“That was like, cathartic, in a really weird fucked up way,” Arlen agreed.
“What do we do with him?” Romero asked, resting his boot on Marco’s side.
I looked down at the man and studied him, committing this moment to memory. I imagined it wasn’t quite so fun with the tables turned.
When you went from being the strong to the weak, helpless, and completely at someone else’s mercy, and you could do nothing to make the pain and degradation stop, death would be a welcome relief.
He and his wife had made me feel like that many times.
This—what I was doing to him—was an act of kindness compared to what I had planned out in my head. But my options were limited in this cabin so I had to do the best with what I had.
Did it change my past and erase years of being an abused fuck toy? No. Did it make me feel better and thirst to hurt someone more, do something crueler? Hell yes.
I hated these assholes.
I wanted them dead.
“Let’s go check on your hole” Romero’s voice filtered into my head, bringing me back to the moment. Our bloodied fingers intertwined and we walked away together.
Cobra and Arlen followed, dragging Marco behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The grave was shallow perfection.
Cobra dumped Marco right into it and managed to squeeze Vicky in slightly on top of him.
Being buried alive with your dead wife had to be a nightmare. Fortunately, I was the dream-maker and not the victim.
“How did you do this so fast?” I asked Bryce, toeing the soft dirt.
“It was already started. We haven’t found whatever it was they wanted buried.”
I hummed and stared down into the hole. It was caddy-cornered from the cabin with a clear view of the upper master-bedroom.
I wondered if that was planned.
“He looks damn pitiful,” Arlen sighed.
She was right, he did. He was naked from the waist down, his dick was engorged, he had crusted blood on his nose, and the gaping wounds on the back of his feet rested squarely in the dirt.
“Let’s bury him and get our asses to church,” Grimm said.
As he and Bryce got busy filling the grave with dirt, Cobra went to drag the delegates to where we were.
“You need to relax. You know, the more you panic, the quicker you’ll use up all your air,” Romero explained as if he were speaking to a child. He tossed a cellular I hadn’t seen before down on Marco’s chest and grinned. “Tell David I said hello.”
I shook my head and smiled. He knew full well that call was going to go unanswered. Marco still had a gag in his mouth and his arms were left bound. He turned his head left and right, yelling up at us, trying to shift from beneath his Vicky’s body.
“You know how paranoid he’s going to get?” I laughed just thinking about the look on David’s face when he couldn’t get hold of Marco.
“I know.” Romero smirked, crouching down so he could look Marco in the eyes.“In just a few minutes, all your open orifices are going to be filled with dirt. It’s going to crush your chest and your ribs. You won’t be able to see, and you won’t be able to breathe. You won’t even be able to move. You’re going to suffocate.” He titled his head and grinned. “Slowly.”
I rested my cheek on his shoulder and watched each mound of dirt bury Marco a little more. It was a small victory.
Whatever was lurking beneath my surface was far from satisfied. She didn’t want slow, methodical torture. She hungered for fast, spur of the moment brutality. And I was going to find a way to give it to her.
“How the hell are we going to get in there?” I studied Jericho, popping another tortilla chip in my mouth from the bag I’d taken from Marco’s.
