“About time you woke up. I’d hate for you to miss all the fun. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to ask you about Tarin. How did you know she was even my daughter? Why did you think if you took her, that I’d trade Ilara and Hope for her?”
He was breathing shallowly. I could tell his ribs hurt. There were flecks of blood coming out and staining his mouth when he breathed. That was a sign that a lung was punctured. “I overheard her talking on the phone one day at the café in town. She was telling someone she found her dad. His name was Bear, and he was in a biker club called the Archangel’s Warriors. She was going to see him later.”
“What did you do then?” Outlaw asked him. Hamilton glanced at him then back to me. “I followed her to her hotel. I knew that it might come in handy to know where she was staying, which it did.” He gave me a tiny smile. I wanted to bash his face in. I didn’t, though it looked like Outlaw might.
“When you failed to get Ilara that day at the hospital, you came up with this plan to grab Tarin, didn’t you? Again, why did you think I’d trade one for the others?”
“Because she’s your daughter! Hope isn’t and Ilara is a woman, but you can find another one. I was going to make the trade and take my family home.”
“They’re not your fucking family! They’re mine. I’d never trade any of them! Blood isn’t thicker than water. Hope is as much mine as Tarin is,” I shouted. I stabbed him in the other shoulder. He wailed in pain.
This time it was Outlaw who asked the next question. “When you took Tarin, you didn’t plan to give her back, did you? You were going to rape her and then kill her.” His voice was deadly calm, which meant he was enraged.
Hamilton raised his head. He started to laugh. “I was going to kill her, but only after I had her and made her scream my name. She would’ve begged me to fuck her again and again, just like Ilara did.”
As he laughed, Outlaw and I both went for him. Outlaw was stabbing him with his knife. He sliced up his underwear and tore them aside until he could see his limp cock. He made one swipe and cut it in half. Hamilton looked down in horror and sobbed.
I grabbed his hair. “Look at me. I’m going to show you why they call me Bear. Some say it’s because I’m big like one and I growl like one, but that’s not it. It’s because of a story I told as a prospect. I think you should hear it.
“When I was a kid, my dad would take me hunting. One year, we came across a bear. We weren’t going to bother it, but the bear decided we were a threat. It circled around on us. He was charging at us when we shot him several times and killed him. While we were field dressing it, my dad told me a story about a frontiersman, who used to cut out the hearts of bears after he killed them. I thought it was cool, so I cut out the heart of the bear. We had bear meat all winter and into the next spring.
“Now, what does that story have to do with now? I’m going to cut out your fucking heart and burn that fucker to ash. And you’re going to get to watch, because I’m not waiting until you’re dead to do it,” I hissed. His eyes went wide, and he shook his head and mumbled “No” over and over.
I went over and grabbed the ax we had on the table. I had to get through ribs to get to the heart. He screamed as I hacked through the bone and got to his heart. It took several whacks to get through the bone. I had no idea how he didn’t faint, to be honest. It had to be excruciating. His screams rang throughout the room as I hacked into his chest. As his eyes looked at me dully, with his life racing out of his body, I cut his heart out and held it in front of his face as he took his last breaths.
My brothers were standing around silent and I could tell I’d shocked them. I’d helped to torture men before. They’d seen me do it, but none had seen this. I hadn’t ever thought of doing it until him. I threw his heart in a bucket. I had blood all over me. I turned to them. “Will you burn the heart and the body in the crematory for me? I need to go get Ilara at the hospital.”
Bull nodded. “We’ll take care of it. You go get cleaned up and get your woman. She’s safe now. All of them are.” He looked at Outlaw when he said that.
“Thank you for helping to make sure my family is safe.”
“That’s what family does, Bear. We help each other and do whatever it takes to keep each other safe,” Tank told me. I left them there to clean up the mess. I was tired and just wanted to hold my woman and see my daughters. Thank God we had that hidden crematorium under the Cellar. It sure came in handy.