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He doesn’t make a sound, and I snicker.

“Oh, that’s right. She’s fuckingnineteenand you’re fifty-two.” It was bad enough that he was twice Delilah’s age, but to end up with a damn teenager? One he claimed on her eighteenth birthday?

Nah, he had to pay me double for that.

“Come on, let’s watch this together then I owe you a conversation.”

His head sags toward his chest, so I loop a finger through the zip tie around the back of his head, yanking it back up.

Something that sounds like a scream gets stuck in his throat. “Pay attention, Jimmy. This is important.”

Alonzo presses play behind us and the video I’ve seen at least ten times starts to play.

Jimmy walks into Marcellus’ office, in the camera’s blind spot. The clip cuts to an hour later and he walks out with Marcellus on his heels and a devious smile on his face.

While Jimmy looks like he just won the lottery, Marcellus calls Delilah out of her room, one door down from his office.

The set up of the camera angle never made sense to me until I realized he’d put it there to track her upstairs.

Delilah appears, introductions are made, and then the show starts.

Two minutes after meeting her, Jimmy’s hand stretches toward her chest, fondling her breasts like she’s a fucking animal at a petting zoo. That smile on his face grew darker while she let him get away with it. The worst part is the nonchalance in her father’s gaze.

Delilah lets a whole ten seconds of groping pass before she rears her head back and rams it into his nose.

Blood drips on Jimmy’s white shirt and Delilah stares at him, a silent dare in her eyes to try it again.

“Fuck you, bitch.” Jimmy raises his hand to backhand her, but she catches his wrist and knees him in the groin.

Then his bitch ass scream fills the air, and Marcellus drags Delilah somewhere off camera.

“Wait, let’s watch that again, ‘cause you got me fuckedup, Jimmy.” I take a blade out of my pocket and cut the zip tie, sending chunks of his hair to the warehouse floor with it. “Let’s watch it again and this time I want you to explain what the fuck you were thinking.”

Avoiding my eyes, he spits the cloth out of his mouth, and it lands in his pissy lap.

I pocket the knife and pull out my gun.

Behind us, Alonzo laughs dryly before aiming the remote at the TV.

We watch it again, pausing right as Jimmy’s scream punctures the air.

“Explain, Jimmy. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Did she put you up to this?”

“No.” I shake my head. “She doesn’t even know I’m here. This is private. Just between me and you. Now, tell me why the fuck you put your hands on her.”

Panic squeezes the words out of his throat until they come out in a wheezed jumble. “We were going to get married! Her dad said?—”

The butt of my gun slams into his temple and I’m rewarded with a scream that turns into a whimper. Got damn, he’s a bitch. “I don’t really give a fuck about what he said. That man is in the ground and unless you want to join him, I need an answer that ain’t bullshit.”

Jimmy’s eyes roll before his head tries to loll forward again. My thumb flicks over the safety, dislodging it.

“The bitch already broke my nose. What the—fuck!” His sentence ends on a screech when I put a bullet through his restrained hands.

“Call her a bitch again, Jimmy.”

“This is bullshit, that contract was void before I left that house. What do you want with me?”