I stride across the roof to the rusted water tower, my blood humming as I listen to the footsteps of my brothers behind me. This is as much their vengeance as it is mine. I tilt my head to either side, cracking my neck before climbing the rungs to the tower’s hatch. The ladder is just as rusted as the rest of it, the scratchy metal gritty under my palms.
Anticipation licks my skin like alcohol flames as I unlock the padlock keeping the hatch firmly closed. I will be so fucking disappointed if the bastard died before my fun could really start. I don’t regret many things, but if he’s dead, I will regret putting a screwdriver through both kneecaps before locking him in the water tower twenty-four hours ago. It was admittedly a bit overzealous.
With a sigh and prayer, I lift the lid and like a gift from God, Mark Schneider’s weaselly face is staring back at me, alive and well—okay, notwell, but alive. His hair is wet and stringy down his forehead as he gasps desperately at my arrival.
“Thank god, you’re back.” His voice instantly wobbles with tears, and I sniff at his pathetic breakdown. “Please don’t leave me again, I won’t make it. Please, I’ll do anything if you let me out.” He bobs in the water, and I’m disappointed the lighting isn’t better so I can see if the water has turned red or brown from his blood.
His arms flounder weakly as he swims across the tank to the open hatch with two destroyed knees. The man’s an idiot if he thinks we will take him out of this tank and simply let him go.
But surely he knows that. He’s spent the past ten years hearing about all his co-conspirators showing up dead from the most gruesome injuries. I have to give it to him, he was very fucking good at hiding. But not perfect, and we finally caught him.
It sickens me to reach into the tank, having to touch him to pull him out. I growl in disgust as I yank him out and send him headfirst down the ladder. He falls to the roof, howling in pain. There’s not an ounce of sympathy in me. Knowing my father must have howled the same way as he slowly lost his mind in solitary confinement.
Officially, he was there for his own protection. He was jumped during his first week in prison. But I never doubted for a second that it was Schneider and his cronies who locked him away so he couldn’t tell anyone the truth.
The truth being that they—the members of Governor Albright’s cabinet—killed the Governor and framed my father. The cabinet wanted to get into bed with the Italians, but Albright was loyal to my family. In one savage swoop, they eliminated both Albright and my father.
Any resulting pain they’ve suffered at my hands is due to their own shortsightedness. Nobody expected the hot-headed son of Aiden Fox to amount to much. Everyone assumed my brothers and I would fizzle and burn, motherless and fatherless. Drown ourselves in drugs or get ourselves killed in petty street fights.
Of course, that didn’t happen. And now I’m standing over the huddled, moaning form of the last roach to squish. I squat down to look at his tear-streaked face. “I hate to lower myself to your level, but I want to do this eye to eye.”
“Pl-please,” he blubbers, and I pull the gun from my waistband and shove the barrel in his mouth to shut him up.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt?” His eyes are giant, watery saucers as he nods shakily around the gun. “Anyway, you’re not here for a fucking etiquette lesson.” I hear one of my brothers snort behind me—probably Finn, the twisted fuck.
“Have you heard of death by a thousand cuts? Everyone thinks it’s so literal and pictures a thousand tiny paper cuts or some shit. Do you know what they actually did?” He mumbles something incoherent with the gun still lodged in his mouth. “Hmm, I didn’t quite understand that. I’ll just tell you, huh?
“The executioner would actually flay small portions of the skin, then amputate the limbs, and the grand finale was decapitation.” Righteous ire bubbles up when I watch him cry, his shattered body shaking with his sobs. “But don’t worry, Mark, I won’t do that to you. See, unfortunately, the condemned usually dies or passes out long before they get to the amputation. And that doesn’t sound like very much fun.”
I flick my wrist, indicating for my brothers to set him up on the spanking bench they carried up to the roof. I won’t be using it for its intended purpose, but it will work great for what I have planned. I withdraw the gun as my brothers pick up the man. He screams between sobs and pleas as they lay him over the bench and fasten his wrists and ankles below him. His knees make a terrible crunching sound when they bend them to fit into the bench.
Schneider is shivering, and I don’t know if it’s from the chill in his wet clothes or the pain. Maybe fear of what’s to come. Either way, it’s a beautiful sight. Out here, on the outskirts of June Harbor’s city limits, the stars are visible in the clear night sky, giving the scene before me an air of astral magic.
“I recently read about this amazing Norse ritual called ‘blood eagle,’ have you heard of it?” I’m only answered with moans. I fist his hair and yank his head up. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you, Mark. Damnit, where was I?”
“You were about to tell him about the ‘blood eagle,’” Roan says from my side.
“Right, of course. It’s only mentioned a few times in Norse lore, but every time it is, it’s in retribution for the murder of a father. And I thought, ‘ah, how fitting.’”
“I didn’t kill your father.I didn’t kill him.” The sack of shit wails like it will save him, like I don’t fucking know exactly how my father died.
“You’re right, Mark. You didn’t kill him. He killed himself. You know how?”
“He…a wall…” He mutters something indistinguishable.
“I didn’t hear you.” I wrench his head higher, pushing the limits of his neck.
He speaks slowly and full of dejection.Fucking finally, he’s realized he’s going to die. There’s no way out of this. “He hurt himself.”
“How?”I spit, the simplicity of his answer infuriating.
He sighs. I hope he’s collecting a breath so he can speak the truth without mincing words. “He hit his head against the wall of his cell until he passed out.”
“Have you ever heard anyone hit their head on something? A table, a cabinet door, anything like that?” His brows knit together, confused, but he mutters a yes. “And it’s loud, isn’t it? So you’d think that when my father smashed his head into a fucking concrete wall over and over, it would make some fucking noise. No?”
He mumbles again, and I can’t fucking stand it. “Answer me, motherfucker! He would have made a lot of noise, wouldn’t he?” I yell into his face, and he winces at my fury.
Fury.I’ve been fucking filled with it for a decade.