It wasn’t just how she looked, she was the most beautiful woman, yes, but it was more. Every time I was alone, it was her scent, that subtle mix of a delicate flowery scent with musky undertones that made me want to bury my nose in her neck and stay there.
I wanted to catch a whiff of that scent and follow it to her.
I wanted to see her challenging smile, hear that laugh, and watch those icy blue eyes scrutinize her environment before settling on mine.
I hadn’t said it to her, but by fuck when I got her back, I would. Every damn day I would tell her I loved her until she understood it and more.
My heart ripped when I realized she was missing, and I had laughed like a psychopath because it couldn’t, shouldn’t, have been true.
I combed through hallways and corridors littered with dead or dying people. Not batting an eyelid as they led me to where the men I needed were.
Tied to chairs, the five men were in a small windowless room. Maybe it was the wreckage from the attack, the bloodstain on the walls, carpet, and ceiling, but I hadn’t been overly impressed with the hotel’s interior.
Maybe I’d just done Triev a favor because this hotel wouldn’t have lasted half the year if it had started operating.
I entered the room, and one of the tied men opened his mouth.
“Do what you want, we’ll ne—” he was starting to say before I fired at one kneecap, and he screamed.
Then he tried to talk again, and I fired at the other kneecap. “Now you’ll never fucking walk,” I said with a surprisingly calm voice. Inside me, I was falling apart. I snapped for a chair and dragged it to the front of the man I’d just shot, and my boys filtered out of the room, shutting the door, and getting to work cleaning up the street. They didn’t need to bother with this place, it would be burnt to the ground soon enough.
I pulled out a knife and started the torture, digging out for the bullets lodged in his knees.
His screams were blood curdling and distracting, so I stopped after getting the second bullet out.
“Normally, I would have asked you a question, but I think you were just about to say that you’d never talk, yes?”
If looks could kill, I’d never have made it past twenty years old, but here I was, well into my thirties, being given a death stare that was severely laced with fear.
It was unlucky for him that the death stare wouldn’t hurt him the way I planned to.
I pulled out a knife and went for the tongue. If he wasn’t going to talk, then he didn’t need it. His comrades watched me mutilate him in perfect silence.
A scapegoat was what I’d been looking for, and the universe had provided it accordingly.
I started humming again after tossing the tongue to one corner of the room, listening to the heavy breathing of the other managers.
“There are only two things you can do if you want to live,” I said, ripping the man’s shirt so I could start carving out his torse, “one would be able to tell me where the fuck your boss took my wife to. The other, if you could remind me what the fuck I’m trying to sing. I can’t remember the words.”
The first time I carved a living thing must have been a rat from my childhood; it had snuck into my stash of snacks, and I’d set a trap for it.
With his stomach open, the first man died very quickly.
When he went limp, I pushed him back, so his chair tripped and fell over, and scooted my chair to the next man.
He was soaked in blood from the first man’s spray, sweat, and tears.
“Will you also not tell me what I need to know?”
He was shaking his head and already begging. “I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know. I don’t have the level to know, they didn’t tell me anything, I swear.”
“Not even the rhyme?” I asked, wiping the blood off my knife on his shirt.
Sanitary was preferred.
“…I don’t know…” his replied in a pleading tone.
Not good enough.