Page 51 of The Pawn

His eyes settle on mine and what I see in them throws me off. Because he’s cocky. He’s about to be butchered. He knows he is. But he’s cocky.

“Tell me, did you touch her with these filthy hands?” I ask him, getting in his face, his rank smell turning my stomach.

“I can help you. I can find him for you.”

“Not what I asked. Did you touch her?”

He grins with one side of his mouth and my muscles tighten, my hand a fist around the handle of that knife as I take his forearm with the other.

He touched her. I know he did. And I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner. How I’ve let him live for as long as I have.

“I did more than touch her. And I’m not the only one.”

“You’re a lying bastard.” She wasn’t raped. The doctor examined her. She confirmed Allegra hadn’t been raped. But I never asked Allegra if they did anything else. I couldn’t do that to her.

“She liked it. Whore like her mother before her. I had her too. Felt so warm and wet. Tasted good too.”

My heart thuds against my chest. Blood pumps so hard it blocks out the sound of him.

“You’re a fucking liar.” I say, my voice foreign to my own ears.

Rami grins. “Am I? Or maybe that little whore is the liar.”

“You fucking bastard,” I say, slamming his broken arm down on the ground so hard, he screams. “Hurt?” I ask.

“Fuck you.”

“I haven’t even started yet. I’m going to go slow. Take a little piece each day.”

“He’s going to come for what’s his.”

“She isn’t his.”

He laughs and the sound is deafening.

I look down at the fingers with which he touched her. The filthy hand he laid on her. I raise that knife high and bring it down hard and for one very brief moment, everything goes still. Rami. The room. Time. Everything.

And then he screams.

And I look down at the four fingers lying on the ground, the bloody nub of a hand with just a thumb. It’s more grotesque for it.

Rami screams and screams, eyes wide on the carnage of his hand. I take his other arm, and he fights me, trying to get free. He can’t. I have fury on my side. And when I chop off the fingers of that hand, I feel a grim satisfaction. A sick balancing of scales, although they’ll never be equal. Never. His life wouldn’t pay for a hair on her head.

Rami stares at his hands as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He’s all thumbs now.

I tear my shirt over my head and gather up all his fingers inside it half-crazed myself. I get up, I don’t bother to lock the cell door. No need. I walk out of it.

“He’s coming for her, you fucking bastard!” Rami calls out behind me.

I pick up the gun and tuck it into the back of my jeans before walking toward the stairs when he starts to laugh a mad man’s laugh.

“He’s coming to gethiswife!”

My world teeters sideways. My brain rattles against my skull.

Rami laughs.

I turn slowly, hear racing, blood roaring in my ears. I look into his disgusting face. “What did you say?”