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“And yet, not only did Isa hire a low-level grunt to deliver the message to that trash that jumped me, he also didn’t find it worth the effort to hire the messenger himself.”
Yule had discovered that the men who’d attacked Jita had been given the orders by a man named Tuesday, someone everyone knew was deep in Isa’s pocket. Still, Tuesday wasn’t very high up the food chain, nothing important or special.
Jita went to a metal rolling table set against the right wall and took his time selecting something from the array of objects over the surface. When he turned back, he was testing the weight and length of a medium-sized chain.
“He sent his dog to do it for him,” Jita picked the conversation back up as though there hadn’t been a pause, walking around until he was standing behind First. With no other warning than that, he wrapped the chain around First’s neck and pulled, meeting Odin’s gaze as the man in his hold began to struggle. “I hate when people don’t acknowledge my worth.”
It was rare to see the counselor emote since he was usually all business, but he’d been trained along with the rest of the Brumal, and there was literally only one thing that he absolutely refused to tolerate from anyone.
Being looked down on.
Jita had been abandoned at an orphanage at the young age of three and had no recollection of his parents. He’d studied hard on his own to make it into college and had gotten involved with the Brumal during. As a self-made man who’d grown up on the streets, he understood the importance of having his accomplishments and social standing acknowledged, especially on their planet.
He tugged the chains tighter, listening to First gurgle and try and struggle against it before letting it loose and ripping off the gag. “Why isn’t Meg Thorn dead?”
Straight to it, very Jita.
Hunter tensed and Odin rested a hand on his narrow back lightly. Whether he was anxious over if First would speak or because seeing this scene was giving him flashbacks, Odin just wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone.
There was still a lot they needed to discuss about the day he’d been kidnapped, and how Odin had found him, but last night they’d been exhausted and after their bath he’d coaxed the Huntsman into bed, not wanting to get into it. Later, once they’d handled this, the two of them would need to sit down and talk, and until then, there were most likely aspects of Hunter’s kidnapping that he wasn’t yet privy to.
Hunter didn’t ask to leave or look away, so Odin wasn’t going to bother suggesting he do so like he had earlier with Yule. Besides, Jita was every bit as deadly when he wanted to be, but he was far less creative with his torture methods than the butcher.
First hacked a few times, angry red welts forming around his neck from the chain, but didn’t immediately respond.
So Jita repeated the process, cinching the metal a little harder and for a little longer this time.
“She isn’t dead because she isn’t dead, asshole,” First heaved when he was released again. Even though he’d answered the question, he spit on the ground at Hunter’s feet.
“Why didn’t Isa kill her?” Jita asked as he tightened the chain, letting go once tears had begun leaking from the other man’s eyes.
“He tried,” First surprised them by admitting. “He shot her in the head.”
“I was sent a photo,” Hunter said.
“She was still breathing when people went to move the body,” First told him. “For some reason, Frost found that interesting and decided to have her hospitalized instead of offing her for good. When she woke she was different.”
“Different how?” he asked bluntly.
“She’d lost most of her memories but had no personal connection to the ones she’d kept either. She described it as though she was seeing clips of a movie, like the life she saw in them was foreign and belonged to somebody else.”
“Frost found that interesting, too,” Odin surmised.
“Of course,” First confirmed. “He tried to see how truthful she was being, trained her and taught her how to use a blaster, then told her to kill one of her old co-workers. She did it without batting an eye so he took that as her test, passed her, and had kept her all this time.”
“No one has seen her.” Odin certainly would have noticed if she’d been kept close to Isa for over ten years.
“She wasn’t in Ovid,” First said. “He had her relocated. She’s only recently been called back.”
“And she turned on Hunter so easily,” Jita frowned behind him. “Does she have no recollection of him?”
“Her family is one of the things she completely forgot,” First affirmed. “To her, even the name Hunter Thorn is meaningless.”
“Will she ever recover her memories?” Jita asked, but before First could answer, Hunter cut him off.
“No,” he said. “Because she doesn’t want to.”
First laughed.
