It’s a never-ending cycle and there’s never a winner. Not for long.
“Please.” The man’s voice momentarily breaks through my shield. “Please, I just need one more week, Beat Down. I swear to God, I’m coming in to some money from a…a…my grandmother. She passed away, God rest her soul. Just waiting on the inheritance.”
“Bullshit,” I say, opening one of the kitchen drawers. Selecting a knife from the collection of crude utensils. “No one in their right mind would leave you a cent.”
“Oh, come on. Please.” He starts to cry in earnest, the acrid aroma of fear nearly making my eyes water now. “What about some collateral? I’ve got that boat out front. You could ask Frank to hold it until I come up the twenty large.”
“That’s a nice offer. But that boat isn’t worth dick and neither are you.” I flip the knife over in my hands, letting the numbness steal over me. It’s just a job. I’m not suited for anything else. When God made me this huge and hulking and horrifying, this is what he had in mind for me. I’m the muscle. I’m the last thing a lot of men see before they draw their last breath and it’s all I’ll ever be. “If Frank started making exceptions, he’d lose respect in the parish and you damn well know it. Time to pay up the only way you can.”
“Take my daughter,” blurts my victim, throwing up his hands to guard his face.
My knife stops in the middle of slicing through the air in a downward arc.
“She’s in the basement. Please!” screams the man. “Take her until I can give back the money. I’ll have it in a week. I swear to God. Would I sacrifice my own daughter if I didn’t mean what I’m saying?”
Daughter.
In the basement.
I wasn’t aware this man had any family. This information is only a distraction and I should continue with my task of ending his pathetic life. When I linger too long over a job, the violence starts to eat at me. Get it over with.
“She’s trash, just like her mother was.” With a venomous look in his eye, my victim spits on the floor in front of him. “Have to keep her downstairs or she’d be running off with the first man she laid eyes on. A curse—that’s what she is. I can’t have her leaving the house looking like she does or she’d wind up pregnant. It’s hard enough feeding two mouths, let alone three.”
“She’s that pretty, is she?” Grim asks, skeptically. Although, it’s easy to see his interest has been piqued. “Maybe we should at least have a look-see, Beat Down?”
“No. Let’s finish this and leave.”
But I make no move to lift the knife again. What does my victim mean when he says he has to “keep her downstairs”? Is she locked up or something? My stomach gurgles over the possibility of that. It’s one thing to hurt men who make promises they can’t keep and get in over their heads. A woman who did none of the stealing from Frank doesn’t deserve any of the punishment. If I kill her father and leave here…and she is, in fact, trapped in the basement, she could starve to death. Apparently I’m not numb enough to let that happen.
“Stay here,” I growl at Grim, shoving the knife into his hand.
“Let me know if she’s worth a look,” calls my associate after me as I stride to the back of the shack, throwing open two doors before finding the stairs leading to the basement. I duck down under the frame and descend into the near darkness, the stairs groaning in protest of my weight. “Hello?” I rumble. “Is someone down here?”
There’s a scraping sound and then a tentative, “Yes.”
That whispering voice, that single word, plows straight into my chest. The air locks tight around me, seizing my muscles and I can hear my pulse firing, booming in my ears. Have I been drugged? What is going on here? My feet move by themselves, carrying me down the rest of the staircase, eager to find the owner of that voice. I haven’t been to church since I was a boy, but that word—yes—was like the opening notes of “Amazing Grace.” I’m teeming with anticipation. And hunger. I’m getting hard and I haven’t even seen her yet.
“Where are you?”
“Over in the corner.” A rattle of chains. The sound is like hands wrapping around my throat. “C-can you please let me out, sir? The key is hanging on a nail by the boiler.”
My vision doubles thanks to the sheer enormity of blood rushing to my cock. I’m ashamed of myself. I’ve just found a woman—young, by the sound of her—chained in a basement and I’m aroused. This never happens to me. I don’t let myself get erect for women. If there is ever one around, in the store or on the street, I keep my gaze on the ground so I don’t scare them. I don’t look at the opposite sex. Ever. No point in wanting something I can never have as a big, ugly son of a bitch.