across his face. And still, I don’t take my eyes off the gruesome sight. Danny rounds Pedro’s kneeling frame, coming in close behind him. Taking his hair, he yanks his head back so he’s forced to look the man who’s about to kill him in the eye. Danny’s face is a picture of pure evil. Pedro’s is a picture of pure fear.
“Please,” he sobs.
The smirk that crosses Danny’s face multiplies that evil by a million. “I was ten. I didn’t cry, and here you are, a grown, dribbling man, begging for it to stop.” He bends and gets up close. “I’ve dreamt of this moment for years. I’ve imagined all the ways and all the places I’d cut you.” Holding him in a headlock, he takes the blade to his cheek and starts carving a circle while Pedro screams and begs for mercy. I don’t realize my feet are moving forward until Brad takes hold of my arm, stopping me, and I look up, seeing him shaking his head mildly.
“What is he doing?” I ask, casting my eyes back to Danny, who’s now flicking the knife out from the edges of the circle, like he could be adding flashes of color to a painting.
“He’s carving the family emblem,” Brad answers.
Pedro is quiet now, and when Danny releases him and he falls face-forward to the concrete, I realize he’s passed out. Danny wipes the blooded knife across the back of the lifeless man’s jeans and slips it into his pocket, pulling his suit jacket in before turning and striding toward us. “Finish it,” he says to one of his men as he passes, collecting me from Brad. “And get rid of the witnesses.” With his hand in the center of my back, he guides me back to the car. I’m quiet and willing, constantly checking his deadpan face for any hint of emotion. There’s nothing.
Brad gets in the car, along with Ringo, and starts the engine. I hear a gunshot in the distance as we pull away, and two more just as we round a corner.
“Feel better?” Brad asks, looking at Danny in the rearview mirror.
Danny doesn’t reply, but he takes my hand from my lap and puts it in his, holding it as he stares out of the window.
And I wonder what it must feel like to put an end to someone who has affected you so terribly.
“The person who raped you . . . who was it?”
“You know nothing.”
“I know everything.”
I couldn’t look away from him as he took the power back. Vengeance. He does know. Maybe not everything, but he understands violation. He understands destruction. He knows hate.
And tonight, while he fought hate, I was there silently cheering him on. And when he sought me, I let him take my hand. He took comfort from me.
Chapter 13
DANNY
* * *
A weight has lifted from my shoulders. One that has sat there for years and pulled me down, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. A weight on one’s shoulders suggests the presence of a problem. For me, it’s always represented a need. A need for vengeance. A need to look that motherfucker in the eye and know in that moment he felt how he wanted me to feel all those years ago. It doesn’t matter that I was never scared. It doesn’t matter that he couldn’t hurt me. The point is, he wanted me to feel scared. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted me to look in the mirror every day and remember how I got my scar. The latter is the only one he achieved, and unlucky for Pedro, it just made his death more brutal.
When we pull up at my mansion, Rose still hasn’t murmured a word. I’m thrown that she didn’t bolt having been given the perfect opportunity. Instead, she came into the alleyway and watched me calmly carve that man up. And when I was done, I found she was rapt. Riveted. I could almost hear her silently encouraging me. I could sense her . . . peace. For me?
Brad opens the car door for me, and I get out, looking down at my hands. They’re stained red, as is my shirt. “I need a shower,” I tell him, climbing the steps to the door. “Meet me in the office in half hour. Have the men there.”
I start to pull my tie loose as I ascend the staircase and work the buttons of my shirt as I wander down the corridor. By