Page 14 of Wild Heart
Acigarette sat precariously in the corner of my mouth, my nostrils flaring against the bitter scent of smoke as it curved through the stale atmosphere. Ashes fell from the tip and landed in a small pile on the concrete. I watched their embers glow before I used the toe of my boot to smother them. The rubber sole was stained with fresh blood.
Rising from the old chair I sat in, I strode across the shadowed room. My stitches pulled with each step I took, but I welcomed the ache the same way I welcomed another drag of my cigarette.
It kept me grounded. Focused.
I stopped just beside a wooden pallet and stared down at the man who was strapped to it, naked and covered in gashes. His eyes were drowning in fear and frustration, and I knew we only had minutes left before he began to beg.
The begging was my favorite part.
Between my fingers, I captured what was left of my cigarette, tapping the pad of my thumb against the edge. Ashes fell like rain against his abused skin, burning small wounds into the place just above his genitals. He twitched against my barely there assault, and with a flick of my wrist, I pressed the butt of my cigarette against the tip of his cock.
A heinous growl tore through him. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Get in line, bitch.”
I poked a finger at the tattoo etched on his chest—a fucking half-assed job that looked like it’d been done in a crack house somewhere. The ugly emblem implied he was one of Delgado’s boys.
“Blue,” I called.
A pair of wide eyes appeared on the other side of the table. They were full of excitement. “Sir?”
“Go get a blowtorch and get rid of this tattoo. I’m tired of looking at it.”
The kid made a happy sound and fuckingskippedacross the warehouse. He was eager as hell and deranged as they came. Ben had found Blue living under a bridge, playing house with his parent’s corpses. Kid was barely eighteen but hell if he didn’t get the job done.
“Alright, so here’s what’s going to happen.” I pressed both palms to the wood and leaned over him so we were eye to eye. He smelled like piss and the panic he was trying to hide. “I’m going to ask you some fucking questions, and for every question you don’t answer, Blue is going to burn a new patch of your skin. You ever smelled charred flesh before? It’s putrid. A bit like leather over a flame but I don’t mind.”
Blue was hugging the torch now, rubbing his cheek against it. He hummed as he swayed back and forth. “I like when the scent gets so thick you can taste it. You want to know what your own flesh tastes like, Freddy?”
Freddy.
Thatwas his name.
“Anything you do to me won’t be half as bad as the shit Delgado will do if I talk.”
I grinned. “Do you think you’re making it out of here alive,dolboyob?”
In a blink, I had my hand wrapped around his neck, shoving my fingers into the cut Blue had made with a rusty butterfly knife.
Freddy’s feet thrashed, and he growled through his teeth as I increased the pressure.
“You’re dying on this table tonight, but if you cooperate, it won’t be so bad. If you don’t, I’ll let Blue waterboard you until he gets bored.”
He choked on my grip. “They are going to know it was you.”
“Yeah, no shit.” I released him. “Especially after I start mailing them chunks of your body.”
“You have a death wish, man.”
“I’ve been dead for years,dolboyob. Hell and I are besties now.”
“I taught him that word,” Blue said just before he lit the blow torch.
Freddy’s scream nearly blew the fucking roof off this warehouse. We were far enough out that I didn’t have to worry about gagging him. The depleted warehouse was one of Ben’s initial purchases. It was close to an hour outside of Seattle, surrounded by swamp and forest—all owned by a Benjamin Thomas alias. It was where we conducted our business, and Dominic Delgado had been our business for years.
“Tell me where Delgado’s holed up.”
“I don’t know! He changes his location every night. We have to report to him by burner phones, and if he’s in a good mood, hemighttell us where he’s staying.”
