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The idea makes me queasy, although Anton definitely deserves it.
“True, but I’d like his punishment to last a lot longer,” Ingram says. “I mean, it should last at least as long as he tortured you with that show.”
Six months?
I’d have trouble thinking of ways to hurt Anton, but also keep him alive. What would that even look like? Locking him in a cell and making him watch Ingram thrive once more? Revenge is all Anton’s cared about for so long; is there really that much that can hurt him? Would living with the fact that he’s failed bring him constant pain, or would he get over it in time?
“Ingram, the last six months were terrible, but after a while I’d get used to it. People always adjust. Anton would too. Eventually it would just be delaying the inevitable. Would you really want hurting Anton to lose its value?”
“Trust me, it wouldn’t,” he says.
“Maybe. But Anton fucked up not killing us quickly. What if we make the same mistake? What if he finds a way out? You’ve been running what amounts to a terrorist organization — it wouldn’t be hard for him to paint you as the villain, rather than a vigilante. Everyone thinks I’m a hack now, and Anton is beloved in the business community. Convincing the world that we’re uncovering a massive deception won’t be easy. How will it look if all the world sees is us standing over Anton’s mangled corpse?”
“We’ll record his confession. We’ll expose him, long before we lay a finger on him. The rest of the Masters will corroborate everything. There won’t be any confusion about what he’s done.”
“There’s still a risk he could escape,” I say. “I want revenge, and we will have it. But sometimes you just have to end things.”
Ingram grabs a bottled water and takes a sip, then leans back on his bed and stretches out his legs.
“Okay then, answer my question: how would you kill Anton?”
“What are we talking, a few days worth of torture?” I ask, smirking.
“Sure.”
Is it a bad sign that my mind races with horrific ideas? Am I a psycho in waiting?
“It has to start with his balls,” I say. “A solid kick to them, every day.”
I doubt he’d get used to that.
“Come on, you can do better,” says Ingram.
“Okay, okay. How about… we starve him for a couple of days. We use noise to keep him awake until he’s delirious. Then we give him a bowl of the spiciest hot peppers we can find to eat. No water, no beverage — if he wants to eat, it has to be the peppers. He will feel like absolute shit.”
“Yeah,” Ingram says, nodding and grinning. “Yeah, that’s pretty good.”
“Then, when he’s begging for food and something to drink, we give him a bowl of milk, but it’s spiked with poison — something that puts him in terrible pain for days before he dies.”
Ingram stares at me, eyes wide, mouth open in shock.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,” he says. “Holy shit. Who the hell are you, Kate?”
My jaw drops.
I don’t-
He’s the one who-
“Wait, this was your idea!”
“I’m joking, Kate. I like knowing that you have a mind for vengeance, though. And trust me, I can think of way worse than that.”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Actually, I know what would really hurt Anton,” says Ingram. “Far more than anything else.”
“What’s that?”
