Page 47 of Restitution

I was fifteen.

I’m hauled from the memory when Kade pulls away and heads to the table filled with devices. Tobias set up when we first got here. He grabs the hammer, flips it in his hand like he did the blade then grabs some nails and strides towards Chris like a panther stalking its prey.

“You see her?” He grabs his head with one hand, his fingers and thumb at his temples, and turns him to look at me. “This will be the last time you see her.”

Chris must think that means figuratively as he laughs through his pain, but Tobias moves behind him and pries his eyeball open. I quickly turn away as Kade hammers a nail into it.

The scream – it’ll be burned into me forever.

He deserves it. He deserves it. He deserves it.

I keep my back turned as they do the same with the other eye, blinding him. I can tell he’s shaking from the rapid gasps he lets out, and when I turn to face him once more, bile rises in my throat. He’s crying tears of blood, and it’s a horrifying sight.

Kade doesn’t fuck around with words, and Tobias crosses his arms, waiting for his son’s next move. Kade paces between me and Chris. Blinking fast. Tugging at the hair behind his head – agitated.

Chris is chittering, trembling with pain and fear, shock consuming him as his fingernails sink into the arms of the wooden chair.

Kade stops pacing and looks at me. “Go upstairs.”

I tilt my head. “What? No.”

“You know he’s going to suffer – I’ll make it painful – so go upstairs. You don’t need to see this.”

“I do need to see this,” I retort. “He took everything from me.”

Kade stares at me, snarling and blinking. So much blinking and pacing and muttering under his breath. I’m more concerned about his mental state than taking revenge on my abuser.

Then he grabs a small hacksaw and stops in front of me again. “The first time he touched you, what did he do?”

I try to speak, my voice breaking. “I… was unconscious.” Chris told me about it at breakfast the next morning.

Kade’s eyes darken even more, something I thought would be impossible.

“Never mind – I have a better idea.”

I frown as Kade turns to his dad. “Hold his hand still. The left one first.”

Tobias doesn’t seem to enjoy taking orders, let alone from his chaotic son, but he obeys anyway. Chris is thrashing again as Tobias holds his wrist to the wood, and Kade saws off four of his fingers.

The digits drop to the floor like bullet casings, and I nearly vomit everywhere.

Chris sounds like an animal being slaughtered.

“Now you won’t be able to look at her or fucking touch her.”

“He just pissed himself,” Barry states.

“I can see that,” Tobias snipes, flicking his boot out to banish the minuscule drop of piss that touched it. “Just stand there, you useless prick.”

Barry shrugs. “I don’t want his dirty blood on me.”

Blood squirts all over Kade, but he keeps going with the other hand, yanking at the digits he hasn’t managed to fully detachwhile Chris lets off more harrowing screams.

“I won’t kill you,” he tells him in a bored tone. “I want you to live and know you can never see her beauty or touch her perfection. I want you to be helpless and unable to walk.” On the last word, he puts a bullet in Chris’s knee, and I close my eyes at the sound that comes from him. “I’ll leave your hearing, so I can tell you when I win her back, so you can hear her moaning my fucking name. When I marry her. When she births my fucking children. And guess what? I’ll have all of that. You won’t. Because Stacey Rhodes has been mine since the day I fucking met her.”

He shoots Chris’s other knee as Tobias whistles.

Chris has saliva dripping from his mouth, his face red with pain and rage. “She. Mine.”