Page 74

8

ALEXIS

T aking advantage of the security cameras, I leaned casually against the wall and watched Dom make his way to the stairwell of the ground floor, trying with all his might to open the door. These doors were reinforced steel, and there was no way he could burst through, but it was sure fun to watch him try.

The anticipation sent a wave of adrenaline throughout my body and I stood tall from my leaning on the wall. Using the stairwell on the opposite side of the building, I descended to the basement floor, following Dom. I could hear him barreling through the door on the other side of the building, and I slipped silently through mine. As I closed the door without a sound, I looked directly into a security camera that I knew Aaron was watching from Amara’s office.

Giving him a wink and blowing him a kiss, I waved at him with my fingertips as I stood in the shadows at a corner, peeking out just enough to see him trying to open any and every door he came across. With every door he couldn’t open, I could practically smell his fear. With his panic increasing, he approached an emergency exit that led up a flight of stairs to a back entrance to the hospital.

When the door wouldn’t budge, he slammed the bottoms of both of his fists on the door three times in frustration. Taking a moment to rest his head on the cool metal of the door, I took advantage of his pause, and slipped silently across the hallway towards a supply closet.

I stepped inside, purposefully leaving the door slightly ajar, and slipped myself onto the bottom shelf that still had boxes of supplies for the morgue staff. After a few silent minutes, Dom gently pushed the door open, holding the scalpel out defensively as he carefully scanned the room.

He tried turning the light switch on, grunting in annoyance when it didn’t work. Taking a slow, wary step inside, he scanned the supply shelf, easing boxes and supplies out of the way. With another grunt, he turned away to exit the closet, and I took advantage, silently pulling Aaron’s knife out of its sheath.

Before he could exit the room, I slid myself through a gap of two boxes and swiped the knife up towards the ceiling. The blade sliced through Dom’s jeans and calf like butter, forcing him to fall to his knees, drop the scalpel, and scurry out of the closet on his hands and knees like the insect he was.

Chuckling out loud to myself, I climbed out of the shelf and dusted myself off.

I was growing bored with this shitty hunt, eager for the coup de grace… ending Aaron’s pathetic life.

Humming a random, made up tune, I followed the trail of blood from Dom’s leg out of the closet and into the stairwell. I was past the point of caring if he heard me or not, placing Aaron’s knife back in its sheath, and swapping it for Dom’s gun.

Following the blood trail to the second floor, I pushed open the door to the stairwell to find Dom sitting and leaning against the wall. He was getting slightly pale, a small pool of blood forming under his leg.

“I’m bored, Dom. This wasn’t the hunt I was expecting from you,” I said, shaking my head in disappointment.

Wincing in pain, Dom looked at me, as if he were just surrendering, and rested his sweaty head back against the wall.

“Take a look up here,” I said, pointing his gun towards a security camera, tapping on the outside of the lens.

Dom’s eyes found it and looked at me, confused.

“Say hello to Aaron; he’s watching,” I said, a wicked grin forming on my face.

“Did you know, Dom, the femoral artery is located at the top of your thigh, right here…” I said casually, walking up to him and stepping on his upper thigh with my foot. “When you get shot through the femur, the bone fragments can sever the artery and you can bleed out in two minutes or less.” Removing my foot, I aimed his gun at his thigh. “I’m a pretty good shot, you know.”

Dom’s eyes closed as he leaned into the wall. He was giving up, and that wouldn’t do at all.

“Open your fucking eyes when I’m talking to you,” I hissed, shooting him in the shoulder.

He cried out in pain, his dull eyes finding mine.

“Good boy,” I purred, turning my back to him and stretching dramatically with an exaggerated yawn. “I recommend you keep moving if you want to see your brother again.”

Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I tapped a few options and locked every door except the stairwell leading up to the sixth floor offices where Aaron was being held. I turned back to Dom, pleasantly surprised to find he’d silently slipped away. The distant sound of the stairwell door closing echoed from the other side of the room.

That’s it, Dom. Run for me.

Giving the camera on the ceiling near to me another dainty finger wave, I pulled open the door to the second stairwell, ascending to the office floor.

With silent movements, I gently opened the door to the sixth floor just enough to peek out. Dom wasn’t even trying to be quiet anymore as he turned and tried to force every doorknob open he encountered, leaving a thin trail of dripping blood behind him. But only one door would open for him; the door to Amara’s office.

The moment his hand closed around the doorknob of Amara’s office, I could see the fear in his eyes, feel his anxiety, his pain, his uncertainty if Aaron was still alive or not…

Dom carefully opened the door to Amara’s office as I moved behind him with silent steps. The moment his eyes fell upon his brother, they went wide in fear and concern.

“Dom…Get the fuck…out of here…” Aaron groaned.

As I approached Dom from behind, Aaron’s eyes widened, as if silently urging Dom to turn around. But before he could open his mouth to speak, I kicked him roughly behind his knees, forcing him to kneel in front of his brother, bracing himself with his hands on the floor.

“Oh, come now. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve seen each other,” I taunted, standing next to Dom, aiming his gun at the top of his right hand on the floor. “These hands hurt my fiancée,” I said flatly, shooting him through the tops of both of his hands in rapid succession.

“D-Dom!” Aaron grunted, tossing his body around, trying to free himself from his restraints as Dom pulled his hands to his chest to protect them, groaning in pain. Tears of pain streaked down his sweaty, disgusting face.

“You crazy fucking bitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

I tucked Dom’s gun in the waistband at the small of my back and armed myself with Aaron’s knife, spinning it on my finger tauntingly by the hole at the bottom of the handle. Aaron’s eyes narrowed in pure hatred as he struggled against his restraints again. Closing in behind Dom, kneeling in front of his brother, I pulled his head back with my palm on his stupid, bald, sweaty forehead.

Keeping my eyes locked on Aaron’s, I held his knife blade away from me, pressing the tip of the blade into Dom’s neck, under his jaw. Not giving Dom a chance to react, I drew my hand back, then lunged it forward, stabbing him through his neck.

Aaron was crying out loud for his brother, and I lifted the corner of my lips into a smile, tearing his blade out of the front of Dom’s neck. Dom’s blood splattered on Aaron’s face, causing him to go pale, his eyes wide as he watched his brother fall to the floor.

Dom reached his hands towards his neck, gurgling and choking on his own blood.

“Say goodbye, Aaron,” I said, stomping on Dom’s neck wound as hard as I could with the heel of my shoe. Dom’s blood splashed and soaked the legs of Aaron’s pants.

Standing there in a trance, I watch the pool of blood growing underneath Dom as he bled out. I felt as if a part of Amara’s soul was freed as the crimson flowed from his body.

“Fu-fucking…psycho…fucking psycho bitch…”

Four more, baby. Four more.

Observing his pathetic body, a bloody mess on the ground, I scoffed, tossing his 1911 on the ground near his hands.

“There you go, Detective Wallace. One of the murder weapons used against Amara,” I said out loud, cracking my neck.

Aaron was seething and hanging his head as he sobbed.

“What a disappointing hunt,” I said, bored. “I expected more…thrill.”

Aaron looked up, silent, keeping his eyes off of his dead brother.

“Shitty feeling, huh? That… emptiness,” I sighed, standing between him and the monitors.

He continued staring forward as if he could see through me.

“So, now that you know how serious I am, you’re going to tell me where to find the others.” Standing next to him, I leaned on his shoulder, propping myself up with my elbow. “Where are Emerson, Erik, and Sebastian?”

“Fuck you.”

“I had a feeling you’d be this way, but don’t worry, I’m prepared.” Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I pressed a few buttons, the video of Amara’s murder now playing on the monitors. “Look familiar?”

“Yeah, best fuck I’ve had in a long time,” Aaron hissed, nudging his chin towards the screen as the video showed him forcing his cock into Amara from behind.

An annoyed giggle escaped my throat as I watched the monitors, my rage settling deep in my chest.

“I had plans for you, you know. Make you watch your youngest brother’s death, kill you nice and quick, not giving you the chance to comprehend the loss. But now, you’re going to watch what you did to my Amara over and over until it’s the last thing you see.”

My eyes found a stray piece of metal plating on the ground in a small pile of trash and rubble as I placed Aaron’s knife back in the sheath. I couldn’t tell you what it was from, where it went, what it was meant for, but it gave me the absolute best idea. Picking it up, I held it in my hand, studying it. It was about three inches long and five inches tall, and about a half inch thick.

The lightbulb moment went off in my mind, and a fresh surge of adrenaline pumped through my body.

Digging through my duffel, I pulled out a mallet that I used to help me set up the electric windowsills. Walking back to Aaron, I placed the longest end of the metal on top of the fingers of his left hand at the knuckle.

“Every time she begs you to stop, you lose a finger,” I said, putting pressure on his pointer finger, and tapping his head playfully with the mallet.

His eyes went wide as he noticed what I was prepared to do.

“P-please… Please stop…”

With all my strength, I swung the mallet down over my head onto the metal, the blunt edge severing his finger.

Aaron’s deafening cries of pain were music to my fucking ears.

Positioning the piece of metal on his middle finger, I watched the monitors as he continued his assault on Amara, making her beg him to stop.

Swinging the mallet again, but not as hard, I hit the metal, only severing it halfway.

“F-fuck! Stop! Fucking stop!” Aaron cried out with tears of pain running down his cheeks.

“Stop? STOP?!”

Dropping the mallet, I braced myself on his arm, leaning all my weight onto the metal and used a sawing motion, digging it through the rest of the bone and tissue. The squelching sound of his flesh being sawed into, combined with his screams of pain, made this entire process so worth the wait.

Blinded by my rage, I picked up the strip of metal with both hands and raised it above my head. With all my strength, I forced the edge of the metal down over and over, until his hand was a bloody stump. Each of his fingers was severed during my fit except for his thumb.

“Amara begged you to stop! BEGGED!”

His blood soaked my gloved hand and the metal, making it difficult to get a decent grip. Tossing it to the floor, I stood in front of Aaron, watching his now pale face fight to stay conscious.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re giving up already, like your weak ass brother.”

“F-fuck…y-you,” he stammered, as he looked up to glare at me, sweaty and panting.

“You know, I did all this for you,” I said, stepping over Dom’s lifeless body, positioning myself in between his legs, still bound to the wheelchair, and motioning at the monitors behind me. “Drove thirty two fucking hours round trip, just to bring you two useless sacks of shit here for a few hours of pain.” I pulled Aaron’s knife out of its sheath and spun it on my finger with the hole in the handle before slicing down his chest, cutting his shirt. A wet, crimson pool soaked into the shirt and he hissed, trying to hide the pain.

“Three weeks of planning…” Swiping the knife at him again, I sliced in the opposite direction, forming an “x” on his chest.

“Two years of pain because of you…” I swiped yet again, not even paying attention to how or where I was cutting him.

“You took her from me… The only person that ever loved me…” Pressing the knife into his skin on the side of his eye, I dragged it down, putting as much pressure as I could, cutting a deep gash in his face down to his chin.

“I should’ve killed you in Denver, not gone through all this fucking trouble. But I wanted you to fucking suffer. I know all about you, Aaron; I looked into your background the deepest,” I said, pressing the tip of the blade into the front of his shoulder.

He was a bloody mess, his face was covered in warm crimson, leaking and dripping to his soaked, sliced up shirt, to his lap. Bobbing his stupid fucking head, I walked behind him and pulled his head back, just like he did to Amara, positioning the tip of the blade on his neck under the curve of his jaw, blade facing out.

“I know Dom was your real brother, how your mother left you, Sebastian, and Dom on the streets after you tried to kill her for divorcing your father. I know how protective you are of Dom, and how you nurtured him, even though he was non-verbal. But his thoughts were darker than yours, weren’t they? He was the one that tried to kill your mother, not you. Yet you protected him anyway. I know your abuse of women was because the one woman that you truly loved fucked another man. Cheryl, wasn’t it?”

Aaron whimpered, shamelessly sobbing as I put pressure on the knife.

“Trust me when I say that I will kill every one of the remaining Davis “Brothers” and everyone you’ve ever loved. I hope you rot in hell for what you did to Amara; I’ll be seeing you real soon…”

Aaron closed his eyes, and I stabbed the knife through his neck, tearing it out the front like he did to Amara, tossing his head to the side. The force of the knife being ripped from his neck sprayed his blood across the monitors, dripping down the screens, as the image of him doing the same to Amara appeared.

He gurgled, struggling to breathe, and I circled around to his front to watch. I wanted to see that light leave his eyes as he died; I wanted to be the last thing he saw.

As he died, I tossed his knife onto his lap and closed my eyes, savoring the silence.

Turning to face Amara’s dust-covered desk, I sighed.

It was done… It was finally done. Two down, three to go…