“You should talk to him,” I said to her. Because if I did I might’ve actually skipped the talking part and immediately start beating his face.
She turned to Neal. “Bring Monte here as fast as you can, he’s at the rehab center.”
He nodded and hurried out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” Mel said to the both of us as she walked out.
What the fuck? We didn’t have time for this!
“Am I the only one aware of the doomsday clock that’s ticking away right now?!” Declan asked as he slammed his hands on the table. “We aren’t going to be able to hack this. Should I get Fedel and have the family meet us? We have to go now and get a head start on all this.”
“We aren’t running,” I said to him as Mel returned with a bottle of whiskey, a first aid kit, and small duffle bag.
She said nothing to either of us before she headed inside the room and closed the door with her foot.
“Liam—”
“Declan, I will not fucking tell you again. We are not running. Shut up. Sit down, and wait. He wants to throw us off again, and you’re letting him fuck with your head. Now focus!” I yelled at him, when in all honesty, I was speaking to myself.
Focusing on her, I watched as she undid his bandage, and exposed his knee’s flesh, bone, blood, and skin. She took the whiskey and poured it on his wound, his leg twitched, but he didn’t scream or even flinch for that matter. Noticing that, she shot me a quick look before she took the new bandage and wrapped it around his knee. If he didn’t respond to this, then torturing the information out of him wasn’t going to be possible. In fact, he would want us to waste even more of our time on him while the clock continued to tick.
When she was done, she grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen from her kit, tilted his head back and pinched under his jaw to force his mouth open. Dropping the pills in, she flushed it down with the whiskey.
“At least he’s human,” I muttered to myself as he coughed and sputtered.
We all had the ability to control pain, but some things were just human nature, like coughing up a liquid that had been forced down our throats.
Slowly, she packed up everything.
“You’re wasting time,” he spoke for the first time since getting here.
“I have all the time in the world,” she replied.
“You’re lying,” he snickered. “I can see the fear in your eyes. You’re thinking about how far you could make it if you run.”
“You surprised me, Avian, I have to give you that. I never thought you would give up so easily.”
He laughed. He laughed like a madman, and I wondered if this was where Aviela had gotten her insanity from.
“I haven’t given up, Melody. I’ve won.” He grinned, “Your husband made me see that with his little massacre yesterday. My name is already tarnished is the public’s eye. And for some reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Thank you all for that wonderful revelation, it feels as though a burden has been lifted off my shoulders. You took away the only thing that I thought mattered to me. The only thing left that can satisfy me now is knowing that I destroyed you.
“Your world is over. I did that, and never again will any person rise to the same status as this family. You will spend the rest of your lives running like dogs until someone puts you down. You thought you were ruthless. You thought you were untouchable. You were wrong. There is only one. There is only me. So tell me, how does it feel to know that you’ve been under my foot this entire time?”
“Don’t bleed out when this is over. I’m sure Liam would like to properly repay you for his father,” she replied as she stepped out.
“Tick-tock!” he yelled before his manic laughter broke out once more. Mel made no reply as she shut the door behind her.
“If I ever lose my mind, you have permission to put me down,” she said to me as she dropped the bag onto the table.
“Noted,” I replied as she handed two watches to Declan and I, before she placed one around her own wrist.
“We’re going to break into Avian’s office, and I’m going to hack into his computer,” she said.
“How do you know that’s the right computer this program is from?” Declan asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t. You and Monte will be hacking all of these reporters. Just like when you were trying to hide my mother from me. Even when the timer goes off, I want to make sure that they aren’t able to access any of this information.”
“Why don’t you attach a virus to it? That way if they open any of the files, it will destroy their hard drive,” I suggested and they both froze.
“And this is why you're the fucking boss!” Declan clapped.
Mel moved beside him and looked over his screen.
“We don’t have time to build one from scratch, do you already have one in your system?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do—” He grinned. However, as he clicked on a folder, his whole system shut down.
“What the fuck just happened?!” I yelled at him, I could feel my heart in my throat, as Mel pushed him out of the way and reset everything only to have the clock pop back up. It spun out of control, until finally, it stopped.
“Damn-it!” Mel screamed as she grabbed the first aid kit and flung it at the one-way mirror.
I couldn’t even speak. What was once twenty-two hours, was now down to eleven. Eleven motherfucking hours.
“Did you try to attach something to my program? Tsk-tsk. Didn’t I tell you that that would cut your time in half? That was a little surprise your mother added for me when she set up the program. At least she was good for something.” Avian laughed.
I couldn't stop myself from grabbing my brass knuckles. I stormed into the room, all but kicking down the door. As I grabbed onto his collar, I smashed into his face.
“You stupid son of a bitch!”
I punched him and his cheekbone cracked under the force of my blow.
“If you think I’m going to go down like this, you’re mistaken!”
I punched into his nose, enjoying the way it felt as it broke in two places.
“Liam,” Mel called behind me.
Gripping onto his throat while my other fist hung in the air, I said, “You better pray, old man.”
He smiled and the blood in his mouth poured out like a waterfall along with a few of his teeth. “I don’t fear death. I don’t fear exposure. You have no control here. Tick-tock.”
“Liam,” Mel called again.
Letting go of him, I kicked into his chest with so much force that he and the chair fell backward.
Stepping out again I pulled the brass from my knuckles.
“What the bloody fuck happened?” Neal yelled as he entered the room and his eyes zeroed in on the clock.
He wheeled in Monte who was dressed in a pair of shorts and T-shirt. His left leg was gone and he had a cast on his right one. Thank God he still had his hands.
“Did he fill you in?” I asked him.
“I thought we had twenty or so hours left?” he asked.
“If you try to corrupt or change the program, it cuts the time in half. So if we can’t kill it from this end, then start hacking into the journalist’s computers. Set up the virus from their end and killing all incoming mail, along with anywhere else he planned on sending it,” Mel said to him as we ran past him and up the stairs.