When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

He screamed.

But with the truck door closed, you would only be able to hear the sound if you stood right outside, as my fellow camorristi did while keeping watch.

I pulled the other chair leg from the sleeve of my jumper and pinned his other hand, too easily because he was made of nothing but bones, before I impaled that too.

His scream devolved into a snot-filled garble.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

“Do you remember Elena Lombardi?” I asked, almost conversationally.

It was strange how I could modulate my voice even when I was filled with so much rage my skin threatened to peel off from the heat of it.

He stilled slightly, panting through his slack mouth.

“I thought so,” I repeated.

I probably only had ten more minutes before the guards would arrive to usher us back to our cells so I pulled out the shiv I’d made out of shard of glass stuck into the end of a melted toothbrush handle.

There was only the dim light of a solitary bulb hanging over head but it was enough to see Christopher’s face, his pale eyes and weak chin.

In the darkness, with revenge in my heart and love in my veins, I let the beast I’d inherited from Noel and honed under tutelage from Tore overtake me.

It was wet work, filthy and loud because Christopher wouldn’t stop blubbering and begging for mercy.

“What mercy?” I said. “What mercy did you show Elena?”

He mumbled words about her liking it at first, but that stopped when I cut off his ear and shoved it into his mouth. Then, he just waxed on and on about how sorry he was, about how it was just a bad time in his life.

“Lies.” I had one wrecked hand between my own, tracing his bones with the knife so they showed through the split skin and dripping blood. “You went back for Giselle and Elena a year and a half ago.”

“Bitch bit my ear,” he roared, niceties over, struggling hard against my grip, but too weak to do anything about it.

I cut off the other ear, notice the mascaraed lobe where Elena had evidently bitten into him.

That was my woman.

My wife.

Fierce pride surged through me alongside the giddiness of retribution.

“She should have the pleasure of killing you, but you also don’t deserve to look at her ever again. So, I’m the lucky bastardo that will send you to straight to hell.”

“You’ll meet me there,” he countered weakly, breathing too fast because the pain was massive and he was losing too much blood.

“One day,” I agreed as I cut through his Achilles’ heels because he was exactly the type of man to think loving a woman and treating them right made him weak. “But the difference is, I know I’m the villain. You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.”

“They both wanted it,” he snarled, twisting so hard, I almost lost my grip on him because the blood made his limbs slippery.

After that, he didn’t talk anymore.

My cellmate had given me the idea really.

I cut out his tongue.

When I was finished, I went to the corner of the truck and found the change of clothes I’d slipped a guy some cash to stash there for me. I traded my bloody uniform for the new one and wiped my hands using paper towel and a water bottle.

I left the container, jerked my chin at the men who were watching it for me, dumped the bloody uniform in the incinerator, and went back to my post to churn another chair leg.

Twenty minutes later when they found him mutilated in the truck, no one said a word about who might have done it.

And this was prison, people died every day and no one snitched because ratting someone out was certain death.

So, the Warden declared prisoner Christopher Sallow dead by suicide and no one ever knew any different.

Twenty-Seven

Dante

The trial was set for January 31st, which was a Monday. I’d been incarcerated just over a month and I was about done with it. It wasn’t that jail was nightmarish. Mostly, it was boring as hell and for a man who was used to doing forty things at once, it wore on me steadily until I was irritable and snarly.

The worst of it was missing Elena.

If there was a silver lining to our distance, it made me realize the depth of my love for her. I could feel it in my bones and blood. It warmed me at night in the arctic prison cell and kept me sane after hours of mundanity while turning those infernal chair legs.

I used the memory of her like a drug to make me forget my surroundings and circumstances. Argued with myself over the right color for her grey eyes, if they were pewter or wet stone, storm clouded or clear grey skies. Thought of the first time I kissed her on my desk and the first time I took her on the hood of the Ferrari after I’d thought I might lose her in that car chase.