Page 27 of The Carnage We Keep

That mother. FUCKER!

And no, this has nothing to do with him grabbing me by the throat at the cliffs the other night.

It doesn’t even have anything to do with how fucking annoyed I am that the uptight prick has wormed his way into every single one of my nighttime fantasies. That I somehow keep getting off while simultaneously fantasizing not only about Damiano railing the shit out of me but also pushing him off the top of a very tall building.

That I’ve spent the last four nights confronting the inconvenient truth that, somewhere in my fucked-up brain, wanting him to fuck me and me wanting to murder him have apparently become neighboring thoughts.

No. The eleventy-millionth reason for Bella to curse Damiano out is Patrick.

My nose wrinkles as I glare into the back of the stolen ambulance near the Red Hook docks and stare at the pristine kill scene in front of me.

It’s truly offensive how uncreative my nemesis is.

“Offensive,” I snap under my breath, glaring at a bloodless, blandly dead Patrick McCleary. “I am off-en-ded.”

The way Damiano kills reminds me of the teachers in kindergarten barking at you to stay inside the lines while coloring.

I mean, where the fuck is the creative spirit? The joie de vivre?

My brow furrows deeper.

I make fine art. I make statements that comment on the human condition. Damiano, meanwhile, kills like he’s decorating a dentist’s waiting room. The motherfucker is the Thomas Kinkade of murder, and I simply cannot with his complete lack of vision anymore.

I also cannot with him stealing my motherfucking kill. Again.

But at least I’ll admit… I’m impressed.

It’s pretty clear by now that Damiano and I have the same or at least similar lists. Which means I'm sure we’re both ultimately after Kasper Sorel as our end game. But getting to Sorel means working your way up the food chain of monsters in his organization

Like Patrick McCleary.

To civilized society, Patrick is your classic charming, influential, politically savvy rich guy. He made his money in hedge funds, gives generously to all the expected charities, hobnobs with New York's elite, and spends considerable time on his little-dick-compensation yacht.

What civilized society doesn’t know is that Patrick’s frequently joined on that yacht by female companions who aren’t old enough to vote yet.

…Courtesy of Sorel.

That alone is reason enough for me to teach myself woodworking…thank you, YouTube…and it's why I’ve spent the past two weeks building a guillotine in the Engineering School’s woodshop on campus.

But Patrick is—well, was, given his current bloodless state—also a big financier of Sorel’s organization. Which is why I’d planned on using my new Marie Antoinette makeover machine to remove his dick, then his fingers and toes, then maybe a leg because why not, and then give him the extra short haircut.

Well, actually, my first plan was to keep him chained up and gagged in my kill room until the stage four lung cancer he’s been battling did its thing. But the idea of watching his head roll across the floor courtesy my homemade Chop-Chop 5000 was too hilarious a prospect to pass up.

The tricky part, though, was actually getting to him. Not only has McCleary had extra eyes and security with his recent bad health, he’s also always been notoriously paranoid.

Armed guard escorts when he goes outside. More armed guards on his yacht—who I guess charge extra to ignore the whole trafficking and sex crimes thing.

Gross.

Bullet- and bomb-proof cars. A panic button always on his person. A small army guarding his townhouse in midtown.

Truth be told, I was genuinely fifty-fifty on my plan to dynamite my way into the scumbag’s top-floor bedroom via the roof patio even working.

And that’s the real reason for the rage boiling inside me: Lamiano managed it.

He got to Patrick. And loath as I am to admit it, even to myself, I’m a little impressed.

I grumble under my breath as I climb into the open back of the ambulance. McCleary is on a metal gurney, naked, his body bound to the steel table by perfectly neat loops of plastic wrap. The foot of the gurney is slightly raised, and even though there’s not a single fucking drop of blood anywhere—I mean Jesus, Lamiano, what a fucking psycho—you can still see the incision on Patrick’s jugular and enough bruising there to tell me there was a drainage tube shoved into that incision at one point.