My hand moves reactively on his penis, slicing through it. He shakes on the hooks, his legs twitching frantically, and he watches me saw through his flesh. He can’t feel the pain, but there will be pressure, and the terror of seeing his penis be removed will fuck with his mind. He’s bleeding more, rivulets drip down into the ground, and he curses me, calling me a monster.
“Takes one to know one.” I smile, flinging the limp piece of flesh into the bucket to join his balls.
“What about your sins?” He cackles, like we’re friends, but hate fills his eyes. Blood is caked between the gaps of his teeth. He spits on the ground and grins. “I’ve heard the rumors, El Búho. You’re no better than me. Just another monster feeding your desires. We both deserve death for what we’ve done. Do you think she will accept you? Do you think she will love a killer. One a body like yours? You are stupid if you think Camryn Park will keep you. Her bloodlines and lineage won’t allow it. You’re no better than a mongrel born in a trailer park. A piece of trash. You’re bound for the same hell I am.”
His words hit me right in the chest. That he’s right. That Camryn won’t be able to accept the depths of my depravity. He laughs and continues to laugh until I reach up and squeeze his mouth open. “I’m going to cut your tongue out next. You don’t say her name.” He growls, managing to spit more of his blood in my eyes. I wipe it away, release him, and walk back to the table, where I pick up the dental cheek retractor and insert it. It stretches his cheeks wide, exposing his gums and bloody teeth. He locks his teeth together, but I smash his nose and eye until he opens his mouth. I quickly grab my pliers, pull out his tongue, and cut through the thick muscle while he garbles and screams, blood spluttering out and down his chin, onto my hand and wrist.
The painkiller has worn off. Good. I toss the severed muscle into the bucket and turn to face my enemy once more, enjoying his moans of pain. I deliver another push to his back, letting his body sway, a perfect gory pendulum. Each oscillation stretches the skin on his back more. Gravity and his body weight will soon be too much for the limitations of his skin. Lifting his chin, I make sure he’s looking at me. “Keep those eyes open.”
He blinks and glares at me. It’s exactly what I want. “This is for daring to look at her. Daring to think you could take her.” I stab into his eye socket. He arches in his restraints, andan earsplitting cry ricochets off the wooden slabs of the barn wall. Eventually, his screams stop, his nerves no longer reacting, shutting down from the atrocities I’m enacting on his body. Painstakingly, I remove his eyes, delicately, precisely, until I can roll each orb around in my fingers. I may keep them. Preserve them. Let him watch me dismember the rest of his body from a jar of formaldehyde. I like the idea. I toss them in the bucket for later.
The dark hollows of his eye sockets stare back at me, and I head to the lever and lower the pulley, letting his blood fall. His blood has soaked the ground, creating mud. Using my foot, I manipulate his body into a fetal position. I remove the large metal hooks from his skin. The silver metal was stained with bits of his tissue and fat.
Dragging his body to where I need more light to work, I roll him onto his stomach, exposing the vast expanse of his back. I unroll my knife pouch and select the filleting knife, then carefully make a horizontal incision.
Working slowly and precisely, I complete my rectangular section and carefully remove the muscle underneath with quick slashes of my knife, ensuring that I don’t take too much muscle and fat along with the deep layers of skin. He cries, mewling in the dirt, but he doesn’t move much more than muscle spasms and twitches, signaling the pain he must be feeling. All of it soothes the beast inside me.
Once I’m done, I lay it flat on my table. After I leave him in the woods, I’ll come back and remove the fat.
Picking up my heavy chain, I hook one end to the back of my ATV and then head back to what is left of the most feared drug, crime lord in the Mestizos. I lift the hook over my head and bring it down, digging it into the exposed muscle of his back. I dig it into the trapezius muscle, need it to stay put as I drag him through the forest. Picking up my Guthook knife, I saw that I hadclimbed aboard, looking back at the mangled mess of humanity behind me.
Chapter 77
He’s avoiding me.
The knowledge sits with me as I paint in my apartment. It’s been five weeks since I woke up in the hospital surrounded by my friends and my brothers. It’s been over a month since I’ve hidden out in my apartment because, as much as Jace tried to prevent it, the story of the Park Heiress and two of her friends being kidnapped came out.
The world imploded with the FBI’s involvement. News broke that three compounds belonging to the notorious Mestizos gang were raided. The discovery of over 200 illegal firearms, kilos of cocaine, and other black market pharmaceuticals, and bodies of gang members made big news. The mysterious leader of Los Mestizos had disappeared, but I had a feeling that Stone, Onyx, and Riggs knew precisely what had happened to him. The words that Stone and El Jefe exchanged play on a constant loop. Press conferences from the FBI and other federal agencies revealed that there was evidence of women and children on the compounds, but as of yet, the agencies hadn’t been able to locate them. I held my breath watching the news coverage every night, but each night there was zero mention of the twelve women whoonce lived there like a fucked up version of a brood mare farm. From what I could tell, they were gone without a trace. The only thing I heard was the social media whispers of a vigilante group who were rescuing women kidnapped for the sex trade. Every mention of them was that they were heroes. Stone was involved. I could feel it, and I wanted to track him down and ask him. Find out about whether he was involved and if he knew of a young girl named Cara being rescued.
I never got to thank her. I’m convinced her warnings about the man who assaulted me made the ordeal less traumatizing. I hadn’t been blind to what he was when he entered that room, intent on raping and killing me. I wish I knew where she was, but according to Dru, the organization that is helping them has them in a secret location. She’s not even privy to the information.
Either way, I’m happy that they are safe. I don’t know what it must be like for them. For so long, all they knew was that house, that prison. Silas and Jace are working with Sophia’s cousins to complete the women’s facility upstate even faster, so it will be ready to house some of the women and their children. However, I haven’t heard anything specifically about whether Cara will be one of those women.
I hope she’s okay. She must have given birth to her baby already. I wonder if it’s a girl or a boy. I’m happy that, at least this time, she may get to keep her child. But then again, that child is the product of her abuse and systematic rapes. Her child is genetically half the man who stole her childhood. It’s a fucked up situation, one that, from what I’ve come to learn, is so common in the seedy underworld of sex trade. And then there’s her other children. I don’t know if she will ever be able to find them, or even if they’re alive.
Tears track down my face at the injustice of it all, and for a moment, rage flows through me. Now, I understand what Stone was talking about. The need to destroy them. To eradicate thetype of men who care nothing about humanity. Wiping them, I take a deep breath, trying not to go down another rabbit hole of all the ways the system might be too big to fight. I’ll take the bittersweet ending that at least those twelve women were rescued, but so many more are still part of the vicious system.
When Dru, Sophia, and Meela came to visit, they told me that Silas, along with Caleb Edwards and his team, was conducting an investigation behind the scenes to help locate some of the women and children. The news that many of the young girls and boys were kidnapped. Some desperate families, living in countries fraught with political violence, were tricked into bringing their children to specific agencies, in the belief that their children would be adopted by loving families and sent to school, but instead were sold into sex slavery overseas to pedophiles. The horror of it still gives me nightmares. Dru were honest when they said that we might never find all the children.
Thinking about it brings a fresh batch of tears because Jacinda was just discovered a week ago after four weeks of being held hostage. She arrived home a week ago from Canada, accompanied by one of Caleb Edward’s security team members. When I texted her brother, Julian, about the hospital she was in, so I could visit, he told me flat out that Jacinda didn’t want visitors. Still, he did tell me with a tortured voice that she almost died from diabetic shock, and would have if the man who helped rescue her had done some quick thinking. Julian also revealed that his sister had been assaulted and branded like cattle by her captors. It hurt to know that she had gone through so much. I couldn’t help but feel that if she had never become my friend, she wouldn’t have been taken.
However, the worst feelings are reserved for Kamilah. She’s still missing. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. Riggs left right after they found me to find Kami. Jacqueline ended up joining him. They still haven’t located her. Jacqueline texted usweeks ago that she is staying with the Legion Lords, living with Riggs, so she can help her find her cousin. She hasn’t contacted us since then, and we are all worried about her, but something tells me Riggs will help keep her safe.
And on top of the guilt I feel about Jacinda and Kami, I can’t stop thinking about Stone. The sight of him standing there while that asshole held me in front of him like a shield. The memory of the fury on Stone’s face. The way he looked when he lifted me in his arms right before I blacked out. I was so afraid, but the moment I saw him, I became stronger, more in control.
I don’t remember anything after that. The next memory I have is waking up in the hospital with Sophia and Jace by my side. Once I was released, I came home and slept for a few days, with all the girls taking turns helping me. Each time someone knocked on my door, I expected him to walk in, but I was always disappointed.
I’d overheard Onyx and Jace talking when they thought I was upstairs asleep.
“Where is he?” My brother’s tight voice questioned.
I waited, holding my breath as I hid just outside the back door to the tattoo shop. Onyx finally answered.
“He’s around.”
What did that mean? Where was he? Is he at the cabin?
That was a week ago.
