Page 117 of Chad's Chase

The red duffel bag dropped with a thud beside Chad, and Rafail’s chest began rising and falling at the sight of it. “What will you do to me, son?”

“Punish you.” With a swift, deliberate flex, Chad snapped Rafail’s wrist backward, breaking the joint.

Rafail howled at the sudden pain, and his hand dangled uselessly from the wrist like a bobble-head doll.

Taking delight in the sound, Chad turned and opened his duffel he’d parked in Ricardo’s storage room the week before. Everything he thought Ricardo would need to defend himself should trouble strike, a couple of torture tools. But Chad only need two things from it at the moment.

His well-sharpened machete, and his scalpel.

He took out the two items and carefully set them aside.

“Three men,” he said out loud. And within seconds, three men were looming.

To one man, “Pin his feet.” To the other two, “Each of you pin an arm.”

Picking up the machete, Chad stood up and walked slowly around the men and his father. His father was shivering, but not begging. Rafail was foolishly prideful like that. There was tape in the duffel, but Chad wanted to hear his screams.

Stopping next to the man pinning Rafail’s left arm, Chad wagged his head at the sweat breaking out on the man’s forehead. “You don’t have the guts for this,” Chad told him. “Move.”

The male scurried off and another one immediately replaced him, chest high, shoulders squared, trying to impress Chad as he repinned Rafail’s right arm.

Slowly circling them again, Chad began rambling, as he ditched his cool and allowed the Devil to take full control of his mind and body. “It can be as messy as you want it, or as clean as you want it. I like clean. Blood and bone everywhere doesn’t appeal to me.” He stopped at his father’s right hand. “It’s much like cutting up a chicken for Sunday dinner. You find the joints, and you disconnect…like this.”

Whoaap!

That was the sound of the machete slicing through the air and disconnecting his father’s hand from the wrist.

Rafail’s cry rang rich and loud, but it was merely music to Chad’s ear as he circled again, and—Whoaap!—off went the other hand.

Smooth. Clean. Easy.

“Chadrick…son, please…” his father cried, head whipping from side to side as he looked disbelievingly at his disconnected hands. “Do not do this. Kill me instead. The legacy, it is to be passed on to you when I die. You…you are my only son. Kill me. Kill me!”

But at that point in time, Chad was out and the Devil was in. One doesn’t beg the Devil mercy. Mercy was associated with heavenly things.

Chad rambled on, moving to his father’s feet. “The ankles are a bit trickier with joints. Painstaking. So to save yourself the time, just go half an inchabovethe ankle, and…”Whoap!

Even louder cries now from Rafail. Blood gushing now because he didn’t disconnect from the joint. Body jerking. Shouts piercing.

In the next minute, Rafail’s other foot was clean off.

“Pull down his pants.”

As one man hurriedly did this, Org started in a careful, placating tone, “Shadreek—”

“Shut up!” Chad barked, rattling. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Org shut up.

“Did you hear her story?” Chad ranted, losing it. Totally losing it. “What he did to aneleven-year-oldgirl? No, you didn’t. Do you know what Isabel looks like dead, with blood leaking from her head? No, you don’t. You only remember her beautiful, naked, and riding your dick. I remember her wide-eyed dead! Did you know my aunt? No. She was a good woman. Areallygood woman. Who didn’t deserve having her throat slit from ear to ear for the selfish purpose of getting custody of her fucking daughter. And Clementine, what the fuck did she do to deserve this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Chad pointed his machete at the old man. “So get over your nausea, Org, and watch what happens when a man is pushed until he fucking breaks.”

Switching the machete for the scalpel, Chad knelt down, and with a surgeon’s precision, removed his father’s flaccid cock.

“That’s for Jhay,” Chad announced, then dropped the scalpel along with the dead flesh.

Rafail’s body broke into violent trembles, his cries hoarse, his skin growing paler and paler from all the blood he was losing.