dead.”
“What?” I shake my head, desperate to clear it. It’s too confusing to jump from violence to blood and then death.
“She’s dead,” Arno says, almost as if to himself. His hand fumbles along the bar until he finds a discarded glass and he downs whatever is inside it. “How the fuck am I supposed to tell our mother? Those bastards didn’t even...”
“Who?” My voice ripples over that familiar, low tone. Clarity returns in snatches, but my fingers aren’t shaking at least. “What happened to her? Mack?”
“No, not him. These other bastards—” Arno breaks off, and something cold fills his gaze. “I didn’t want to bother you with this. I know this isn’t your fight, but—”
“I’m in.” Parish. Stupid fucking Parish. So, busy trying to act older than she was, but still too fucking young to die. If it was Mack who got her, then some other drug dealer probably gutted her when she couldn’t pay—if she hadn’t put a needle in her arm first. It’s cruel, but not unexpected, though I don’t know why Arno seems so caught off guard. He understood the fire his sister liked to play with. Hell, some might even say that he was the one to inject it into her veins in the first place, considering the business he dealt with.
But no. Arno seems too raw. Too broken. Parish wasn’t killed at random.
“I’m in,” I repeat, giving the word a vicious edge. “Whatever you need.”
“Good.” He nods once. Then he turns and heads for the back of the bar, jerking his head for Francisco and me to follow. “I’ll need someone to help me clean up the mess.”
Arno heads to the basement of Mulligans. There’s a door off the rear entryway near the fire exit. One of his men stands guard. There’s a Glock in one of his pockets and a knife tucked in the other. He doesn’t attempt to disguise the telltale bulges of either weapon, and his gaze is icy. Parish may have been a nuisance, but loyalty to Arno makes her death everyone’s burden to bear.
“It came a few hours ago,” Arno’s saying as he leads the way down a wooden set of stairs. “Fuck. S-She...” He shakes his head, squaring his shoulders as if preparing to barrel through the closed door awaiting us at the base of the steps. Instead, he knocks on it once with the broadside of his fist, and the door is opened almost immediately from the inside.
“She’s here,” a man says as Arno moves past him, ushering Francisco and me into a large, open area where more men lurk in the corners like guard dogs. The only light comes from rows of fluorescent lights attached to the ceiling. The walls are gray, nothing more than painted cement. The floors appear to be poured concrete. There’s none of the comfort or care that decorates the upper interior of Mulligans. The barroom is for show. This place is for business.
“Well, where the fuck is she?” Arno demands. He cranes his neck and makes a show of glancing around the room on a scavenger hunt for a woman hidden among the slew of men. I follow his gaze. He has about ten bodies here—for show, I suspect. Whoever this guest of honor is, Arno wants to make quite the impression.
The only furniture is a metal folding chair placed in the center of the room, beside a matching table and a laptop. It’s flipped open, the screen displaying a blank blue desktop.
“They’re on their way in,” one of the men says, and Arno begins to pace, raking his fingers through his mane of hair.
Maybe five minutes pass before the door leading to the stairway finally opens.
“Did anyone see you?” Arno demands of the figure at the door before they can even enter the room. “Were you followed?”
His voice prickles with suspicion. He’s on edge. His hair gleams like a flame, and the man himself seems just as untamable, liable to set everything he touches on fire.
“No one saw,” another man replies, his voice gruff. “I got her. The driver’s been paid off. It went as planned.”
I’m expecting a man to appear from the shadows of the doorway. Not a woman. She’s small, slender, and dressed as if for a party. Her black hair is piled on top of her head, displaying a slim throat. Her dress is short, paired with a cleavage-baring neckline, but if Arno had decided to mourn his sister by ordering a high-class call girl, she doesn’t seem to be the type. She looks too young, for one. Her lips are painted red, but they do little to combat the smattering of freckles across her nose or the innocence that wafts from her skin like perfume. I’d peg her at twenty, tops. The color of snow, her skin gleams beneath the fluorescent lighting, though I figure the paleness of it has something to do with the gun being pressed against the back of her head.
“Arno...what the fuck is this?”
He doesn’t bother to answer me. Instead, he grins as the woman is marched across the room by the gun-wielder who I recognize as one of his men. Dall. “Sit her down,” Arno commands, jerking his chin at the table.
The woman is shoved down onto the metal seat, though she does her best to regain her composure. Her legs cross politely at the ankles, her hands settling primly on her lap. She could be at a fucking tea party if it weren't for her expression. Fixated on the laptop screen, her eyes are dead, staring far away at something that isn’t there.
“Arno...” I don’t know whether to intervene or merely watch. There’s something hypnotic about the entire scene. Something intoxicating. And I fucking hate having to admit it to myself. The urgency calls to the beast inside of me who stirs hungrily, sniffing at the air. The threat of violence is as irresistible as it is disgusting. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Language, Dante,” Arno playfully scolds. “We have a guest.” His eyes continue to smolder. He’s amped up on something more potent than alcohol—it’s rage. Like venom, it taints his every word, and I stare down at the seated woman on whom he seems to project most of his wrath. She doesn’t seem capable of murder, but I know without even having to ask that whatever is going on has everything to do with Parish. “Play the fucking tape,” Arno snarls, but his voice slips an unsteady octave. His bottom jaw trembles and he clenches both tightly in an attempt to hide it. “Now, damn it!”
The man with the gun keeps it trained on the woman with one hand, while he leans over her and fiddles with the keys on the laptop with the other. The screen turns black, and then the still image of a woman appears. Over her face hovers a white sideways triangle enclosed in a circle. The universal symbol for Play. The moment the video begins, I know why Arno’s so unsteady. Why his men sport the looks of wolves eager to hunt.
The video’s star stares dead into the camera. Her hair hangs dank and limp down her shoulders, and her green eyes are vacant but steady. She’s high, but not to the point where she can’t feel any fear. “Arno...” She inhales, her voice trembling. Someone behind the camera must be holding up something for her to read because she squints. “T-this is what happens...”
“Keep going,” someone grunts, their face unseen.
Parish flinches. Her tongue shoots out to wet her lips before she tries again. “Arno, this is what happens when you—oh God.” A hand seizes her hair, yanking her head back, and the camera pans out to reveal the figure standing behind her. He’s tall. Parish, hunched over on her knees, barely comes up to his waist. Dressed in a black, tailored suit, he doesn’t seem like the sort to solicit the favors of a coke whore. He’s young, maybe thirty, but there’s an agelessness in his dark eyes. Slicked-back brown hair frames a broad forehead anchored by a square jaw. His nose is crooked—like it’s been broken one too many times. Behind him is a nondescript backdrop of white walls and tiled flooring. I scope out every detail, but it’s no use. They could be anywhere.
“This is what happens when you fuck with the wrong man,” he says. The line is cliché, but his delivery is almost enough to erase the corny-ass phrasing. An accent lurks in his words, but it’s like a knife’s edge, honed sharp and impossible to place. “Enjoy the show.”
He shoves Parish forward, and another man enters the shot. His back is to the camera, but with a chuckle, he undoes his pants and lets them fall around his ankles. Parish whimpers when he waltzes over to her, but her cries are soon muffled when he takes her by the back of the head and...
“Jesus Christ, Arno!” I’m moving forward, reaching for the laptop. “Turn it off—”
“No!” Arnos’s shout mingles with the woman’s. She’s sitting straighter, her eyes glued to the screen. Arno doesn’t seem to notice when he lunges for her and grabs her by the nape of her neck.
“This little bitch is going to watch. Every fucking minute of it.” He shoves her forward, nearly throwing her out of the chair. With a grunt, she braces her hands against the table, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the screen as the bastard continues to shove his cock down Parish’s throat. Seconds into it, Parish struggles. She chokes when he goes too far. Laughing, the man pulls out of her mouth, only to stand behind her. Bending down, he tugs at her jeans, winking for the camera.
I memorize every inch of the bastard’s face. My blood hums, singing its bitter melody. I feel rage burn slowly through every nerve in my body, centralizing in my fingers—but without anyone to take it out on, it builds like the pressure in a teakettle.
“Arno,” I manage to grit out before my vision goes fully red. “Don’t watch this shit.”
“I need to,” he says hoarsely, but his eyes are unfocused. Unsteady. I can only imagine how many fucking times he’s “watched” it, playing this scene over and over in his mind.
There are more men in that room, twelve of them at least. They appear from the periphery, circling Parish while the first bastard succeeds in getting her pants off.
“Fuck.”
They show no mercy. They’re ruthless, like the animals we all pretend to be. At one point, Parish screams so loudly that the sound comes through the speakers only as static.
“Arno.”
He doesn’t look at me, but he’s no longer facing the screen, either. He shoves the woman forward until her nose nearly brushes the screen while his eyes remain fixed on the wall. They’re red and well up with moisture with every pathetic cry his sister makes—but he grits his teeth rather than let them fall. The rest of his men fare no better. In fact, the only one who seems to be at rapt attention to the gruesome movie is the woman in the black dress, her face a mask.
The man with the gun to her head has his eyes averted from the screen. His hand shakes, his finger quivering over the trigger.
“Give me the gun.” I snatch it from him before he can comply. “You’ll blow her fucking head off.”
The woman doesn’t seem to notice or give a damn as to her impending death. She watches the men take turns abusing Parish. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t cringe. Her eyes are almost thoughtful; it’s like she’s taking fucking notes. How much abuse can another woman take before she starts screaming for her mother?
It’s unsettling watching her. Almost as unsettling as it is watching Arno. His fingers tighten around the woman’s neck. He has her nose brushing the glass now. There’s too much fire in his eyes. When Parish moans his name, it’s like tipping a gallon of gasoline on an already raging blaze.
“Don’t,” I say, and he glances down in shock. It’s as if he didn’t even realize that his fingers had encircled her throat entirely, pressing into the white flesh. The woman makes a strangled sound, but her eyes never leave the laptop screen. On her lap, her fingers flutter, but then she laces them together tight as if fighting the instinctive urge to resist the suffocating pressure. She’s entirely willing to sit there patiently while he kills her. “Arno...”
He flinches. His knuckles pop, turning white. Then he lets go, and the woman slumps forward, gasping for air. “I can’t...” He stares down at his hands. For a second, I don’t even recognize him. He’s a stranger, silhouetted against his sister’s screams and the curses and jeers of the men who torment her. It’s a dark game we play: this tip-toe around sanity. Arno’s close to losing whatever shred of it he has left, and some sick part of me almost wants him to. Misery fucking loves company, after all.
“Stop.” It takes more effort than I’d like to admit to stalk forward and brace my hand against the back of the laptop’s lid. “Turn this shit off—”
“No.” The protest doesn’t come from Arno this time. The woman on the chair clutches her throat with one hand and bats my fingers away with the other. There’s something almost regal in the motion. She’s a fucking little queen, unwilling to be denied her entertainment. I don’t know whether to be pissed or impressed by her tenacity. Who the hell is she?
Arno doesn’t seem capable of giving me any answers. His eyes are on the floor. He’s shaking his head slowly from right to left. Then left to right. “I’ve never asked you for anything,” he says heatedly, “Never. But Dante—”
He doesn’t even need to ask. “Go.” I cut my gaze over to the door. Then I cock the gun and aim it in the vicinity of the woman’s head. “I’ll watch her.”
He staggers toward the stairs without question, but when his eyes meet mine again from over his shoulder, the lion stares back. “Make sure she watches every fucking bit of it.” He palms the doorknob and gestures to the rest of his men. “Everyone out.”
They leave, though it’s hard to register the movement when my eyes are focused on the girl. She’s leaning forward again, her ass nearly out of the chair completely. Her prim little lips are pursed, her gaze steely. It doesn’t seem to bother her one fucking bit, the sight of two men using Parish’s limp body at once.
For what it’s worth, I can’t fucking watch it.
Two hours. That’s how long the video lasts. The laptop’s almost out of power by the time the final man takes his turn with a motionless Parish. The machine protests its overuse with a steady beep that cuts through the guttural sounds issuing from the video. I turn to the screen just as a prompt warning 2% battery remaining flashes across it and the video cuts off on a still of Parish’s body, lying naked and lifeless on the floor. Someone had thrown syringes onto the floor in front of her, each one filled with amber liquid.
Slamming the screen shut so hard something cracks is the only thing I can do to preserve her dignity. The violence of the motion makes the woman seated before me jump. She blinks as if snapping out of a trance. Her mouth opens for a sharp intake of air. Then, she laughs. The sound trickles out of her, low and unsteady. Then louder. High pitched. Her body jerks with the force of it, and she winds up slumped, face down against the table, giggling hysterically. Helpless, her hands flutter at her sides, the fingers circling and uncurling as if she doesn’t fucking know what to do with them. With herself.
It’s as chilling as watching a pack of hyenas cackle after a kill. She’s drunk on the violence and high off the bloodshed. Every brutal, violent image is etched onto her skin, and the bitch just can’t stop giggling as she takes it all in.
It’s only when she seems to run out of air that the sound finally dies off. She inhales brokenly instead, writhing with each breath. Her face tilts until she’s looking at me, her eyes bloodshot, her hair a mess. There are tears rolling down her cheeks and snot on her chin. “Is that...is that what you’re going to do to me?” she asks when she catches her breath. Like the first man on the video, she has an accent that I can’t place. “Is it?”
I don’t answer her. Arno does for me.
“Yes.” He’s returned, guarding the doorway to the stairs like some beast straight out of Hades itself. There’s a cold, icy gleam in his eye that I know well. Hell, I helped put it there. The puppy and the kitty cut their teeth on the same milk bones, back in the day, honing their shared lust for blood. “I’m going to do exactly that and send it to your fucking fiancé. But not without giving him a little appetizer first.”
He flexes his right hand, and the knife he holds in it catches the light. It has a wicked edge, and when he reaches the table, he shoves the computer out of the way and stands directly across from the woman. “Hold her still,” he tells me.
I can’t fight that part of me that bristles at the order, but even I can forgive a grieving bastard for forgetting his place. I reach down, bracing one hand on the woman’s shoulder, not that she struggles. Slowly, she pulls herself upright, sitting pretty once again. Her eyes trace the blade Arno waves in her face. She doesn’t flinch. It’s only when he reaches for her arm that she moves at all, jerking out of his reach.
“Not my hands,” she says hoarsely. “Not my fingers.” She accompanies the command by reaching up to brush a strand of dark hair behind her right ear. Then she tugs pointedly at the earlobe. Her message is simple but crystal clear: take this instead.
Arno grimaces. I don’t know if it’s in shock at her brazen request or the fact that the little princess just took all the fun out of his torture. She doesn’t seem scared shitless by the threat of the blade. She merely requests we not cut off her goddamn fingers first.
Once again, a single question crosses my mind, more fiercely than before. Just who the fuck is she? Your fucking fiancé, Arno had said to her. I picture the man in the video again, the one in the suit with the crooked nose. Was that him?
The girl has a ring on her left hand. The diamond in the center of it almost spans the width of her entire finger. Whoever her fiancé is, he certainly isn’t a poor motherfucker.
“You don’t make the fucking rules of this game, bitch,” Arno snarls. But it’s increasingly apparent that he can’t make good on his threat. His hand shakes too badly. The rage is back, consuming his gaze and swallowing him down whole. Before the girl can react, he lunges across the table and snatches her forearm. He yanks her forward, nearly dragging her across the table. Her feet dangle in the air, the black heels scraping the floor.
Grunting, Arno eyes her skin, hefting the knife. I doubt he’ll be satisfied with just a finger. No. He’ll take her whole hand. Her arm. And something tells me that he’ll want her alive long enough for her “fiancé” to get the message.
“Give me the knife.” I hold out my hand, forcing Arno to make eye contact.
He shakes his head. “This is my fight, Dante—”
“Give me the knife.” Something in my tone makes him back down. He lets the woman go, shoving her onto the chair. Then he slams the knife against my palm, blade side down. I hiss at the burning pain, but I curl my fingers around the blade and switch it to my dominant hand.
I’m like a butcher, hunting for the finest cut of meat when I trail my gaze along the woman’s fingers. They’re slim, slender, and she curls them up tight beneath my gaze. In the end, I don’t know what makes me seize her earlobe between my thumb and forefinger instead. She has a diamond stud in each one, and the gleaming head serves as the perfect guide for when I start to cut.
I make it quick. One firm slice and her earlobe is in my fingers. She whines, smothering the sound beneath a pale hand before it even seems to fully leave her throat.
“Here.” I throw it on the table toward Arno who just stares down at the severed bit of flesh. His fingers shake, but after swallowing hard, he reaches down and captures it in his fist. “Take her,” he says while circling around the table, his eyes on the door.
“Where?”
Arno shrugs. “With you. Any-fucking-where but here. Take her upstairs. My men are too riled. I need her alive, and…” He stops in his tracks, and his entire body rises with the force of his inhale. “You’re the only one I can trust. It’s only for a few hours anyway—” he shrugs and looks back at me, his expression the grim mixture of a smile and a grimace. “She’ll be gone tomorrow.”
I force her to walk up two flights of stairs, and into the apartment Arno let me crash in. She staggers, leaving a trail of blood the entire way but I don’t bother to disguise it. Let Arno get the mess. I hope he has to get on his fucking hands and knees with bleach to erase every trace of her. Maybe then he’d remember that “babysitter” wasn’t listed on my fucking resume.
She’s silent when I shove her through the narrow living room without bothering to turn on the light. I sense her body stiffen. She’s pale enough to glow in the dark when I shut the door behind me and twist the lock.
A true monster would get off on her fear. The pain makes her sway. Blood dribbles down her neck, emanating from her like perfume. A part of me can’t resist breathing it in. Then I surge forward and shove her down the hallway before she can bleed all over the fucking floor.
“Get into the tub.” I grit out the command while I flick on the bathroom light and drag her into the narrow space by her forearm. It’s a tight fucking fit. She has to practically climb over the toilet in order to obey me. With one hand, she clutches at her bleeding ear and eyes the basin of the tub with a wary expression. Her free hand slides down her hip to tug at the hem of her dress, and I imagine her trying to decide the most ladylike course of action to climb inside it.
I make the decision for her and ram my open palm against her shoulder. She goes down hard, smacking her chin off the tiled wall, but she curls up on her side, small enough to fit inside the coffin-like space with room to spare.
Blood wells up beneath her. Already her eyes are unfocused, drifting up to the ceiling. Frowning, I snatch a towel from the nearby rack and throw it toward her. “Put pressure on it,” I tell her while I crane my neck back to take in the mess she’s already made all over the floor. Arno won’t be the only one forced to scrub tonight. Fuck.
The girl curls her fingers obediently around the edge of the white towel, but she doesn’t move. She eyes the ceiling instead, and I leave her there, cutting off the light before I slam the door shut. Her blood spots the carpet. I can see it even in the darkness. I can smell it. I can smell her.
Ignoring both, I turn and enter the flat’s single bedroom. Then I slam the door shut and try to get some fucking sleep.