Page 22 of Like An Animal

THE SHADOW

One Week Ago…

I f it wasn’t for Massimo, I wouldn’t have noticed the discrepancy.

There’s enough time between every photo or video I’ve received from the person who is supposed to be keeping an eye on Bronwyn that I never noticed that every image has her in one of three outfits…

and my woman never wore the same thing more than a handful of times.

“What the fuck is going on?” Xavi drags in the individual I’ve been dying to see as I sit in my chair, one leg thrown over the other, and I hold a kitchen knife in my hand, my preferred weapon of choice.

Xavi tosses the man to the floor before binding his wrists behind his back with a single zip tie.

“Hello, Hector,” I mutter and he looks up, his face draining of color.

“Jeremy.”

He knows he’s in deep shit if I had to fly out from New Jersey to Grove Hill to check up on him.

I stand to my feet, slowly walking over to him, before leaning down to be closer to my target. “You forgot to say hello. You wouldn’t want to be rude, would you?”

A lot has changed in the past five years.

I’m not the same man I was when I left. I’ve become hardened and my name is now one that breeds fear.

I was going to wait another year to come back and reclaim what’s mine, just until my grandfather hands everything over to me, but considering I haven’t had any proof that my little ghost is perfectly fine in half a decade, my timetable was pushed forward.

“Wha-wha-what are you doing here?” he asks, his voice shaking with fear.

I press my knife against his cheek and he screams in terror before the blade even touches his scruff. Such a baby.

“Don’t waste my time by pretending you don’t know why I’m here.”

His eyes widen in fear. “The-the girl?”

I look up to Xavi as he leans against the closed door. “What do you know? He’s not as dumb as he wants us to think he is.”

Xavi chuckles. “Clearly. He just has a death wish. Everyone knows you’ve done worse than cut up an ugly rat like him for just talking to her.”

That is a pretty well known fact in our circles, but he’s not close enough to know how feral I get when it comes to Bronwyn. I become like an animal where she is concerned.

“Please, please, don’t hurt me.”

His desperate plea falls on deaf ears before I dig the blade into his cheek. Blood oozes around the knife as it cuts through layers of skin and flesh until it clinks against his teeth. The little bitch screams as he thrashes against the restraints.

“Why did you only send me photos and videos of her from over a few days?” I growl.

Hector is the private investigator I tasked with keeping an eye on Bronwyn. He was to report back if anyone messed with her so I could deal with them personally. I paid him good money to look after her and clearly he has been cashing those checks without fulfilling his duties.

“It wasn’t my fault!” he screams, but I just yawn in response, tired of listening to him scream like a toddler.

“She disappeared out of thin air. It was three days after the arrest. I hadn’t seen her come out all day so I checked the house.

She wasn’t there! She left everything behind.

She didn’t even take her identification. She was just gone .”

“So, you just kept sending Jeremy the same photos and cashed all the checks? You expect us to believe you have no clue where she is.”

“I really don’t!” he sobs. “I talked to the neighbors and they said a blacked out van showed up. They walked her out of the house and put her in the back. The neighbors said it was weird, but didn’t look like she was leaving against her will.

I tried to find her, but it was hopeless. There was zero trace of her.”

“And, you didn’t communicate any of this to Jeremy because…” Xavi trails off, leaving room for Hector to fill in the blanks.

“Isn’t that clear?” I turn my gaze back to Hector before sneering at him. “Money. He wanted the money even though my woman has spent five years unprotected, unaccounted for, and who knows where.”

“No, no, no!” Hector exclaims. “I was looking for her, I swear!”

Like that matters.

“But, you didn’t find her, did you?”

His eyes widen in horror. He knows he’s going to die. He just doesn’t know how I’m going to do it.

“Xavi, get me a jar,” I mutter and the amount of fear I find on Hector’s face is beyond anything I’ve witnessed. Anyone else I have said that around hasn’t reacted like that, but everyone knows what I do to people who betray me.

What is that religious text?

If your eyes cause you to sin, pluck them out.

Something like that.

“No, no, no. Please, Jeremy!”

Xavi walks over to my bag and pulls out a glass mason jar before bringing it over to me. He sets it on the ground as Hector flails like a fish.

“I’ll do anything you want. I swear. Just please don’t take my eyes.”

Why does he care? He’ll be dead anyway.

I pull the knife off of his cheek, but lift my hand before slamming the blade into his shoulder. Blood squirts out the wound around the metal and Hector’s screams are music to my ears.

Such heavenly bliss.

The cut won’t kill him, not instantly anyway.

It gives me the time to make him sit there and feel every second of removing his eyeballs from his sockets.

Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a enucleation spoon, a tool specific for removing eyeballs from their socket.

I may have swiped it when I first moved to Jersey from an ENT surgeon that was involved in a scandal that my grandfather needed help dealing with.

I can’t explain it but the second I saw it, I had to have it.

My grandfather thought I was insane for taking it, but this tool is the reason most people fear me and do what I say to avoid my wrath.

I press my finger against his forehead before putting my thumb below his bottom lashes, stretching it so his eye opens no matter how hard he tries to close it.

I dig the spoon in, not caring if it cuts or causes damage to the flesh underneath, and the eye makes a soft pop as it drops out of the socket.

It’s as if he transforms into a cartoon character from the early nineties because the fucker freezes, blinking his one eye over and over again before he lets out an ear-curdling scream, thrashing about like that’s going to help him in any capacity.

I do the same to the other side. Warm blood coating my fingers as the first eye detaches, landing in my palm like a rotten grape tomato, squishy and oozing all over my fingers.

I open the jar and drop it inside before I move onto the other eye.

However, all fighting has ended before I slice through the last layer of flesh on his last remaining eye.

I hum a song to myself as I drop it into the jar.

I pull my knife out of his shoulder. Blood spurts out as if I hit an artery and the man’s fight dies down, turning into whimpers as I cut through the tissue.

I slam down the knife, driving it into his heart before standing to my feet, the mason jar slipping in my grasp.

I don’t lose hold of it though. I replace the lid before handing it over to Xavi, who stares at it like he’s going to be sick.

“Ew! I’m not touching that.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not handing them to you. They’re in the jar. Stop acting like such a baby.”

He glares. “I’m not a baby. You’re the baby, Jer, and you’re gross. Seriously, did you have this pension for taking people’s eyes back then? If you did, I don’t know how Bron put up with you.”

I push the jar into his hand before I walk to the attached bathroom and wash the blood from my hands. I can’t do a lot about the blood soaking through my clothes so I’ll probably need to take a shower before I start my own search.

Bronwyn knew a very different Jeremy Borza.

If she thought I was demanding and obsessive before, she won’t know what to do with the man I am now.

With those changes comes a strength I lacked.

Sure, I viciously killed strangers for just looking at her, but I sometimes hesitated.

That caution is gone along with my willingness to handle disobedience.

I will kill anyone to reach the end goal I seek and that goal is my little ghost…and she’s fucking missing.

Massimo and Xavi were really pissed when they found out that it was Bronwyn that framed me, but it didn’t last long. They’re always considered her one of us and just like me, they knew that there had to be a reason.

They’ll be just as determined as I am to find her and bring her home. She might come back kicking and screaming, but she will come back.

I switch off the water and dry my hands. I pop my head out the door before muttering, “Get someone to clean this up. I’ll be out in a few.”

“A please would be nice, Borza.”

I close the bathroom door without saying another word before stripping off my clothes.

I don’t give a fuck what I have to do. I will find her.