Page 5 of Sire

“I’m not fucking cutting your hand off, man.” The seller gestures to the opulent house. “I don’t need a mess and the heat on me.”

It doesn’t matter.

Tomorrow, Nash will drain this evil fuck’s accounts of the money we paid for the girls, and then Axel and I will kill him, the orange buyer, and the hired guns behind him. It’s only six men. It won’t be hard.

It’ll be fun. I’ll make sure of it.

“You want flesh or not?”

“Theirs.” He points to the girls.

“Nah, they’re my toys and I don’t share. So, take my fucking pinky and let’s roll.”

I slam my hand down on a glass table, strewn with tumblers of whisky. Giving a pinky isn’t a Christian custom. It’sYubitsume, a Japanese mafia thing. My Russian mafia father admired their discipline and rituals. Growing up, he took a lot from our flesh, too.

But the seller keeps eyeing my Iron Angel.

“Come on, man.” I keep my voice flat. “Three million and my pinky, and it’s a deal, and I get to take my girls home to play. I have a dungeon waiting for them.”

He likes the sound of that way too much. In three steps, he presses the blade, poised over my splayed digits.

“No!” The Iron Angel cries out, “Don’t hurt him!”

I wink at her. “It’s alright. I won’t feel a thing.”

But goddamn, I do.

At first, the shock hits me, even though I expect it. Numbly, I stare down at him doing it, my blood pumping as flesh and bone are severed. It spills over the glass table, but he wipes it up with a towel one of the gunmen throws at him.

Then it’s a throbbing, nauseating pain from my severed finger to my stomach, to every nerve in my body registering the unnatural trauma—the permanent loss.

But I hide it.

I don’t want to scare the girl and the Iron Angel any more than we need to get the fuck out of here.

“Done.”

I make myself breathe while the seller lifts half of my pinky, holding it to the light like a goddamn diamond.

“Careful,” he warns. “With your appetite for torturing virgin pussy, you’ll run out of fingers.”

No, dumbass, you’re out of time.

In twenty-four hours, I’ll cut your head off.

With a blood-soaked towel wrapped around my left hand, I signal to my angel with the right. Shockingly, she follows me without resistance and gets the girl to come, too.

I guess the Iron Angel believes I’m the lesser of the evils in the room.

Maybe she’s wrong.

When we get to my rented Hummer parked in the driveway,I clock Axel in his rental, acting like he’s on his phone when really, he’s waiting for me.

His eyes shock wide at the bloody towel around my hand, but I lift my chin.I got this.

Yanking the back door open, I bark, “Get in.”

The youngest starts to sob again, so I drop my voice to as true as I can make it sound.