Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“Let’s see if you can talk.” I did the same with Luka after.
“Let us go,” Jakov growled. “We haven’t hurt anyone. You got the wrong guys!”
Luka heaved a ragged breath, already teary-eyed from one punch. He wasn’t gonna last long.
Movement caught my eye, and I saw Finn walking over to me. He lit up a smoke.
“Mate, the jig is up,” he said, sounding a bit bored. “After we caught you, we mapped out your whole fuckin’ life in a few hours. The transactions for those videos you sold trace right back to an account under your name.”
That made me curious. “Did the detective ever find DNA under my mom’s fingernails?”
He shook his head and flicked ashes into the duffel bag. “We were hoping he would, but the only test he ran came back inconclusive.”
Got it.
I bent down to level with Jakov. “I want you to repeat after me. ‘I fucked up. I shouldn’t have hurt those women.’”
“I didn’t do anything!” he snapped. “That’s not my account.”
Finn chuckled. “Or your address? Or the son you lost custody of? Because you make payments to his mother from that account.”
Jakov wasn’t panicky enough. It bothered me—
“We didn’t know it was Sons territory,” Luka blurted out. Idiot.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jakov snarled at him.
Funny how Jakov had come here from another country, while Luka was born here, but his accent was more noticeable.
“No, no, let’im speak,” Finn said. “What part of Philly isn’t Sons territory, Luka? Enlighten me.”
Moreover, they’d committed their crimes in a neighborhood that wasn’t just Sons territory. It was the home of our fucking origin story in the US. South Philly was where we’d grown up. Everyone fucking knew that.
Finn shrugged to himself and wandered off.
Luka had nothing to say anyway. He stammered and panted, minutes away from giving himself a panic attack, and I was over it. I wanted to focus more on Jakov, so I grabbed the duct tape and shut Luka up again.
I nodded, satisfied, and turned to Jakov. “Now it’s just you and me, buttercup.”
“S-stop it! Please stop!”
“Did you like it when my mom begged for mercy?” I asked quietly. “Does that bring in more money for the videos, when the women scream for help? Like, do you count the pleas when you decide the price? I admit, I’m not familiar with your creative field. But I found it curious how my mom’s video was being sold for two hundred bucks, while another woman’s was three hundred, and one was just one-fifty.”
The fucker just stared at me. Jaw clenched. Forehead beading with perspiration.
“Answer me!” I yelled.
He flinched and breathed through clenched teeth.
Fine. So be it. I picked up the hammer and squatted down on the floor. Then, before he could curl his toes like a dick retracting in cold water, I let the hammer come down with force on his big toe, and he screamed bloody murder.
“Son of a whore!”
What did the fucker say?! “Dipshit, did you just call my mother a whore?” I slammed down the hammer across all his toes until his screams morphed into garbled choking. “Choose your words better, you inbred sack of shit.”
I slipped on the brass knuckles again, and I rose to my feet.
“Are you ready to apologize?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, just k-kill me and get it over with!”
“Nah.” I punched him hard in the stomach, wanting him to feel what those women had felt. “Do you even know the damage you caused? All the internal injuries you gave them? Broken legs, shattered knees, ruptured spleen, cracked ribs, one punctured lung—one of the women spent a week in the ICU, you absolute roadkill.”
More screams, more garbled bullshit. The chair tipped for a second when he gasped for air and threw his head back.
I punched him in the jaw too.
Luka watched with terror in his eyes, and I didn’t wanna spoil things. So I positioned myself in front of him, planted a boot on his chest, and kicked him back, effectively crushing his tied arms against the floor.
“You’ll get yours later,” I told him.
At least his agony was muffled by the tape.
I went back to punching Jakov across the face, because it was time to watch him bleed. Right in the mouth, over the cheek, in the eye, back to the mouth—and there we go. Blood spurted from his lips, a sight that transported me back to the screen with Mom’s video. She’d lost blood too.
“Please help!”
“S-stop,” Jakov wheezed out. “P-please.”
“I can’t br-breathe…”
My heart started pounding.
“I can’t breathe!”
“Stop,” I exhaled. I wasn’t sure if I said it to myself or to someone else, but I just needed to stop for a moment. Deep breaths. My vision blurred. The shadows from the spotlight on the floor contorted Jakov’s face, making it look more gruesome and evil, and I wanted it unrecognizable. Smashed in.