Page 187 of Beautifully Ruined

“Yes, please.”

After I hang up, I wander back up to Gianna’s room.

She’s still with her mom, and my heart aches a little.

I don’t have a mom, but if I did, I’d want a Cassandra.

But I have something as good. Lia. And I have Cade. Apart from Lia, he’s the first person to make me feel truly part of a family, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes us.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

CADE

“You didn’t tellher we have them both?” Enzo asks.

“Of course not. I’m in love with her. I don’t want her thinking I’m a psychopath.”

He snorts. And punches Thomas once more.

The brass knuckles do the job, and he grunts.

“Your turn.” Enzo steps back. “And you’re not a psychopath. This is vigilante stuff.”

“Vigilantes tend to have problems.”

“Well, don’t we all? Look at Thomas here.” Enzo looks at me. “He’s got issues. Likes to kidnap girls, likes to sell them. Has a load of fucked up morons who buy girls who will be going down. One way or the other.”

I pick up the confession we made him write.

The thing is, as much as I hate this man, he’s a businessman, and he saw an opening. He’d never have made money illegally withhuman trafficking if there wasn’t a market. We’ll never close the market, but we can do a lot of damage.

I hand the confession to Enzo. “You know, Thomas, it’s a pity you tried to put your fingers where they don’t belong on my girl. She told me how you tried to touch her, and she kicked you. I think she’s trying to save me from myself by not telling me just how far you got. Or maybe you didn’t. But the thing is you tried. So…”

I cut into him, slashing him across the face, then light along the neck. And finally, I stab the knife into his cock, making him unleash an ungodly scream, and he passes out.

“Should we?” Enzo asks.

“Fuck, yes.”

It takes us both to string him up and hang him until he dies, neck snapping as he comes to a little late to the party.

And I feel nothing.

We stand, looking up at the body of Thomas Allistair.

The man doesn’t have a family. Not really. And the clubs…well, someone will take them. The clean money we took, the rest is left as evidence.

He’ll be found here, and the post-mortem will get doctored to nothing more than guilty man dying by suicide.

I turn to a scared Joseph Walsh.

He’s chained up, and the best part is, we haven’t touched him. Not…physically, but he’s definitely pissed and shit himself, from the smell of him, as we tortured his friend. Beating him, cutting him, twisting his tiny dick to make him scream.

We had a long debate over cutting Thomas’s tongue out, but in the end, we settled on the music of his pleas and cries.

Theatrics, perhaps. But I needed it for what comes next.

As much as I want to hurt Joseph, a man who likes underage girls, not too young, but around sixteen, what he’s called, in one garbled confession, the first blush of womanhood.