Chapter 17
Anton
Jamie thinks I won’t hurt him, he thinks I’m playing a game. “She was mine,” Jamie says it on repeat, and it makes me angry, and angrier. She was never his, ever. I laugh at him, because that’s all I can do while I prepare for what I’m about to do. He shakes his head as my hands grip the metal. “She wanted me, she has since the beginning.” He soon fucking changed his mind when I burned his skin, when I charred it so badly that it bubbled and turned black.
Now he knows better, he knows not to mock me and talk about Sam any longer because I’ll fry the fucker until all that remains is his charcoaled skin.
“You aren’t so smart now, are you?” Cutting his pants off he’s now butt-ass naked in the chair. Over his lips is duct tape, so I don’t have to listen to his pleas or his threats.
Heating up the metal cleaver, I step closer to him again and that’s when I hear it, her gasp.
It’s right near me this time—she isn’t on the phone any longer.
Turning around, I notice a large audience, and hers is the most shocked look. Sam looks to Jamie then back to me, then she drops to the floor. I dive for her, dropping the cleaver, and just manage to catch her head before it slams to the floor. Elina pushes through and touches her neck as I sit up, cradling her in my arms.
“Sam.” Her eyes start to stir open, and when she sees me, she tries to pull away but can’t because I have a firm hold on her. “Calm down, Sam.”
She takes a deep breath. “You’re in the mafia, aren’t you?”
I look back to Kazier who’s watching us.
Fuck it.
“We are the Bratva, sweetheart.”
“Fuck.” She swears, and it’s damn cute. She tries to move away from me, but I won’t let her. “You can’t kill him.” Sam looks past me as she sits up, and over to where I have Jamie tied up. “Maybe a little,” she whispers, making me laugh.
“You need to leave.”
“We need to talk,” Kazier says, looking down at Sam then back to me. I know what he’s going to say, I shouldn’t have done what I did. What I am about to do. But right now I don’t care. Yes, we are despicable. Yes, we have hardly any morals. I know all this. Though, if you hurt those close to us then be prepared, because not even God himself can save you from us. Not even a badge that gives you special privileges will make me stop.
“Talk.” Kazier looks down to me then back to Jamie.
“He’s a cop, Anton, a fucking detective.”
“I know.” His eyes go to Sam.
“She’s a civilian, Anton. You know what happens to those that talk,” Kazier tells me.
I feel her shaking in my arms.
“She won’t talk.”
“She better not.” Kazier looks back then reaches for his wife. “You have today to get rid of this mess you’ve created, then you’re not to work for a month, Anton… a fucking month.” He walks out, the rest following him apart from Death who stays where he is.
Sam looks up at Death gratefully—she doesn’t know the real reason he’s stayed behind, and it’s nothing to do with her. It’s all to do with the body I’m about to turn to ash.
“Go with Freya.” I pull her to a standing position, and Jamie moans loud in the back of his throat making her look past me to him. “Ignore him.” She looks back to me. “Go to Freya, and go home.”
“You’ll come after?” she asks in desperation.
“I’ll be there later.”
Sam turns, dropping my hand from hers, and starts to walk out of the house. I wait until the door is closed and the car starts up before I turn to face Jamie. Death stays where he is seated on a chair and tapping away on his cell phone, not caring. This isn’t his favorite part. His favorite part is to come, once my favorite part has played out.
“You’re in love,” Death mutters without looking up from his cell. I look at him and shake my head. He’s playing my game—Clash of Clans. Smartass picked on me for days for being addicted now he’s totally hooked himself.
“You don’t know shit,” I say to him as I walk off.
“No, maybe I don’t. But right there is a man tied to a chair, because what? You don’t care for the woman he hurt? Or you want to hurt him because of the woman he raped?”
My feet stop walking as I look down at Jamie. He was easy to capture, the fuckhead was parked outside of her house when I walked out. I was about to walk back in, but seeing him there made me even angrier. So a knock on the head and he was mine to take. His car was ditched and now here he’s tied to a chair and at my fucking mercy. Right where he fucking belongs.
“Shut up and play your fucking game.”
He grunts but doesn’t say anything else. The cleaver I was using on his skin is now on the floor. I rip the tape off his mouth and he looks up to me.
“Let me go, the police will be here soon.”
I shake my head with a smirk, walk back to the fireplace and place the steel end into it.
“She wanted it. You want to protect a woman that doesn’t want you?” He’s spitting words at me, but it’s not working.
“You raped her.”
Jamie’s head starts shaking.
Giving a little time for the cleaver to adequately heat, I stand up and pull it from the hot coals. He looks from the cleaver to me and tears start falling from his eyes, so I step closer.
“She wanted it?” My voice is deadly.
He cries.
“No, she didn’t, she didn’t fucking want it.”
His nipple is the first to be fried this time, the skin on his arm dark and fiery from earlier. Jamie’s scream rips through the house as I hold it there even longer than what’s needed, and when I lift it, it tears some skin off his chest as well. His screams continue to fill the house.
“My cadavers are so much better,” Death grumbles as I stand with the cleaver in hand. “They don’t scream,” he says, looking back to his cell phone.
“That’s because they’re dead, fuckhead.” I shake my head at him while trying to block out Jamie’s screams. “Will you shut the fuck up?” I direct the next statement to Death. “When did you become such a chatty Cathy anyway?” I ask Death, who’s now watching Jamie, shaking his head.
“Can you just shut him up? Better yet… kill him so I can go home.”
I turn to face Jamie. “You see that fuck over there?” I point my finger behind me to Death. “He wants to slice and dice you. You see, he hates the sound of people’s voices, other than his own today it seems.”
Jamie’s head starts shaking harder, his cries grow louder.
“You see I’m in a predicament, I want you dead just like he does, but my quandary is because you touched something that wasn’t yours. Took it like you were entitled to it.” I lean in close to his ear, dropping the cleaver and grabbing my pocket knife from my back pocket. “I want you to know something…” his breathing stops, “… you weren’t entitled to her from the minute my cock slid into her pussy because from then on out she wasn’t yours to touch, to look at, let alone to stalk. She. Was. Mine.” I take his ear, my sharp as a scalpel knife slides through the cartilage like butter.
“Fuck! You trying to take away my job?” Death complains from behind me.
“Seriously, seriously… why do you choose this moment to talk?”
Death shrugs then looks back to his game. “Maybe it’s ‘cause my cock is pierced, and I can’t get fucking laid,” he whines.
My hands go up in the air. “Seriously? Go and eat your wife’s pussy and shut up.”
He nods, smirking. “I do that… every night.” Then his forehead scrunches as he concentrates on the game a little more.
I turn back to Jamie. “I think he’s right, I can’t play forever. Boss’s orders and all. So while it’s sad to say for me, because you know, no more play time. But you, my rapist ass, are about to end up in barrels of acid, compliments of Death over there.”
Jamie’s cries stop. He sits up a little straighter, looking past me to the fucker behind me. Who now chooses to go back to his brooding. I just bring out the best in him, or maybe not, who knows, so I let out a chuckle.
“My partner will be looking for you. You can let me go, I won’t say anything.”
“Your partner can look all he wants, it doesn’t matter, he’ll never find you. No one ever finds our dead, it’s how we’ve survived all these years. We are that good at what we do, Jamie.”
He tries to speak, but my knife touches his throat. I lean down to his face, so our eyes are searching each other. “I’ll see you in hell.” The knife slides and the blood pours. Running down his front and onto my hands while the gurgling sounds give me such joyful pleasure. His eyes are large. This is my favorite part, watching this. Watching how the life falls from someone’s eyes like it wasn’t theirs to begin with. Maybe that’s what will happen to me.
“Harvest his organs,” Death says looking at his cell still. “Boss’s orders.” He walks off and comes back with a cooler full of ice. I start untying Jamie. There’s blood everywhere, even on me. The house will have to be scrubbed and bleached or whatever the hell they do. Lucky for us, we have specialized cleaners who mop up our dirty work. Cleaners who know how to make a crime scene so sparkling clean, that you could eat off the floor afterward. There’s never a trace of anything left once they have finished—it’s the reason we are never caught, there’s never any evidence left for the cops to find.
“I need sex! I slept in bed with her all night without putting on the moves,” I tell Death as he hikes the body up over his shoulder and places it on the counter.
“Lucky you didn’t.”
I nod my head. True. Especially since what had happened to her.
“I’m not in love with her,” I tell him, and he smirks and nods his head. “I’m not, I just like the sex. Like… looove the sex.” I walk over and start the cutting. Our team are the only ones trained into removing the organs. It’s a tiring and precise task but the black market is one of our biggest operations. Death is opening the cooler, getting ready for the organs. We both work in silence as we take out what we need. That’s the thing with Death I like the most—sometimes I hate it too, though—is his quietness. It’s both a good and bad thing, apart from today, where he seemed to have gotten the mojo to not shut up, and it still has me baffled.
We start cleaning up the mess. Death has the sheet already on the floor, and a team has been called in for clean-up. He wants to take the body, he wants to work on it as he hasn’t had any bodies for a few weeks. His fingers are twitching just the same as we do for the kill. He carries the fucker to the back of his car and places it in the trunk. Usually, we would be stealthier, but right now he doesn’t seem to care, and neither do I.
Driving back to his house, the car is deafening. The music he listens to is obnoxiously loud, and I can barely hear my own thoughts coming at me.
We don’t hear the sirens that are following us until it’s too late.
Neither of us move once we stop out front of his house. The cop in the car behind us turns off his siren then climbs out. I changed my shirt before I left but there’s still blood on my boots.
Sloppy. We are never sloppy.
Death doesn’t look worried as the man approaches.
“Gentlemen.”
I nod my head to the cop who’s dressed much the same as Jamie was.
Jamie, the corpse who’s now wrapped in plastic in our trunk, only inches from where this man is standing.
Predicament? Maybe.
“Is this your house?” We both get out of the car. The policeman places his hand on the handle of his gun as he watches us.
The door opens, and Pollie walks out holding the baby in her arms. Death looks up to her then back to the man.
“What can we do for you?” I ask.
“I was wondering if you could tell me where I could possibly find a Samara Hanson.”
“No,” I say to him. His eyebrows push together, and his eyes look me over then back to the car.
“Mind if I have a look?”
“Warrant?” I ask him. “Cause?” I ask him as well.
He nods his head then slides his glasses back on.
“If you see Samara, tell her Jamie’s partner would like a few words with her. Here’s my card, be sure to hand it on to her.” He passes me the card then looks at my boots.
“Tomato sauce, pizza shop,” I say automatically.
He nods then walks back to his car.
Death walks off up the stairs to Pollie, capturing her in his arms with their baby, as I get back into the car and drive it around the side to get rid of this body.