Page 44 of Theirs to Hunt (Girls Like Us #1)

Chapter forty-four

T he man’s screams echo off the cypress trees, useless out here where the swamp swallows everything.

The only light comes from the truck’s headlights and the dull orange glow of a lantern swaying from a meat hook.

He’s on his knees now, sobbing. Pants long gone, wrists zip-tied behind his back.

“You know what your mistake was?” I ask, voice low, even.

He looks up, face puffy, streaked with blood and spit.

“You thought no one was watching,” I continue. “You thought a woman was prey. That she didn’t have wolves.”

Brooks stands off to the side, silent.

The gator pen churns behind us. Big bastards. Hungry.

I crouch, close enough for him to smell the bourbon on my breath. “You don’t get to die clean. That would be mercy. And this isn’t about mercy.”

He starts to beg again. Slurred. Broken. Every word a waste of breath .

Brooks finally speaks, his voice vibrating with fury. “Hold him.”

He moves in, fast, practiced.

The sound that follows is one you never forget. Flesh parting. Not deep. Precise.

The man shrieks until he gags on it.

We don’t react. We don’t flinch.

Brooks stands beside him, holding a gloved hand out to Devon as if offering a gift.

In it, the most literal piece of justice.

Devon walks to the fence. The gators are already circling.

He drops the severed flesh into the pen.

The splash is small. The frenzy is not.

Devon turns back to the man, whose face is a wax mask of shock and agony.

“Every time you piss through a catheter,” he says coldly, “you’ll remember what it means to hurt a woman in my city.”

And with that, the lesson is permanent.