Page 10 of Lines Drawn (Crimson Bonds #5)

I should have brought Jude with me . I decided to let him sleep, but that means it’s Emilio and I in charge of visiting the three men the Martellis captured.

I suppose it’s a good thing we cleared the air between us when it comes to Benjamin, so we can work together without any hostility.

Though, if nothing else, torturing people will help provide an outlet for us both.

The Martelli warehouse isn’t as well-equipped as my torture chamber, but that’s not a problem. Though I miss my favorite toy, I can make do. There are so many other ways to get someone to talk…

“Pick your favorite and then blindfold the other two,” I tell Emilio.

He stares at me for a long moment. “For what purpose?”

“You’ll see. We’re going to have some fun with them, and taking away one of their senses is disconcerting. Especially when they can hear but not see, it leaves the imagination running rampant.”

“Or we can just get this over with and get them to tell us what we want.”

I shake my head. “Choose or I’ll choose for you. I understand you’re good at this, that you have learned a lot, but you have a long way to go, Death. Trust me.”

Emilio sighs, but points to the one on the left, which would have been my choice as well. We create makeshift blindfolds from a towel that was laid out by the sink, and once the two not chosen are properly blindfolded, we drag our chosen one away from them.

He tries to struggle, but it does no good, his binds are too well done, and there’s two of us, one of him. We have to untie his hands briefly in order to tie him to the chair in the middle of the room, but it’s not an issue with us working together.

“What now?” Emilio asks, frowning at the man.

“Now, we get him to tell us all his secrets. What types of knives do you have?”

Emilio grins and walks over to a table, gesturing for me to follow him.

I nod in approval at the array of knives.

Selecting bone and gutting knives, I set them on a portable tray table and gather some extra rope, along with a cloth bag.

If worse comes to worse, I'll teach Emilio how to waterboard someone. Maybe I'll do that anyway.

“Time to make our prey sing, Mostrotto.”

I get a raised eyebrow at the nickname, but it's fitting for Il Padrone's Death.

“What's your name?” I ask once we're standing in front of our new friend.

“I'm not telling you shit,” he spits.

“Hmmm, that's a shame.” Pulling out my knife, I hit him across the face, enjoying the way his blood wells from the cut on his cheek. He grunts, but otherwise doesn't make a sound.

“I'll only ask you one more time,” I say in a smooth, friendly voice.

“I know who you are. I know what you do. You're not getting shit out of me.”

I grin, which earns me a look of confusion. “That’s perfectly fine with me,” I say softly. “All I wanted was your name, but if you don’t want to give it…” I shrug, unconcerned.

Emilio steps forward. “This can only go one of two ways. We will get what we want from you.”

In his hands is a small pair of pliers, and I smile for real when I realize what he’s going to do.

“How’d you know screaming is my favorite type of music?” I ask as he slides the pliers under the chosen one’s nail and gives a firm tug.

Nothing has even happened yet and the guy squeals like a pig. The Little Monster laughs and adjusts his grip on the pliers, before giving them a firm yank and ripping the nail out of the bed.

Ignoring Emilio and his new toy, I watch as the two people blindfolded on the ground react. One jumps as another wail echoes around the room, while the other barely reacts.

Picking up a coil of extra rope, I walk over to the two we blindfolded. Wrapping the rope around the neck of one a few times, I give my impromptu leash a few tugs, enjoying the way he thrashes, making the noose tighten around his throat.

With a forceful tug, I drag him across the room and lay him down in front of the chosen one. He jerks in his chair when he sees his buddy fighting—literally—for his life at my feet.

“Are you ready to tell us your name?” I ask calmly, as if I didn’t just drag a man across the floor on my own.

“Fuck you!” he spits.

I sigh and exchange a look with Emilio. “I don’t think he’s going to give us what we want, Mostrotto. Which is a shame. è un vigliacco debole.”

“How…disappointing,” Emilio responds. “That means we don’t need to keep him alive.”

“No, no, please!” our chosen one begs. “I couldn’t tell you what you wanted because I don’t know anything.”

“I don’t like liars,” Emilio says.

The crying and begging stops, and the desperate man disappears as quickly as it came, as if he realized that tactic wouldn’t work on us. “None of us will tell you anything,” he says. “Why should we when you’ll kill us anyway?”

“Oh, you’ll talk,” I tell him. “Whether it’s because we have to cut it out of you, or because you helpfully give us what we want to know. Either way, you will do what we want.”

“This one might be a dead end,” Emilio says, looking annoyed. “I hate wasting my time. I have better things to do than try to squeeze information out of people who are just cannon fodder.”

“Oh?” I adjust my grip on the rope and give it a tug, so the man at my feet doesn’t feel left out. He makes the most delicious choking noises before I ease up on the rope. “Like what? Cuddling with Hol?”

I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look at him, keeping my attention on the third prisoner. I watch every little twitch he makes, wondering when he’s going to break. As an experiment, I tug on the leash again, letting the poor bastard suffer for a long moment as I watch the third man.

He flinches and shifts, trying to escape his bonds as he hears his friends being tortured. It makes me smile, thankful this wasn't a wasted trip away from my loves.

Releasing the rope, I let it fall unceremoniously onto the floor before walking back over to our uninjured friend.

“Don't worry,” I tell him softly when he flinches at my approach. “I'm going to help you.”

Pulling my earbuds from my pocket, I insert them into his ears and then take out my phone.

Choosing one of Roman’s more annoying playlists, I turn it on, making sure it's at full volume.

“There,” I say, knowing he can't hear me with the music playing.

“Now you don't have to hear anything you don't want to.”

Standing, I make my way back to Emilio. “How's it going here?”

He pokes his knife into the fleshy part of the chosen one’s chest, right under his nipple. “I'm growing bored. Can I kill him now?”

I laugh. “Patience, Little Monster.”

He scowls. “I was named Death, not Patience, for a reason.”

“Then you can join Jude and Benjamin in their lessons.”

Reaching over to the tray, I pick up the boning knife. “Ever use one?”

He shakes his head.

“Then watch and learn. Hunters use this to remove the bones of their kill, but to keep the flesh intact. Self-explanatory, but it can get messy if you're not used to it.”

Grabbing the hand Emilio hasn't already mutilated, I choose the middle finger for my example. A bit of finesse is needed for bones so small, but I do love showing off my skills.

Carefully, I split the skin open, from nail to the back of hand, exposing flesh and blood. “I'm going to expose the bone, and I'll show you how to do it.”

The bone knife easily cuts between the knuckle near the hand and the finger bone. It's a simple thing, but the phalanges are such small bones, it's easy to lose or nick them unnecessarily.

Carefully, making sure I don't cut the flesh, I extract all three phalanges from the skin suit and present them to Emilio. “Want to try, Mostrotto? You can remove his entire forearm if you want.”

He takes the boning knife from me with a grin. “You have wonderful ideas. Perhaps we can be friends after all.”

He turns to the crying, whimpering man sitting in the chair, and I take a step back to watch him work for a moment, until his test subject passes out from pain and blood loss that is.

Walking back over to the man on the ground, I stare down at him and sigh. “You're not even worth my time,” I tell him.

Leaning down, I remove his blindfold and then pick up the rope. He stares up at me with hateful brown eyes as I strangle the life out of him.

Once I'm sure he's dead, I look back to Emilio. “How's it going?”

“Tricky. I think I accidentally broke his hand.”

I tsk. “It happens, first times are messy.”

Making my way over to him, I watch as he severs the forearm from the elbow, and then carefully removes both bones from the flesh.

“We should make knives with these,” Emilio says.

I laugh, enjoying the unhinged look in his eyes and the blood spattered on his clothes and arms. My blood heats and my cock thickens as the evidence of his activities is right there on his skin.

Swallowing back a groan, I gesture to the portable tray. “Set them aside and we'll take them with us, if you want. Bones make terrible knives, but you can keep your souvenir. We can either sew him up and kill him later, or stab him in a place that will let him bleed out slowly.”

Emilio looks at the slumped man in the chair, distaste clear on his face. “Let him bleed out.”

“Okay. Let's finish this then.”

Emilio sets his trophies to the side, and then plunges his knife into the soft skin of the passed out man’s belly, ripping his flesh open and letting a torrent of blood pour out of him. It’s a slow, painful way to die, but one I highly approve of.

I squat down in front of the one we’ve left out. Pulling out the earbuds, I shove them into my pocket, not worried about putting them in their case as I’ll never wear them again.

Emilio comes over as I remove the blindfold and ask, “What’s your name?”

“S–sam,” he whimpers.

“Okay, nice to meet you, Sam. I’m Tennant, and that’s Emilio.”

He nods. “I know. P–please, just kill me.”

I give him a small smile. “Why do you want to die so badly, Sam?”