It’s been three days since she walked out of my apartment.
Three days since she pointed a gun at me, full of fury and heartbreak.
It kills me.
She’s been staying at Milena’s place. Which is smart, because that girl lives in a fucking fortress.
It makes it nearly impossible for me to go over there and drag her back—kicking and screaming if necessary—and tie her to my fucking bed, and apologize over and over until she understands that I didn’t mean to fuck up this badly.
That I’m sorry.
That I need her more than I’ve ever needed anyone, and that it scares the fuck out of me.
But Milena living in a steel castle isn’t the reason I haven’t gone to get Naomi. There’s always a way to reach someone. It’s not like the Mercury Theater has armed guards.
It’s me.
I fucking earned this.
The dark sensations slam into me all over again.
I used her own assault against her.
I mean…holy fuck.
I threatened her with it. I built everything upon it—everything we are.
Were.
“P-p-please…”
The steady drip-drip-drip of blood hitting the dirty floor blended with the half-conscious whimpers for mercy that is never coming pulls me from my thoughts.
Re-igniting the fury.
Forcing the self-loathing I’m wallowing in back to its cave as I morph back into a dark apostle of wrath and vengeance.
Speaking of vengeance…
I turn to let my eyes narrow on the two men hanging by the chains around their wrists, dangling from the rusty rafters of an old slaughterhouse. We’re deep in Brooklyn, safely away from prying eyes and curious ears.
Out here, I am death, destroyer of worlds.
Or at least, destroyer of their worlds.
Adam Chapman and Steven Haines. Naomi knew them as Gus and Seb.
The two pieces of shit who put their fucking hands on her. Who lured her in with the promise of a photoshoot, then drugged her and sexually assaulted her while she was blacked out.
Put their fingers in her. Touched her wherever they wanted. Jerked their pathetic, tiny, rapist dicks while looking at her and came on her body. Filmed her at her most vulnerable moment.
Well, now they’re in a hell they haven’t even begun to comprehend.
I found them the fun way: hunting them. I watched the video again until I could pause it and zoom in on the window in the background. A window that looked out at a café, enough of the signage visible that I was able to find it in the West Village, figure out the angle, and then determine the building where Naomi was assaulted.
From there, a very prickly but ultimately helpful woman named Celine Rios, a ceramics artist who lives and works in the building, told me about the photographer and his assistant who’d sublet the top floor.
“Always in and out at late hours,” she’d complained. “Bringing in all sorts of sketchy types. Not artists. Dangerous-looking men.”
The top floor studio they’d been subletting still had signs of carnage when I saw it. The owners had already started fixing it up, but there were bullet holes in the walls, and clear bloodstains in the tile grout in the kitchen.
Celine didn’t know what’d happened up there, but I do.
Leonard tried to start shit with the Obsidian Syndicate and sent people to the studio space in the West Village. There was a fight, and Mario, that contact who got me the fucking video, grabbed the thumb drive and got the fuck out in the middle of it.
There was still a square of plywood over the busted back window that leads to the fire escape, where Mario made his break for it.
After that, the hunt was easy. Both of the fuckers had gone to the café across the street a few hundred times, and most of the staff knew them.
Not as Gus and Seb. As their real names.
And here we are.
Steven, AKA Seb, sounds like he’s trying to speak, but it just comes out as a wet cough. Blood drips down his chin from his ruined mouth, his jaw slack.
Probably broken, come to think of it.
I walk toward him slowly, my boots loud in the quiet stillness.
“Something you’d like to share with the group?” I ask, voice low. “Because now’s your chance, while I’m giving my arms a rest.”
He flinches, even though I haven’t made a move to hit him again.
“W-we didn’t pick her,” he mumbles, blood still leaking from his swollen lips and trickling down his fucked-up face. “Th-they did.”
“Who’s they?” I snarl, grabbing a hank of his hair and jerking his head back.
He groans in pain, his eyes—excuse me, eye; he’s only got the one, now—rolling around aimlessly in its socket as the chains he’s hanging from rattle.
“I don’t know…” he chokes wetly. “No one high up uses names. We were just told that she was the daughter of a congressman. We didn’t ask questions.”
Adam—Gus—wheezes beside him. “I-I know…” he croaks.
“I’m sorry, what?” I whirl and punch him in the dick, just because.
I should mention they’re both completely naked and their chains are suspended from old meat hooks. I’m willing to bet Naomi isn’t the first girl they’ve raped or assaulted together.
…So this retribution is a long time in the making.
“If you know, stop fucking crying like a little bitch and tell me,” I snarl, punching him in the balls again and making him choke on the blood dripping out of his fucking mouth.
“Omar…” Adam gurgles wetly. “His name is Omar.”
Wait. Why does that name sound familiar?
“And what is this Omar’s role,” I spit at Adam.
He coughs and wheezes, wriggling on his chain like a worm on a fucking hook.
“He’s the one who brings orders from the guy at the top…” he mumbles, fading in and out of consciousness.
Oh, can’t have that. He’ll miss all the fun.
I turn and grab one of the buckets of ice water I’ve got lined up behind me. Adam sputters when I splash it on him, sending him back into consciousness.
But just to make sure?
Yup. Another punch to the dick. Hugely enjoyable.
“Tell me more about Omar,” I hiss. “Last name. Address. What he looks like.”
Adam is openly sobbing now, writhing on his chain.
“Don’t know his surname…” he cries. “Or where he lives.”
“Adam, all I’m hearing is that you want to get hit in the balls again. And this time, I might have to use something sharp and pointy…or how about that blowtorch over there.” I turn, gesturing to the table of goodies I have laid out like a buffet.
He wails, shaking his head. “I don’t know! H-he’s your height. Hispanic, maybe Middle Eastern. Light skinned, goatee…”
For fuck’s sake.
He’s describing easily a fifth of the population of New York.
“Adam, Adam, Adam…” I sigh heavily as I turn toward my toys on the table.
“Tattoo!” he blurts in a broken voice. “Yeah…tattoo on his forearm. A giant lion…wearing a Yankees cap…” He sucks in a ragged breath. “And a number eight…gothic font.”
Holy. Shit.
A month and a half ago, I met a man on a rooftop—a possible lead into who might be prying into the Black Court. Naomi accidentally saw me push the dumb fuck off a roof, but not before I’d had a chance to talk to him.
Hear his threats.
“If you were this interested in meeting me, then that means you’re worried about what me and my crew might already know about your little club.”
I remember wondering how someone could have that fucking bad of a lion tattoo on their forearm.
And his name was Omar.
When it clicks into place, something dark blooms inside me.
Omar wasn’t just “some guy”. He was Obsidian Syndicate. And not some low-level foot soldier, either, if he was the link between these two fuck-bags and “the guy” at the top.
Something cold ripples down my spine.
I’m beginning to think that the whole meet on the roof was a setup. The Obsidian Syndicate, looking for more weak spots—or, fuck, trying to kill me.
Shit.
“Tell me about this guy at the top,” I growl at them.
This time, Adam is dumb enough to stop talking. That’s an automatic punch to the dick.
Hey—I don’t make the rules.
“How about you, fuck-head?” I smile coldly, turning back to Steven. “Your balls need itching too, or are you feeling talkative?”
He whimpers, his eyes sliding toward Adam.
“Don’t look at him,” I grit. “Look at fucking me.”
“Th-they call him the Marquis,” Steven croaks. “I only met him once. I don’t know his name, I swear! But dresses really sharp, definitely has money.”
“Something I can use, Steven,” I growl. “Not his fashion choices.”
His lip quivers. “H-he…” He glances at Adam again before he apparently makes up his mind about something and drags his gaze back to me. “There’s tension,” he mumbles. “In the Obsidian Syndicate ranks—”
“Stop…talking…” Adam wheezes.
I flick him in the balls, relishing his pained shriek before I turn back to Steven.
“…You were saying?”
Steven nods eagerly, blood smeared all over his body.
“Th-there’s a splinter faction within the ranks. Some people say the Marquis is getting sloppy. Going soft. Taking too much off the top.” He turns his head, and blood dribbles out of his mouth. “Some of the guys…they want something new. New leadership, that kinda thing.”
I’m not sure yet how any of this might be useful. Still, I mentally file it away.
And now I get to be the avenging angel of motherfucking death and fury.
“The sort of new leadership who might, for example, not use rape as a tool of coercion?”
My voice is pure venom and acid.
Steven trembles, blood dripping from his lip. “Look… We didn’t even know who that girl was. We were just told to get it done. She was just a message.”
Just a message.
The words crack something open in my chest.
I stare at him for a long second. Then I take a slow, deep breath, walk over to the table and pick up a crowbar, and turn back to the pair of them.
“Her name is Naomi. Not ‘that girl.’ Naomi.”
Adam tries to mumble something, but I crack him across the jaw with the crowbar.
Steven starts bleating in terror.
“We didn’t know who she was!” he sobs. “They just told us to—please—we didn’t know!”
I turn to him, my grip tightening around the crowbar.
“It didn’t matter,” I hiss coldly. “It didn’t fucking matter who she was when you drugged her and put your filthy hands on her, and rubbed your limp little cocks to her.”
I raise the crowbar to his jaw, lifting his chin slightly with the end of it to make damn sure he looks into my eyes.
“Now, though,” I growl, “it matters.” My eyes narrow. “Because she’s mine.”
Warm liquid splatters my shoes, and I realize Steven’s lost control of his bladder.
“Now then…” I murmur, walking back to the table. I trade the crowbar for a rusty, not-very-sharp pair of gardening shears and turn back to them. “I’d like to know exactly which fingers you each touched her with. And don’t be shy. If you say nothing, I’ll take them all.”
Adam’s bleary eyes raise, horror on his haggard, bloodied face.
“You…you promised us if we gave you wha…what you wanted to know…”
“That I’d let you go?” I chuckle to myself, twirling the shears in my hand.
“Yeah, and you promised Naomi she was just going to have her picture taken.”
His face goes white.
“But don’t worry, you rapist piece of shit,” I say quietly. “Death is a long way off for both of you. Now, whose balls am I cutting off first?”
