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If his boss wanted to send a message, it might include, 'P.S. We can toy with Leo's people as much as we want.'
"How would you have killed me?" I didn't know why it mattered, but it did. Some part of me needed, wanted, to know what I was up against. If nothing else, it served to further justify the guy's killing Eric Parcell. If this was the war they claimed it was, what or who else might come at me?
"Answer the woman." Ice moved the pliers to Nixon's pinky finger, but didn't squeeze yet. It was the only finger on his hand that wasn't shattered and covered in blood. If he got out of here alive, he wouldn't be using his hand again.
Yeah, boo fucking hoo.
"The boss wanted it done in a personal way." Nixon's voice was weaker now as the pain closed in harder on him. "He wanted you to know he could get to any of you as much as he wanted to."
"That's fucked up," I remarked. "You would have, what? Strangled me?" The thought of his hands around my throat robbed me of air for a few moments.
He gasped out the word, "Yeah."
Ice nodded towards the pliers. "Do you want a turn?"
"It's okay if you do." Mannix turned my face and pressed his lips to mine. "He would have wrapped his fingers around your neck and squeezed. He would have watched while you struggled for air. He would have held you down while you fought back. He would have watched the light leave your eyes and felt your body become lifeless. People like him, they enjoy every minute of it. Don't think you would have been his first. Or his last."
His words set my blood on fire.
"Have you killed women before?" I needed the answer to that, even knowing how horrifying it might be. My stomach twisted, rebelled.
"Yeah," Nixon said. "When the boss wanted me to." Any hint of his former denial was gone, replaced by a sickening sense of pride in the horrible things he'd done.
I stepped towards him.
He tried to step back, but the chains held him in place.
"Did you enjoy it?" I locked my gaze on his, unflinching, even as a small part of me protested my being here in doing this.
Shutup, I told it.This is your life now. You can't unknow or unsee anything. You might as well enjoy it.
The power of standing in front of someone twice my size, knowing he couldn't fight back, knowing he deserved what was coming to him, was heady as fuck. Mannix was right. This was addictive. No one but us would ever know exactly what went on here today. Not the police, no one.
The smile Nixon gave me was chilling and vicious. "Yeah, I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed strangling you. I bet you would have put up a fight, but you wouldn't have won. Your life would have been mine to end."
Yeah, he wasn't unhinged at all, was he? I saw it in his eyes that he was imagining what it would be like to hold me down with the weight of his body and watch my life end. He would have gotten off on killing me. The experience would have been orgasmic for him.
That same small part of me I just told to shut up, reminded me I was getting off on this too. That it made me almost as bad as him.
Not as bad, I reasoned, because I did nothing to warrant his boss sending him after me. I did nothing but be Leo's stepdaughter. As far as I knew, that wasn't a crime anywhere in the world.
I reached my hand out for the pliers.
Without a word, Ice lay them across my palm. They felt warm from his touch, slick with Nixon's blood.
I gripped the handle and held Nixon's pinky finger with the end of the pliers before I squeezed.
"This is for the women you killed. You won't be killing any more of us." Flesh and bone gave way under the pressure, like squashing a chicken bone. The crack and crunch, and his howl of pain were the most satisfying sounds I've heard apart from the guys’ grunts when they came.
"Do you want to start on his other hand?" Ice offered.
I shook my head. "No." I handed him the pliers before I turned and trotted up the stairs. I managed to key in the passcode and step outside into the fresh air before I threw up every bit of my breakfast.
Chapter Twelve
Kennedy
Mannix found me a couple of minutes later, sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the building. I'd pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs.
