“N-no,” said Brandon. “I’m sorry. It was Amber—she said the girl would be here, she told me I should—”
“Shut it,” Darragh seethed. “You’ve disappointed me tonight, Brandon, acting like a dog. I don’t take kindly to that sort of behavior from my boys.”
“No!” Brandon cried, bucking and fighting to stand, but the thugs forced him down to the floor by Darragh’s feet.
The Irishman wound the belt in his fists, admiring the leather and the dragon etched into it. Finally, the buckle: he stroked the gleaming silver.
His gaze flicked to me. “If you don’t like blood, I’d avert your eyes,doll. I’m told some find this… unpleasant to watch.”
Brandon let out one final protesting shout. Then the goons hauled up his shirt, exposing his back—and Darragh let him have it.
The first crack of the belt was so fast I almost missed it. Thecrackthat reverberated was sharp, the sound hitting the air like something splitting.
Brandon’s scream was louder. The metal pin had torn a chunk from his back, like a creature snapping out for meat. A gob of flesh flew, blood arcing behind it in a spray of crimson.
My breath hitched. I’d never seen something so vicious, so awful. Yet I couldn’t keep my eyes away, horrified as I was.
I saw the blur of leather and metal as Darragh struck again.
And again.
And again.
Leather and metal tore through skin with wet, sickening cracks.
Blood spattered, Brandon’s screams turned ragged, then hoarse, then finally into pleading whimpers.
“There,” breathed out Darragh when he was finished. He stepped backward, cocking his head at the heaving mass that was Brandon, sobbing in between the two guys holding him steady. Brandon’s back was now a mass of gouges, flesh open and oozing blood in a thick river of red. Gore spattered the floor.
Darragh stepped back, satisfied, wiping a fleck of blood from his forehead. “What do you say, Brandon? Has that taught you your lesson?” he asked mildly.
Brandon sobbed. From somewhere deep down low to the ground, he gasped out, “Yes, bossman. S-sorry.”
Darragh nodded. “Anything to say to the girl?”
“S-sorry,” he wheezed without looking at me. “I’m—I’m so s-sorry.”
“That’s better. You can let him go, boys.” When they had, Darragh handed over his belt. The leather was flecked with droplets of blood. The buckle and its pin were coated with it. “Clean this up,” he told them. Then he turned to me. “I understand you’ve been asking questions. Reckon I can answer them.”
I looked to Tristian, but he had gone deathly still. His face was pale. He hadn’t moved a single inch. His eyes fixed on Brandon, not blinking.
He was somewhere else in his mind.
Somewhere far away, somewhere darker, somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I pressed my hand to his arm and slowly he came back. He glanced between me and Darragh as if waking from a dream—or a nightmare.
“She doesn’t need to talk to you,” he rumbled, low.
“Shecameto talk to me, son. Just like you did.” He flashed a shark-like grin, voice dropping into something almost tender. “She’ll be safe in my hands, don’t you worry. Then you can take her home. That’s a promise. I’m a man of my word, Tristian. I’d have thought you’d know that about me by now.”
Tristian was quiet. The strength had gone out of him. So when Darragh pointed at me and said, “Up. My office. Now,” I found myself going, and Tristian didn’t move to stop me.
Swallowing hard, I followed.
Darragh led me toward his office, and I winced with every step; my bare feet felt every grain of grit, every microscopic shard on the floor.
I threw one last look over my shoulder. Tristian was still leaning back, a dark silhouette lost in thought. But the moment I rounded the corner, I heard the heavy thud of him standing up and the deliberate, weighted sound of his footsteps heading straight for Brandon.
