Chapter Two
Ronan
Obey.
Be prepared to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the greater good.
Never surrender. Always resist.
Do not hesitate in eliminating any threat.
Exercise self-control.
Always be well polished and clean.
Continually strive to strengthen body and mind.
Live cleanly. Do not drink, smoke, or partake in sugary substances.
Do not associate with outsiders.
Never question orders.
Always be striving towards the goal of a free nation.
For as long as Ireland is in chains, so too shall you be.
“Crack on with it,” Farrell says.
Glass digs into the skin beneath my knees as I struggle to repeat the core values one more time. I’m thirsty and my tongue is dry so it’s sticking to the roof of my mouth. Farrell’s patience is wearing thin, and if I don’t speak soon, the punishment will be worse.
I stumble over the words and forget which number I’m on halfway through. My eyes are heavy, and I don’t know how many days have passed since I slept. I’m starting to see things. Things that aren’t real, I think.
My arms are stretched above my head, but I can no longer feel them. My legs are keen for the reprieve from standing, even it if it is only to kneel in broken glass. In the two years since my training began, I’ve come to know that life is simply trading one pain for another.
There is never comfort. Not even for one moment. Because operatives are not made in beds of roses. That’s what Farrell told me when they took me from the only four walls I’d ever known. One house, four beds, four other lads. Lads I’m not supposed to speak to.
I think I was eight at the time. They always start training at eight, Farrell said.
I’m ten now. Ten.
I don’t feel ten.
Farrell glances down at me in shame, and it burns through me. I cast my eyes to the floor and wait for the punishment. My shoulders sag and I bow my head in defeat. My eyelids are growing too heavy, and I’m afraid of falling asleep. Every bone aches. My skin burns, and I tremble with each movement.
Without another word, Farrell releases the cuffs holding my wrists in place. The resulting fall smacks my face against the concrete. I can’t move. My cheek burns and I reckon it’s bleeding. The sound of Farrell’s boots echo off the floor as he moves around behind me.
He pulls my trousers up from around my ankles and I try to jerk away from him. Coyne presses his boot into the flat of my back, keeping me pinned to the floor. And then I hear the buzzing of the cattle prod.
I find a dark spot on the wall to stare at before he jabs at the soles of my feet. But it doesn’t help. Nothing ever helps. There’s only pain.
Pain. Blackness. Pain. Blackness.
I like the blackness.
Water splashes on my face, and I startle awake. Farrell is standing over me, shouting out orders again.
“Get up.”
“I can’t,” I tell him.
It’s not a lie.
He nods at Coyne and they both heave me up by my arms. I’m naked now. They’ve taken my clothes again, so I know what follows. They stuff my hands back through the cuffs that stretch my arms overhead and it requires me to stand on the balls of my feet to maintain the position. The burns are so bad I feel on the verge of passing out again. But I know I can’t.
Coyne appears with the hose. He sprays me with cold water for a long time. My body is shivering, but I try to focus on sucking some of it into my mouth. I’m so thirsty.
The hose shuts off, and Coyne looks to me and then back at Farrell.
“He’s fading.”
Farrell nods and then retrieves another pill from his pocket. I don’t like the pills. Anything but the pills. I squeeze my lips together, but he forces it inside my mouth anyway. It tastes bitter on my tongue, and there’s no choice but to swallow it.
My heart beats too fast, and my eyes feel like they are going to pop out of my skull. Farrell walks around behind me and pulls the noose around my neck again. It’s tied to the wall behind me, with just enough give that I have to stand completely straight.
He slaps me on the cheek and they walk towards the door. The one that leads to places I’ve never seen before. The one I sometimes think about when they aren’t looking at me.
“Don’t fall asleep, little fella,” he says. “Or you’ll never wake up again.”
***
Unfastening the buttons of my suit, I hang the black jacket over the usual hook on the wall. Everything in this room is precisely the way I fancy it. Clean and organized, a workspace suited for my needs. I have a ritual when I walk into this room. And even with the anticipation thrumming through my veins at the moment, I ensure that I perform to my exact standards.
Every object has its place. Every step must be taken carefully and deliberately.
My watch comes off, followed by my undershirt. Two buttons on the remote, and Bach’s Cello Suites flow through the speakers. Always sixty-two decibels, the perfect volume. I’m not particularly keen on music, or noises of any sort for that matter, but this doesn’t bother me so much. When I was still a young lad, Crow’s mammy taught me that this music could help me to concentrate. Which is precisely what I could do with at the moment.
Everything is where I need it to be. That list includes my current client. Donovan is already strapped to the steel table I use for occasions such as these. His eyes are black, spewing venom at me, but he can’t manage a word with the cloth stuffed in his mouth. That’s the way I prefer it. I’ve got no notions to hear any more out of him.
“I know ye think this is for the betrayal,” I tell him as I reach for my tool case and unroll it. “It isn’t. At least, not for me.”
He attempts a mumbled response, which goes ignored. I continue to set up, running my fingers over the shiny metal pieces that feel familiar, comforting. Donovan and I haven’t had many conversations over the years. He was a part of the syndicate, but I’ve never trusted or liked him.
In general, I don’t feel the need to communicate as others do. I speak when necessary, and that does me just fine. Most of the clients who find themselves in this room don’t ever hear my voice. Only if I need to extract information from them.
But this evening, with Donovan, I’ve a few things I intend to get off my chest. I select a scalpel and hold it up to him in question. He only blinks at me.
“Ye’re right.” I turn back to the tools with a nod. “Too easy. I think you and I both know it wouldn’t do to let ye go easy.”
Outwardly, I’m calm. Always calm. There’s no need to put on a show. I will not allow him to see how deeply he has affected me. But tonight Donovan will feel the gravity of my long festered rage. Tonight, I will do what I’ve yearned to since I discovered this prick touched Sasha.
Blood drips from my palm, and I glance down to find the scalpel crushed in my fist. The dark crimson stokes the tempered fire inside of me. But I can’t allow it to take over. Because if it takes over, it will end too quickly.
And Donovan deserves no such kindness from me.
Rightly so, I’d have gutted him slowly and painfully simply for being a rapist pig. But that isn’t what motivates me to see his blood dripping onto the floor. It was who he touched. The one person he knew he couldn’t.
And she let him.
Closing my eyes to take a breath, I count the steps to the door out of habit. Repeating them backwards twice more, I am calm.
I pluck a pair of pliers from my tool case and a dental mouth gag from the drawer below. Since the room is small, built for function, the distance between the table and myself is only five steps. I count them twice as I lay out the necessary tools on the tray table and retrieve my rolling chair.
The table itself is adjustable, and I lower it to a more appropriate position before taking my seat. Donovan attempts to jerk away from me as I strap his head in place. They all do this, and I always find it irritating. They should know once they are strapped to my table there is no sense in fighting the inevitable. This is the difference between men like Donovan and men like me.
Where I would accept my fate and face it with dignity, he simply cannot. When I remove the cloth from between his teeth, a slurry of curse words flies from his mouth along with some spittle. It only makes it easier to slip the dental gag into position without a fight.
Once the task is complete I take a moment to sit back and admire my handiwork. Farrell taught me that I should always take pride in my work. I’m not often a proud man. I feel I do my job and I do it exceedingly well. But in this instance, I glimpse a small taste of the pride I was reared to believe I should feel.
“I usually do this bit after,” I explain to Donny as I retrieve the pliers from the tray beside me. “But I thought this might give us a few moments to chat. A warm up if you will.”
“Fuck you,” Donovan slurs around the metal.
I extend the pliers into his mouth and grip hold of a front tooth first. “This may hurt a wee bit.”
The tooth comes out with some wiggling and a fair amount of squealing on Donovan’s part.
“For a lad who likes to hurt women, ye sure do scream a bit,” I note.
His reply is muffled by the swelling and blood pooling in his mouth. My work continues without a pause, the tension leaving my body when his screams finally die down. That’s the adrenaline kicking in. But it won’t do him a fat lot of good for what I have in store.
The room is quiet save for the moaning of the pliers as I work, and I’ve had some time to piece my thoughts together.
“Does it interest ye to know, Donny, that before you or Blaine ever laid a hand on her, she was mine?”
He meets my gaze, and there’s humor behind his. He’s mocking me with his eyes. In all the time I’ve known the lad, I’ve only ever received mocking glances from him. It’s of little consequence to me. He won’t be laughing when I’m through with him.
“I saw her first that night,” I confess. “Before anybody else.”
He mumbles something indecipherable again, and I shake my head to silence him.
“A mouse in a field full of vultures.”
I wasn’t one of them. My lack of social skills and my position within the organization wouldn’t allow me such a conquest back then. Things are different now.
Only I’m not.
When all of Donny’s teeth have been collected, I stuff the cloth back into his mouth to soak up the blood. I clean up my own hands and set the dirty tools aside while I seek out my next one. I pause over the scalpel again, my usual companion. There’s something soothing and beautiful about a cleanly cut line. Donovan won’t be getting any such mercy from me.
Most men within the syndicate prefer the solid and steady weight of a revolver. A speedy way to do someone in while maintaining your distance. Killing is a messy business either way, but I prefer the knife. Ending a life is generally not something I do without consideration. Killing is personal, and so the act itself should also be.
My purpose in life has only ever been to kill. It was the sole reason for my existence as a wee lad. To learn how to kill. They taught me well. There is not anything else on this earth I can do so efficiently. Conversation, understanding others, making decisions. These are not things I am well versed in. But killing, I can do. Without question. Without hesitance. Without a shadow of doubt in my soul.
I was born to take life.
There is an endless amount of rage burning inside of me. I only ever have to tap into it, drawing off small amounts to complete each task I’m given. It is nothing more than a business transaction. A dot of the i or slash of the t. I don’t particularly feel much of anything when I dim a human light.
Few things can invoke strong emotions in me. I do not like emotion. I do not understand it. Attempts to understand it only result in frustration. For this reason, I stay away from anything that provokes emotions I don’t understand. But death, that is something that I understand.
I’ve been called a sociopath. A monster. But I don’t fancy myself one. I’m simply a man doing a job that needs to be done. If it wasn’t me doing it, someone else would be. The men that I kill, they’ve all had it coming. They knew what they were getting themselves into. They’ve either done Niall wrong or threatened the syndicate in some way. And threats have to be eliminated, just like vermin.
One of the few moral codes I still abide by. I will protect my brethren at all costs.
In doing so, I’d like to think the men who meet with me are given a swift and honorable death, in most cases. Terror isn’t a balm to my soul. I do not draw enjoyment from the act itself. I do not feel anything. I prefer precision and cleanliness. A quick slash. Nothing that involves brute force or unnecessary dawdling. Most of the lads don’t know it, but I truly don’t enjoy the torture aspect. In those cases, I’m only doing what’s necessary and effective. It isn’t the pain I seek from the clients, only the answers. If they tell me what I need to hear, then it goes easy for them. The choice is ultimately theirs.
With that being said, Donovan is a different occasion altogether. He is one of our own. A man who took an oath to remain loyal to the syndicate. To his brethren. He broke that oath. Betrayed his own. The penalty for such a transgression remains the same as the first world that I ever knew. Death.
I believe it’s the common thread that holds all tight knit groups together. The imminent threat of death casts a shadow over wrong doing so large, so dark, that only the boldest or most ignorant of souls will choose to ignore it.
Still, it happens. I’ve laid to rest two other members of our syndicate before. The problem is only one of them was sanctioned. It did not stop me from enjoying that event, regardless. I strongly suspect, as the metal table scrapes against the floor behind me, that I will enjoy this time too.
Pleasure is a foreign emotion for me. The few times I’ve sampled anything remotely enjoyable, it has troubled me. It stands to reason that anything so intoxicating in potency should not be good. Like the pills they used to give me. Addicting. A feeling I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid.
For tonight only, I will allow myself this one small act of pleasure.
When I turn back to my captive, he is bucking against the table in an attempt to free himself. He should know better than to think I’d half-arse any of his binds. He’s been working with me for five years.
I pick up the scalpel and twirl it in my hand, indecision weighing heavily on me. As I said before, I don’t like to dawdle. I could make his death as quick and painless as all of the others before him. But I won’t. Because in this rare circumstance, Donny has managed to invoke a very human reaction in me. One I’ve not often felt before.
These reactions almost always seem to revolve around her. Sasha. She’s worse than the pills. Worse than anything I’ve ever encountered.
I’ve killed for her once, and I did so gruesomely. If ever there was a time I channeled my psychopathic tendencies, it was then. Donovan has brought upon me that same familiar urge. The demons who want to come out and play.
My fingers tighten around the scalpel when I think of him inside of her. Touching her skin. Tasting her in a way that I never can. Feeling her softness all around him. Her scent, her sounds, her hands. My body shakes with the force of loathing I have for myself and for her.
I don’t want her. I never wanted her.
Light spills into the room as the door cracks open, followed by the tiniest of gasps.
Before my gaze even moves, I know it’s her.
Her eyes dart to where Donovan is strapped to the table and back to me, scalpel in my bloodied hand. Her pupils grow even wider as clarity descends, and she stumbles back a step with the one thing I never wanted to see from her. Fear.
She can hate me. She can despise me. But fear me?
No.
I want to go to her. To comfort her and placate her with lies. But I won’t lie to her. I can barely even speak to her. I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say.
Conor pops his head in the door beside her, and I narrow my eyes in his direction.
“Sorry, Fitz.” He grabs Sasha by the arm and tries to usher her away. “I had to take a piss. I didn’t know she was down here.”
My chest heaves as he wheels Sasha away with certain revulsion and disgust on her face. She knows what I am already, she didn’t need a reminder. And like a switch has been flipped inside of me, this entire situation has managed to stoke my temper.
Mocking laughter echoes from behind me, and I turn to find Donovan has managed to spit out the bloody cloth.
“You should see your face,” he slurs.
I ignore him and retrieve the pruning shears from a hook on the wall along with a metal basin. His hands are already strapped down at his sides, and he starts carrying on again when I wrap a tourniquet around his arm.
I rest the metal basin on his torso, and each snip of his finger is followed by a resulting thud into the dish. By the time I wheel around him and start in on the second hand, Donovan is on the verge of passing out. I slap him on the face and throw some cold water at him before finishing up the job. When all of his fingertips have been removed, I grant him a small reprieve only to keep him from going into shock.
“You’re a sick fucking freak,” he snarls. “You know that? It all makes so much sense now.”
He’s never appeared more ridiculous than he does at this moment, toothless and with bloody stumps at the end of each hand. And yet I indulge his antics, against my better judgment.
“What does?”
He grins, and it’s gruesome with the blood all over his face. “Have you sampled her? Because I have. Plenty of times.”
I smile back at him politely. Donny is too dense to understand that won’t work on me. He’s hoping to provoke me into giving him a quick death. But he’s wrong. I’m in control. Always in control. There’s nothing he can say to change that. My limits have been tested by others much smarter than him.
I turn my attention back to my tools, seeking out another for what I have planned next. But the following words out of Donny’s mouth prove I am wrong. He is capable of pushing me in a way I could not have predicted.
“She was doing it to protect you. Did you know that? The stupid whore thought she needed to protect you. I saw you that night Ronan. I saw you hauling Blaine’s body out to your car. And Sasha saw me. She knew I could have ratted you out any time I felt like it. So she kept me quiet, with her mouth as payment.”
Heat spreads through my veins, threatening to tear me apart and devour everything in this building if I don’t cop on to myself.
I grab the drill from the table and flick my eyes to Donny’s one last time before it’s guaranteed he won’t be able to get a coherent thought out.
“If you were so ready to die, all ye had to do was say so.”
I reach for his trousers and pull them down, allowing the cool air to hit his shriveling dick. This was a part of him I never had any intentions on seeing. But it’s also the part of him he touched her with.
“I hope it was worth it,” I tell him.
“I have a failsafe,” Donovan threatens. “You should know that. If I disappear, Niall will find out what you did. What you and Sasha both did. I can promise you that.”
His words won’t change anything, but they always try regardless. There isn’t a thing on this earth that can save him from me now. When he recognizes that on my face, Donovan’s eyes finally abandon all hope.
My face hurts, and when I step forward, it occurs to me that I’m smiling.
***
Once I’ve washed up and disposed of the body, Conor and I drive to Donny’s duplex to clean up. It’s standard procedure any time a member of the syndicate dies under these circumstances. If they’ve paid a visit to me, it means they can’t be trusted. That stands for their home and possessions as well.
Donny was many things. A liar being one of them. But his words about the failsafe won’t stop playing through my mind. I believed him when he said that. I saw clearly the conviction in his eyes. It wasn’t a bluff. He was so sure that would save him somehow.
I doubt I’ll find it here, in his flat. But it won’t stop me from checking.
I’ve never been to his place before. Never saw a need for that, fortunately. It’s in a seedy part of Roxbury. The paint is faded and peeling and the yard is overgrown. I suppose he felt spending his cash on whores and cocaine took precedence over everything else.
“Do you need me to keep a look out while you take care of the lock?” Conor asks as we walk around the back.
I shake my head. The lad is still very green. Doesn’t have much in the way of common sense, but he’s a good kid. I trust him. Which is more than I can say for most people. I have my lock kit on me, but I doubt I’ll even need it. I pull out the keyring I took off Donny’s body and hand it over to Conor.
He stares at it for a moment before he starts trying keys. On the third try, we have a winner. The door swings open, and we are greeted by the last thing I ever expected at Donovan’s house.
A dog.
“What the hell?” Conor echoes my confusion as the small furry beast on four legs comes bounding in our direction.
She has a black and tan face with a white stripe down the middle leading straight towards a big black nose. Two ears that are entirely too large for her head perk up as she leaps up and down on the kitchen tile and makes a variety of odd noises. Her tongue hangs out the side of her mouth as she attacks my leg and I try to shoo her away.
“What is he doing with a Corgi?” Conor asks.
“A Corgi?” I repeat.
“Yeah.” Conor points at the fluff tugging on my pant leg. “That’s a Corgi.”
“How can ye tell?” I try to push it away with my foot.
“Uh, it’s pretty obvious,” Conor replies. “What are we going to do with it?”
I stare down at the animal and find myself at a loss for words.
“You aren’t going to kill it,” Conor says. “Are you?”
I push past him, slamming the door behind me. I do not kill animals. Or women. Or children. Conor should know this, but people always misread me.
“We can sort it out after,” I tell him. “For now, ye need to focus on clearing out anything we find here. Cash, paperwork, documents with his name on it. The only thing I want left when we’re done here is his furniture.”
Conor glances at the dog one more time and then shrugs. “Whatever you say, Fitz.”