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The grating, high-pitched screech of the axe scraping against the cement floor reverberated through the warehouse, each chilling metallic rasp puncturing the eerie silence. Its rhythmic drag was like a sinister metronome, filling the air with an unsettling dread, as the man tried to crawl away from the Vigilante faster, who hunted him with an eerily tranquil demeanor.
When the Vigilante reached his target, his form became an outline, a nocturnal echo in the dark no longer in front of the portable lights.
“Please, please!” The man rolled onto his back and put his palm up. “This wasn’t my idea. I was just following orders!”
“Funny thing.” The Vigilante dragged out every word. “You probably could’ve gone through the rest of your life hurting more people and breathing the oxygen meant for the rest of us. But then you hurther.”
The Vigilante raised the axe with both hands, and though the guy screamed, “Please, no!” he slammed it to the ground with a grating clash of metal against stone—the sound ringing through the air like a ruthless chime.
The man’s severed arm rolled away from him as blood squirted out from his shoulder, and he howled like the dying animal he was.
Shock clenched my heart. I don’t know what I expected, but that certainly was not it. I had to clamp my eyes shut, but I couldn’t shield myself from the horror playing out. The man’s piercing screams hurt my eardrums, and I began to tremble as I heard another loud clank of the axe hitting stone.
I waited several seconds before opening my eyes. The Vigilante had cut off both of the man’s arms, but he didn’t end his life quickly.
“What didhedo to you?” the Vigilante asked, nodding his chin toward one of the other henchmen.
I shook my head. I wasn’t participating in this.
The Vigilante seemed to stare at me for a minute before looking down at the ground. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll have to use my imagination.”
I didn’t want to see this. I appreciated the Vigilante rescuing me, and I hated these men with my whole soul, but I didn’t want to see or hear them being tortured.
“Let me go,” I pleaded.
The Vigilante seemed to regard me.
“You deserve to see them suffer after what they did to you, Luna.”
Luna.Not Ms. Payne. He had never called me by my first name before.
I tried not to watch the torture inflicted on the other men, but it was like witnessing a car accident, unable to look away completely. When I heard a scream, I would risk a peek from my eye and see something horrific. Blood. Missing fingers. Men’s terrified faces as they watched their colleagues getting tortured, making a failing attempt to get away. Only to suffer the same fate of cracking bones and torn flesh themselves.
Eventually, their tortured screams slowly diminished into moans and then silence.
I opened my eyes again, noting that Franco Hopkins—who was still lying on the ground, growing more conscious—was the only one left alive.
CHAPTER61
Hunter
Iwalked back over to Luna and finally unbound her. Should’ve done it right away, in hindsight, but what can I say? Rage had a way of taking over.
As soon as she was free, Luna shot up out of her chair. She stumbled slightly, breathing heavily, but groaned through the pain as she shuffled to Franco. Pounding her fists on his ribs while she let out this hybrid of a scream and a cry.
If Franco hadn’t been pistol-whipped so many times, he might’ve fought back, but instead, I let the beauty beat the shit out of the beast for a bit.
It was mesmerizing, to see her rage. It did something to me, made me wonder if she and I were more alike than I realized, but the moment of amusement collapsed when she fell into a sob.
He would lose a limb for that sob.
In the distance, sirens began to screech through the air.
Making her look up with furrowed brows.
“How did they know I was here?” she asked.
“I called them.” On the way, just in case I was killed when I went in.
