Page 63 of Avenging Azalea (California Made Men #2)

“I don’t know,” he said. I pulled my arm back and slammed the sharp blade into his shoulder and left it there.

“Ahh, fuck!” I grabbed another knife. “I don’t know.

I’m telling the truth.” Blood ran down his chest, painting him red as he stared at the knife like he couldn’t believe it was buried in his skin.

“Guess,” I ordered, twirling the blade in my hand.

“One to three times a week until Cesare took her. For about two years. I don’t know the exact number,” he said, and my hand stilled as my mind raced, doing the math. “It all depended on when her mother was on the evening shift at work.”

I stepped back and tried to wrap my brain around the sheer amount of abuse that Fawn had suffered at the hands of this man.

She never complained, she never told me, she refused to let me in until recently.

Instead, she’d buried it and slapped a smile on her face, happier to be in the hands of my dangerous family than with her stepfather.

If I had known…if I had an inkling of what had transpired…Neil would’ve been hanging in here three years ago. He got three years, but his reckoning had come.

“Nathaniel?”

“Yes,” my brother’s voice was steady, and I appreciated that.

“I need you to record this,” I said.

“Recording started,” Nathaniel answered.

Laying the knife down, I grabbed the electric hand saw, and Neil thrashed in the chains. They rattled with the ghosts of all those who had hung here before him. The fast-moving blade hummed to life with the flick of a switch, and Neil screamed louder.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer without hesitation. If I’m not satisfied with what you tell me, then I’ll start cutting off body parts. I’ll start with something small like your fingers and toes, but then I’ll move on to your ears, nose, and then…”

I stepped closer, letting Neil see the level of depravity swimming around in my eyes.

“I’ll castrate you and skin you alive.”

Snatching him by the throat, it took all my self-control not to snap his neck and be done with this, but I needed to know. I drew him closer until we were nose to nose and nudged the saw against his cock.

“I wouldn’t test me, Neil. I’m not feeling very understanding.”

“I’ll tell…I’ll tell you. Whatever you want to know…please don’t…please,” Neil rambled as piss started to leak down his leg.

Stepping back before I killed him too soon, I played with the saw, switching it off and on. My dark heart smiled with every flinch.

“I want the names of everyone who used Fawn as payment?” His eyes bugged out. Fawn had already told me, but I wanted to compare the names. Make sure none were missed. Not a single person who touched Fawn would continue breathing after I found them.

“What are you going to do?”

“I gave you very detailed instructions. Strike one.”

Neil yelled and tried to yank away as I grabbed his ear and pulled it away from his head. In one quick move, I sawed the top half off and held the bloody piece out for him to see as he screamed.

“The fact that you worry immediately for these men and have no shame for what you did to your stepdaughter is very telling in the kind of man you are, Neil.” I couldn’t believe this piece of shit. “What I do is not your concern. Now. Give. Me. The. Names,” I commanded.

When he begged for his life instead of naming his accomplices, I moved to his hand and started the saw. The noise echoed along with his screams when I grabbed his baby finger.

“Judge Harry Sheridan. There was a bookie named Andre, just Andre. Ryan Elliot, some business guy from Texas,” Neil began to unload.

Every name cut deep. My heart ached, and my stomach churned.

When he stopped talking, I stood there staring at him.

Sixteen names. Not only was Neil a bottom-feeding piece of opportunistic filth, but sixteen other men didn’t care enough about a young girl to walk away, to say no, to be disgusted.

Worse, I already knew it was the same names Fawn had given me.

She remembered each and every one of her attackers. My heart broke all over again.

Their names were tattooed on my brain, and all of them would pay for touching Fawn. I didn’t care about the cost. Whether it was political, financial or destroying family alliances…they would all die.

“That’s it?”

He nodded. “Well, and Cesare, but you know what happened then.”

No matter how many days I had left on this planet, I would never understand men like Neil.

I looked at Nathaniel, and he signaled to cut the recording. The little red light in the corner turned off, and Neil relaxed until I turned on the saw.

“What are you doing? No. No. No. Stop…please stop, don’t do this.”

“Did you stop when Fawn begged you to stop?”

His mouth opened and then closed. “But I gave you what you wanted.”

There was no point in explaining to him that what I wanted was to be able to go back in time and stop the abuse before it started. A man like him would never get it because he thought he was in the right, had all the power, and that women were to be used.

No…I didn’t say a word. Instead, I let the terror in his eyes fuel me. His screams became white noise in my mind to calm the raging beast as I grabbed his finger. This time, I cut it off without hesitation and tossed it aside as I grabbed the next.

Partway through the third finger, he passed out. Instead of continuing, I walked over to the tools and picked up the jar of fire ants. The top had been designed with a screw on center that was smaller than the lid. At closer inspection, it was a nut with a cap on the top.

“You can change the size,” Nathaniel said. “It’s set for finger right now, but…”

He walked over to a drawer and came back holding a lid with a larger opening.

“This should fit his cock.”

I took it and looked back at Neil.

“How does it work?”

Nathaniel smiled, his onyx eyes taking on the darkness of the room until you couldn’t see his iris. He suited this place. Nathaniel was the collector of deviant souls. Maybe he was part Grim Reaper. He quickly swapped out the lid without releasing a single ant and then held out the jar.

“Dip his dick in this,” he said, picking up a smaller container. “It’s sweet water and they love it. Then pop the cap off the nut and twist on the jar. Don’t worry, they’ll do the rest.”

My gaze flicked up to my brother. “You terrify me sometimes.”

Nathaniel smirked. I did as instructed and had the jar halfway screwed onto Neil’s cock when he woke up.

If I’d thought his screaming had been hysterical over losing his fingers, it was nothing in comparison to the blood-curdling wails that filled the room when he saw his dick inside a clear jar with a swarm of fire ants.

“Ahh…ahh, take it off, ahh they’re biting,” he shrieked as he twisted his hips back and forth as much as the chains allowed. The sight was ridiculous. “Please, I’m begging you, please. Ahh…fuck! No.”

“Will this kill him?”

Nathaniel shrugged.

“It can, but everyone’s tolerance is different.

If not, I can toss him in a cell for the night, then let the guards have fun with him tomorrow.

Or I can put a bullet in his head an hour from now.

I’d like to have a coffee first.” Nathaniel snapped his fingers, and the door opened, letting us walk out. “Unless you want to kill him yourself?”

“Actually…I want him to suffer for as long as possible while I lie in bed holding Fawn, knowing that he is getting everything he deserves.”

The men in the other cells looked over as the screams of agony reached them.

“I like your style. I’ll remove the jar in ten minutes and make sure that he’s tortured until his heart gives out from fear,” Nathaniel said. I knew without asking that he’d done that very thing before. “What about the rest of them?” He pointed at the cells.

“Kill him. Kill them all. In any way you want.”

Nathaniel grabbed my shoulder.

“Do you want help hunting down the other names?”

“No, this is something I need to do on my own,” I said.

I wouldn’t stop until I’d found every person and put a bullet between their eyes. They didn’t know it yet, but they’d signed their one-way ticket to hell the moment they touched the woman who owned my heart.

Fawn might not need a white night, but I would be her avenging angel.

I had cursed my ruined wings the day I met her, but now…

now, I knew why I had them. Before I killed the list of men that Neil had so graciously volunteered, I had one more person to visit, and I knew exactly what to do to send a clear message.