The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family)

The scent of dirt and damp met my nose, an old, familiar scent, one I always associated with this kind of work.

It had been a long time since I brought a “passion project” into my little fallout shelter.

I’d been busy with work bodies. Hadn’t had much of a chance to carry out some good for mankind.

Make no mistake, that was what this was. Even if my motivations surrounded Ezmeray and Ezmeray only.

“Not that a little headache will matter. You’re about to be in all sorts of pain,” I said, yanking him down the last step, then starting the trek down the hallway. “What do you think we should start with? Blunt seems fitting, don’t you think?” I asked, stopping outside the door to unlock it, so I could pull him inside.

It was a decently large space, meant for housing at least two dozen people should some bomb drop in the area.

I’d cleared out all the shit that had once been stored inside. A table with chairs and a dusty set of cards, crates full of ancient food, and a couple of books.

The inside was much cleaner than the hallway that led to it.

You know, thanks to all the times I’d needed to clean the shit out of it over the years.

It actually still had the slight scent of bleach as I opened the door.

“What do you think, man? This is your home for the next, oh, I don’t know. However long I decide I want to work on you. Yeah,” I said, nodding down at him as he sniveled. “You’re not going to be walking out of here. In case you had any hope of living. That’s not going to happen. I will say that, eventually, you’re going to wish for death. And I’m going to drag out the pain for at least another five or six hours until I end it.”

With that, I pulled him inside, dragging him over toward the chains I’d beat into the wall because, hey, sometimes you had to take a break from all the torture to go grab a warm sub, y’know?

I had to leave him alone for just a bit to temporarily hide the town car and toss both their phones, so they wouldn’t trace back to the fallout shelter.

So I hooked him up to the chains, put my makeshift lock on the door, and got right to handling all that.

I made my way back a while later, avoiding a call from Emilio because I had a bag full of all my favorite type of torture devices.

I had my bags of clean-up supplies as well, but I left them outside the door in the hall. You didn’t want to get your paper towels soaked in blood before it was necessary.

“Miss me?” I asked, walking back into the room, watching the dread fill the man’s face.

That was the point where a normal person with a proper moral compass would feel something akin to sympathy or guilt.

I was not a normal person.

And my moral compass, well, it was just calibrated different, I guess.

“I know what you’re thinking. You pissed off the wrong people. And that’s true,” I told him, taking each item out of my bag, making a show of inspecting their sharp or blunt tips, flicking the flame on the lighter, working the belt into a noose and testing its rigidity.

“But the thing is, this isn’t about you being a greedy fuckhead,” I told him as I looked at all my selections for a moment before choosing the hammer.

Blunt.

Because that was how he liked to abuse Ezmeray.

“This is about teaching you what it is like to have all your power stripped away, and be subjected to pain there is no way to get away from. Does that sound familiar?” I asked, taking slow, deliberate steps toward him. “This is for Ezmeray,” I said, cocking the hammer, and cracking it across his knee.

Even with the duct tape, his roar of pain was loud.

“Yeah, that sucks, doesn’t it? I imagine it sucks worse to be stuck in an apartment with your abuser for months or years,” I said, pulling back the hammer and whacking it into his jaw.

I only went half-force on him, wanting to drag it out, knowing if I went too hard too fast that he was going to black out from the pain, and then he wouldn’t be any fun until he was awake again.

“Oh, the tears won’t work on me, man,” I said, shaking my head as I put the bloody hammer down. “Did Ezmeray’s tears work on you? Doubt they did. Can’t imagine why you’d think I’d show you mercy when you never showed her any.”

And that was when we played around with some heat.

Before ending up with my personal favorite.

Sharp.

“Saw that scar on her neck, you know,” I said, admiring my blade in the surprisingly bright light of the camping lantern I had in my special bag. “That was a close one, you know. Just a couple millimeters away from taking her life. Think maybe that is how I am going to take yours. But not yet. Nah, man. I’m just barely getting started.”