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Owen had been strung up, his hands keeping him upright as his feet dragged along the concrete pavement. Although the lights were dimmed, there was enough visibility to see the wounds Valentyn had inflicted with merely his fists, way more than I had last night when I had been beating him into the ground. Dmitri was brooding off to the side. He enjoyed more of the action above ground than this part but was equally intrigued when we participated.
“Gianni, you’re up.”
I gave Rhys one last look, wondering why I thought I saw the beginning of a smile tugging at his lips rather than fear.He’s enjoying this.It didn’t make any sense until I rememberedwhowe had right here. We had the man who had tortured Rhys’ body and mind for the better part of a year, strung up and at our mercy. He was watching his nightmare get everything he deserved. Rhys was finally getting the justice that the police had never been able to give him.
He was finally getting the closure that no one else could have ever offered him.
He was staring his nightmare in the eye and silently telling him that he no longer had any power. It was a glorious moment because I recognized it in my past. It was very similar to the first body I had seen Valentyn string up, fighting my demons for me.
And now it was my turn to help Rhys fight his.
I rolled out my tools, shivers of excitement running through my limbs as I picked up a pair of pinchers. It had been a while since we had gotten to do this. My grin widened and I knew what I looked like. I had practiced my smile often enough to know that the crazed expression on my face made grown men shit their pants. I clanked the pinchers together, laughing when Owen unsuccessfully tried to pull away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I tilted my head to the side, falling into my role like I always did. It was hard not to when this part of the process was so much fun. Giving Owen about two seconds to deal with the idea that we weren’t playing, I reached in, clamped the pinchers on his right nipple, and ripped down. Owen howled and I smiled as blood poured down his shirt, another waterfall of tears streaming down his cheeks. Oh, what a glorious noise.
I hadn’t started out doing this part of the business but after my first, it became like a fucking addiction. A forbidden way to let off steam.
Just the thought of Rhys’ terrified expression made me turn around and I hated to say that I was a little disappointed when he was no longer against the wall. But when I faced Owen again, Rhys was right there, running his fingers along my tools. He picked up my favorite tool—a stiletto knife with a deep purple sheen. I usually reserved it for the end of our little information extractions but I wasn’t going to stop Rhys from facing his demons. In any fashion he so chose.
The room fell silent as Rhys positioned himself in front of Owen, the knife tightly gripped in his hands. Determination settled in his expression as Owen tried to gaslight him with more lies. I wrapped my hand around Rhys’, the one with the knife, and positioned it forward, inches from Owen’s chest. “The power is all yours, Rhys. For once in your life, you get to make your nightmare feel the pain and terror he caused you. The first slice is always the hardest because there’s no going back after that.”
I could see him fighting his emotions. He was just the smart kid, the one that escaped into his world of numbers. But now, he had been lied to, gaslighted, and abused in ways that I wished I could make him forget. His life had fallen apart even down to his niece, a kid that I could tell Rhys loved with all of his heart.
Had we pushed him too far?
Slowly, ever so slowly, Rhys pushed the knife into Owen’s chest, the man expelling air as blood trickled from his lips. If we didn’t have another deadline at 8 pm, I would have fucked the shit out of Rhys right here. Instead, I just reached down to adjust my cock, making sure that Rhys caught the movement. He gave me a shy grin, his hand shaking when he pulled the knife out. I slipped it from his hands as Valentyn stole him farther away from the scene, running his hands all over Rhys’ face to bring him back from whatever dark part of his head he had drawn into.
“You did so fucking well, sweetheart. So well. Come back to me. That’s it. Breathe. Mmhm, there you go.” Valentyn leaned in and kissed him, Rhys melting against his chest before pulling away to look at Owen again. That kid was so fucking strong in ways that he didn’t even know.
I turned back to Owen, deciding to use Rhys’ blade of choice to continue dragging out information. There wasn’t much more he gave us other than the fact that his new employer wasn’t exactly Hawk International. I suspected that it was one of our rivals after hearing about the payday Owen was offering. A reminder on my watch told us that we were running out of time.
I slapped a piece of tape over Owen’s mouth and tapped his cheek. “Be right back for you and then you’ll understand what true pain is. It’ll be nice and slow to make you fully understand just why you shouldn’t touch things that aren’t yours.”
Owen mumbled some kind of curse but it fell on deaf ears as we migrated upstairs after I had stuffed my toolset under my arm, Rhys furiously washing his hands in the sink the moment he entered the kitchen. I justknewhe was going to break. I fucking knew it. It had been the only thing I had braced myself for and yet I still wasn’t ready for it.
Rhys looked over at us, shaking his head. “No, I’m okay. I just…” He took a deep breath, his panicked demeanor disappearing. “Iknewbut I didn’t know what you guys did. No, he deserves worse. I told people so many times and they just thought I was overreacting. I wanted him to scream, to yell, to truly cry. All those times I was fucking terrified or when he told me that everything was alright or when my family didn’t believe me.” Ah, he was letting off that adrenaline. I knew that feeling all too well.
Valentyn gathered him against his chest. “Sweetheart, it’s all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. That wasn’t exactly how I thought we were going to bring you into this but seeing you down there? Beautiful. Now, deep breaths. We’ve got that last handoff and then it’s all over.”
I had a strange feeling that it wouldn’t be.
Chapter forty-seven
RHYS
Valentyn was saying something as I washed my hands again, still feeling the ick on my skin. It was going to be there a while, just the memory of the life slipping from Owen’s eyes though made it worth it. I had wanted Owen dead just as much as the next guy but what they—we—had just done down there was some villain Hollywood-level shit.
I wasn’t as bothered by it as I probably should have been.
After all, I was just the numbers guy.
My eyes fell on some of the paperwork spread across the counter, Valentyn doing nothing to shield me from it. I didn’t understand half of it, much of it was just Owen’s whereabouts over the last few years. I garnered from it that nothing had been a coincidence and I hated to think that I had fallen in love or believed that I had with someone who had been planted in my life.
I flipped over a few of the papers, frowning when I saw a photocopy of a credit card. I held up the paper to them. “Why do you have a photocopy of my sister’s credit card here?”
Valentyn stared at me like I had lost my damn mind. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Fraser. It’s my sister’s married name. Ernest Fraser is her husband.”
