Page 35 of Frost and Venom

He tugged at his shirt to expose his neck. “You see those rope marks burned deep? They play a game when they’re up at that altitude overlooking the ravine. The first station for their ‘toy’ is to see who can throw a knife accurately. The goal is to not kill their toy. Depending on how many are playing the game, as many as twelve wounds can be made in various depths. The toy remains tied to the tree while they toast themselves with shots of tequila. That means ants and beetles and all manner of bugs crawl into the wounds.”

Harlow had never conceived of such horror. “That was done to you?”

“Yes. The next round is to see who can waterboard without drowning the toy. Some of the men were extremely enthusiastic. When they were finished with that round, if their toy was still alive, he was thrown onto the ground, still bleeding, still attracting bugs, while they toasted one another with more shots of tequila. The third round was the most dangerous in that they would tie a noose around the neck of their toy and throw or drag him as close to the ravine’s edge as possible. Whoever got the closest, without the toy going over the side, won that round.”

“What was wrong with those people?”

The phone continued to ring and she swiped it off the small table, sending it flying into the grass. Her childhood had been a piece of cake next to Wilder’s. Tossing her phone to escape her father’s annoying, persistent calling felt freeing. He was a criminal, but she was learning there were different calibers of criminal. Her father was guilty of raping and beating women, but he fell far short of the sadistic breed that Wilder’s father and his followers were. She hadn’t ever conceived that anyone could be as vile and inhuman as Wilder’s father.

She knew that didn’t make her childhood any less traumatic, nor did it erase the many triggers she had, but it took away some of the fear she had of the senator. Wilder had served as an officer, and just by being a part of Blom’s team, she knew he had to have a master’s in something. He spoke several languages. He was an extremely educated man.

Wilder had gone through hell and survived. He was a survivor and very, very skilled. Compared to her father, whose power came from wearing a suit and tie, Wilder had been trained in the strategies to survive in any situation—and to neutralize his enemies in utter silence.

“I arrived far too late. My brother was hanging from a tree, his neck broken, his body tortured almost beyond recognition. I could see him clearly from my position. My father and his friends were laughing and drinking tequila shots, toasting one another, with my brother dead not but a few feet away. He was thirteen years old.”

Harlow should have expected that horribly grim news. It had been there in his eyes all along. Hell. The worst. How did one live with that nightmare? How did one keep going? Then it occurred to her. Wilder had been a witness to his father’s brutal, sadistic killing of his brother. Not only his father, but the men who followed him. He’d said ten of them. There was no statute of limitations on murder.

“Wilder, could your father be setting you up? Maybe he found you and is trying to kill you.” That seemed like a very good possibility. More than very good. Wilder knew enough to put the man and his followers behind bars for the rest of their lives. “He might have paid someone to find out where you would be sent, or even arranged it.”

Wilder lifted his head and pulled back from her. Very gently, he deposited her on the porch and stood. There was a finality in the way he put her aside. Harlow studied his expressionless mask. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, he had gone from a gentle, sweet man to something altogether different.

She already knew there were many sides to Wilder, and most of them were predatory. He had the capacity to go from relaxed and calm to erupting into violence without warning. Did she trust him never to turn that ability on her? It was clear to her that his protective streak was off the charts.

Wilder glided down the porch steps to the grass, where he bent to retrieve the phone. “It is an impossibility that my father or his followers are involved.”

“You can’t know that.”

He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “I killed every single one of them that day. I didn’t leave any of them alive. I hunted them and took them out one by one before they could make it back to the camp.” There was no expression in his voice whatsoever.

“Wilder,” she hissed his name, looking around her. “You can’t ever say that aloud. Never. Have you told anyone else? Does Blom know? Could he send you to prison?” She knew the anxiety in her voice was a dead giveaway to her feelings for him, but she didn’t care. Surely, he had to know, no matter how justified, he would be held accountable.

When he turned fully to face her, she realized her reaction probably wasn’t normal, but then she knew monsters weren’t always caught. They got away with all kinds of heinous crimes, destroying lives for their own personal reasons. The more they got away with it, the worse they became. Someone had to stop them.

His eyes had taken on that crystalline-green appearance, an almost laser-like quality. “I’ve told two people. You and Rainier. Blom has no idea, and no investigator would ever find the evidence. If he didn’t teach me anything else, my father taught me how to get rid of bodies permanently.”

“Why Rainier?” She stroked her fingers along her temples, working to keep her breathing even.

“Unfortunately, my father is actually my biological father. I have his blood in my veins. I carry his genetic makeup. He was a monster unlike anything I’ve seen since, and I’ve seen plenty of men who were killers. Rainier is one of the few men I respect. All of them would keep my confidence, but if I ever took a bad turn, Rainier is the only one who has a chance of successfully tracking and neutralizing me. It’s a hell of a thing to have to ask a friend, but he’s a man of honor. He would follow through.”

“You aren’t your father any more than I’m my father,” she protested in a whisper.

“You don’t have a mean bone in your body, Harlow,” he said.

“And yet I have no problem with what you did,” she pointed out. “I’m not a saint. I know my father’s behavior escalated over time. He attacked those young girls. Raped them. Deported them when they wouldn’t cooperate with him. His attacks became more violent the more he got away with them. I couldn’t stop him. I tried, but I was portrayed as the jealous, high-strung daughter who was ungrateful and privileged. In the end, I withdrew, which made me no better than my mother. How many young women did he harm before making this last one disappear? That’s on me, Wilder. Had I been more like you, so many of those young girls wouldn’t have suffered at his hands. And this last one? What if she is dead? What if he murdered her?”

“It isn’t on you, Harlow. You know better.”

“You say you have your father’s blood flowing in your veins. I have my father’s.”

“I refuse to allow that to define who I am,” he said. “If anything, I double- and triple-check every assignment given to me to ensure whoever I’m sent after needs to be neutralized.”

“That’s such a delicate way of putting it,” Harlow said. “I’d like to neutralize my father. It sounds so much better than what I really have in mind.”

His hard features softened momentarily. “I think it best if only one of us does the actual neutralizing of anything. As it has been my profession for many years now, I think I’m a little more qualified.”

“Don’t brag. It isn’t very becoming.”

Wilder burst out laughing, the sound rich and beautiful, music to her ears. The tight knots in her stomach eased. His gaze remained on hers as he came back up the stairs to stand on the porch. “Mon rêve, you are truly an amazing woman.”