Page 51 of Laila Manning (Shadeport Crew #3)

W e needed to talk; I knew that. But I didn’t even know how to start. Laila brushed her hair in my bathroom, glancing at me in the mirror as I sat on the edge of my bed, head hung, elbows braced—just watching her. We came in from The Shop an hour ago, but I was still raw.

I fucked her for hours. Using her body to alleviate the burn in my gut, and she let me.

As if my cock could silence the questions in her mind, like her body silenced the fears in mine.

Now that we were back in the barracks, my hands were idle, and I was losing control again.

Kade was in his apartment across the hall, he said he didn’t want to talk about what happened earlier and just wanted to go to bed.

I didn’t know how to speak to him, with the noose of knowledge around my throat tightening with every minute that passed. How could I have been so blind? How did I not see it until his mother made her appearance today ?

Finally, I spoke, my voice hoarse, and it felt like thousands of needles with each word. “She’s—my mother.” I swallowed, dropping my head further as her brush paused mid-stroke before she slowly turned to face me.

“The woman from the restaurant?” Laila asked with a scowl. I nodded once, forcing my gaze to stay on hers. “Are you sure?”

I nodded again, hating how sick to my stomach I was from just speaking it out loud. “I should have killed her years ago.”

“Zeke.” She whispered, but I shook my head, feeling that uncontrollable rage building again.

“She did it to him.” I hissed. “She got knocked up again and exposed him to this life! She had a baby and then threw him to the wolves to be chewed the fuck up like I was!” Clenching my jaw so hard my teeth nearly cracked, I fisted my hands into balls.

“I should have fucking killed her before she had the chance to ruin someone else like she ruined me.”

“Baby.” She fell to her knees at my feet, but I shot up to stand and get away from her. I couldn’t take her gentleness. “Tell me what you need.” Laila begged, pleading to me with her eyes as I paced my studio apartment. “Just tell me, Zeke.”

“I need—” I cracked my neck and scrubbed my hand over my face before making my decision. “I need to end a life.”

“You can’t kill her.” She whispered. “Not like this.”

“I know.” I paused, feeling that calm power trying to take over the manic rage inside of me. “But I can kill someone else. Someone who has it coming. Someone who’s already mine to kill.”

Her pretty pink lips parted as her eyes rounded.

She rose to her feet, the hem of my oversized tee shirt skimming over her thighs as she stared at me.

Fuck, maybe I could lose myself in her again instead.

My cock hardened just looking at her, and her nipples pebbled under the worn fabric of my shirt.

Slowly, as if she were afraid of spooking me, she crossed the room until she gently laid her hand on my bare chest. “You’re going to kill the man who ruined me?”

“No,” I shook my head, covering her hand with mine. “But I’m going to kill the man who tried to ruin you. He failed. You won.”

Her neck tightened as she swallowed, and I ached to feel it on the inside of my palm like earlier.

“And you think it will settle you?” Her warm eyes looked up at me through her inky black lashes.

“You think killing the man who hurt me will make your pain lessen, so it doesn’t swallow you whole like it is right now? ”

“Laila.” I groaned, hating how on point she was with my emotions. How clearly she saw me.

“Do it.” She leaned up on her toes and offered her lips to me, and I eagerly took them, kissing her deeply until we both panted and moaned for more.

“Kill him. Destroy him, Zeke. Because you’re right, he didn’t win.

I did.” Laila fell back down onto her heels, staring up at me.

“Your mother didn’t win either. I did. Because I have you and Kade.

Not her. Me. I fucking won, Zeke. You and I are the victors. ”

“Fuck.” I groaned, lowering my forehead to hers before standing back up, feeling like my chest was going to break apart and darkness would spill everywhere if I didn’t get it out of me in another way.

“Go feed your demons, baby.” Laila said firmly, patting my chest again. “And then come back to us. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”

I kissed her hard enough to bruise her lips, and she gave it right back to me. Not once had I felt her strength so profoundly as I did at that moment. She believed in me. She trusted me. She was mine.

And she was right.

We fucking won .

Walking out of my apartment, I exited the building out into the dark night. Torches burned across the lawn, the crew and their families still partied, and the firelight danced in my vision as I walked across the blacktop, still hot from the sun that set hours ago.

I probably looked like a deranged monster, barefoot, wearing a pair of black shorts and ink as I marched toward the shop in the midst of a party.

I caught Ryker’s eye across the lawn, and he paused mid-sentence with someone as he stared at me.

He looked behind me, and I followed his gaze to Laila standing in the doorway of the barracks, arms crossed over her chest as she watched me walk away.

The flames of the torches swayed in her bottomless eyes, and she had never looked more regal than she did in that very moment.

Ryker stood up from his seat and silently joined me on my way down the path. Jed was next, his silent presence joining in on my other side as we walked toward the shop.

Tonight wasn’t about justice or righting a wrong.

Tonight was about revenge.

The debts of men, earned from pain of others, would be paid in full.

And my family would be freer by the morning sunrise.

The screams echoed around the room, vibrating off the walls around us and singing a tune in my mind like a siren song. A melody of pain feeding the demon inside my chest, desperate and starving for the bloodshed of those who hurt Kade and Laila .

Body parts littered the floor, blood flowed like a river down the drains, and it coated my skin like war paint.

Fingers, toes and noses were first.

One by one, Charles and Clarissa Lupold were unburdened of those parts, and as expected, Charles tried to die twice from those twenty-one cuts alone. Pussy.

Normally, I would go for the tongue next, and on Clarissa I did. Her nasally voice grated on my last nerve, and taking away her ability to beg, borrow and then threaten for her life, pleased me.

The drugs pumping into their bodies through their IV lines kept their hearts beating even after their other organs shut down from malnutrition, shock, sepsis and blood loss.

And now, they both hung, missing pieces, unable to die yet begging for it to a room of monsters. They thought they were the biggest and baddest out there, and then they messed with the wrong crew.

“So, we’re going to try this one more time.” Jed spun his knife around between his fingers like a menace as I chugged from a bottle of water. “Do you know the muffin man?”

Clarissa gurgled instead of screaming as her cut-off tongue bled into her mouth.

“That’s a shame.” Ryker mused, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned on the table next to me. “It’s a simple answer.”

“Okay, throw a dart.” Jed flipped his hands with a shrug. “She loses a point for not playing my game.”

“Got it.” I picked up the needlepoint darts off the table and chucked one at her, hitting my mark perfectly. Her scream made my blood pump faster as the dart stuck out of her eyeball. “Bullseye.”

Jed chuckled and plucked it out, digging her eyeball out with it. “Pun intended. ”

He held the dart up with the eyeball attached and then threw it at the wall, pinning it to the wall to hang there.

“Well,” Jed stopped in front of Charles, who hung limply in his chains with piss and shit covering his legs.

At least his wife had some balls and fight in her, he, on the other hand was a worthless piece of shit who earned every single thing he had gotten so far.

“What do you say, Chuck?” Jed asked. “Dick or balls first?”

Ryker scoffed and walked up to stand at Jed’s side, “Do you think you could even cut his dick off? It’s almost a vagina at this point, it’s so shriveled up.”

“I could make it happen.” Jed shrugged. “You could always hold it out for me with pliers.”

“Mmh,” Ryker nodded, “That would work. So, Chucky, pick. Which goes first?”

“Please.” Charles whined uselessly, “I’m sorry!”

I rolled my eyes, tired of his bullshit for the hundredth time. From the moment we unblindfolded him in the shop, he had begged nonstop. Pathetic. “I vote for flame.”

“Ooh,” Jed rubbed his hands together. “Melty.”

I picked the blow torch up off the table and stopped right in front of the man who raped, and tortured Laila, before forcing a hysterectomy on her, aborting the baby he left behind in the wake of his torture, and stealing her dreams of ever being a mother.

“How many girls have you raped over the years, Chuck?”

He shook his head back and forth weakly until I clicked the trigger on the blowtorch, shooting a three-inch flame out of the tip and held it in front of his face. Then he finally found the energy to talk.

“I don’t know!” He screamed. “They all ran together after a while.”

“Well, he’s honest, at least.” Ryker deadpanned. “Finally. ”

“Dozens?” I adjusted the flame on the torch, lengthening it. “A hundred? More?”

“I don’t know!” He yelled, panicking again.

“Try.” Jed warned. “Make an effort here, Chucky. You’re ruining my fun.”

“Hundreds!” Charles snapped finally, “Thousands!” His bleary eyes found mine, and he held my stare like a man would, but we knew he was anything but.

“Is that what you want? I fucked thousands of women over the years! Thousands of young bitches who cried and begged for me to stop! But you know what?” He sneered, and I already knew what he was doing.

He was baiting me, and before he even finished his thought, I knew he was going to make me want to kill him for whatever he said.

“Yours was my favorite.” Rage. “She cried so fucking prettily for me to start with. And then she learned that made me fuck her harder, so then she started playing along how I liked. She learned to beg for it. She would get on her hands and knees the second I walked in the room and spread her legs for me, begging me to fuck her!”

I lowered the flame to his shriveled-up little dick, making him scream in agony as I stared at his contorted face while I melted his skin and flesh from his body.

His body rocked as he hung from his chains, the smell of burning flesh assaulting my senses, still I stared directly into his soulless eyes.

“Well, now we don’t have to worry about that ever happening again. Do we?” I lowered the flame to his balls, melting each of them and then continued dragging my flame across his body. Sure, dousing him in lighter fluid and igniting him would have sped up the process, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was for him to have a long, long time to regret what he did to Laila before death finally took him. I could feel the grim reaper standing in the room, ready to take him, so I kept burning him. Melting his flesh from his bones until it dripped onto the floor at my feet.

The others were silent as I killed him by boiling him inch by inch. I imagined every moment of pain he inflicted on my perfect brown-eyed girl the entire time I hurt him. I held space for her pain, while I gave him his.

A hand laid on my shoulder after a while, and I let the trigger go, killing the flame as I stood up to my full height, the mark of my torch sizzling across Charles’s eyes.

“He’s dead.” Ryker said easily from my side, and I flicked my gaze to the monitor on the wall displaying his vital signs.

“Finally.” I replied, setting the torch down.

“And her?” Jed asked, nodding to the one-eyed woman who abused Kade over four days before we found him.

“You can decide.” I stared my friend in the eye. “My gift.”

“To get revenge for my nephew?” Jed said, turning to face the woman who once thought she was invincible. “Hmm, I’m thinking meat grinder.”

“Nice choice.” Ryker added as Jed pulled the industrial-size meat grinder from the wall. “Feet first, of course.”

“Of course.” Jed said, flicking the button and turning the machine on. I sat down in the chair along the wall and watched silently as they used the hydraulic lift to lower the vile woman into the machine, her screams stopped about the time the blades made it to the tops of her thighs.

The machine stopped when she was completely gone, and finally there was only silence in my mind.

My demons had been fed. Revenge had been served. And the scores had been tipped back in our favor .

And all I wanted to do was lay eyes on the two people I belonged to, in their peaceful slumber. I’d destroy the world while they slept just like this, every single night, if that was what it took to keep them safe and happy.