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TWO

Dante

I sit back in the warehouse I’ve occupied for the week. It’s in a seedy side of town where prostitution is high, and druggies are constantly looking for somewhere to squat. It’s not the highest form of luxury, but no one looks for me here. Not that I exist. The news has it all wrong and now the world is running scared of a “serial killer” with no discernable trigger. I’m not a serial killer. Yes, I’ve killed a lot of people for reasons of my own, but I don’t have a compulsion to grab unsuspecting housewives who look like my mother. My motivations are much higher than that. Besides, I have no fucking idea who my parents were as people; even with my memory, her features are faint.

While I eat, I watch the idiot tiptoe around her home with a broom clutched in her hands. I scoff around a bite of my shawarma as she checks each room, looking for me.

What the fuck was a broom supposed to do if I were still there?

Finding and trapping her was too easy. I'd expected one hell of a fight from her. Instead, she folded like an antelope in a lion’s cage, resigning herself to her fate. Father went out of his way to keep his daughter from his life but has weakened her in the process. She doesn’t have the skills to protect herself; she’s a crying idiot who’s incapable. Hell, she can’t even disappear properly. If she were better, it would have been a thrill to find and best her. Her capture was boring but beneficial.

Using my eidetic memory, I’d meticulously gone through everything in her home to see if she had any links to where Father hides now. Nothing. Just in case, I added cameras and bugs in every room in her home except her bathroom. I only put audio in there. I don’t get off on seeing unsuspecting women take shits.

I didn’t expect much from my search, but it would have been a bonus to my real mission. Switching to the next monitor, I check to see how the bidding is going on the dark web. I had to strip her to her bra and underwear to get some decent pictures then redressed her before I left. A lot of unnecessary work, but it helped drive up the cost for her. I needed a particular bidder to fight for her. With a half-hour left, she’ll be the property of Zagan and right where I need her to be.

Zagan is Father's most lucrative vendor and the merciless ruler of the sex-trafficking underworld. Most of the volume goes through him. His organization is single-handedly responsible for the disappearance of most of the women throughout the country. He’ll sell the special ones to high rollers, keep some for himself, and then send the rest to sexual slavery for the remainder of their lives in remote places that are hard to trace. Few make it out and most overdose.

I chuckle to myself once my attention is pulled back to her apartment. Her hair is still wet from her shower, falling in black ringlets that stop in the middle of her back. Jeans and a baby-tee cling to her curvy body as she runs through her home to pack her essentials. Although she’s half Polish, she’s taken more of her black mother’s features with her big brown eyes, long lashes, and pouty lips. Her high cheekbones are all that come from her dad.

She thinks she’s running from me, but her real monster already has men near her home. The moment the bid ends, they'll swoop in and snatch her so expertly that the police won’t be able to find a sign of where she’s gone. I, on the other hand, will be able to track her and find his hideaway.

Zagan runs a tight organization built off the bodies of women and is now above the police. As far as they know, she’ll disappear forever like the rest.

It’s time to move again. Each piece of my setup is carefully repacked and in the back of my borrowed SUV by the time my phone goes off. The wire transfer alert tells me that several million dollars just dropped into my account. The alarm chimes and I know they’ve moved in on her. I get in the driver's seat as I watch men storm into her home. They don’t have the finesse I do. Loud and messy. She doesn’t try to fight and runs full speed toward her panic room, just as she did with me. I shake my head at her ignorance. The first guy grabs her before she can disappear. She jerks against him, attempting to escape. Finally, she swings and hits him in the temple with one of her fists. The next man swoops in and her screams cause him to backhand her. The other pounces and pushes her to the ground. They zip tie, gag her, drop her into a big box, then carry her out.

I suck my teeth and drop my phone in the cup holder. I wonder if Father will feel the irony once he realizes his daughter has just been sold to the very organization he protects. Whistling, I drive off enroute to my next mission.

His daughter’s abduction should weaken his shield, and I will move in to destroy him. The thought of ripping him apart brings the first genuine smile I’ve had all week. I’ll get back to that later, now the wife of a child molester has hired me to take out the trash.

“Please, don’t do this!” He cries as if he doesn’t assert this kind of power over little boys.

Adults who fuck with children’s brains gain a special kind of hate from me. I wasn’t raped physically, but I was fucked with mentally, and if I didn’t appreciate that, the thought of the other makes me livid. I don’t speak much during these missions because, in the very off chance that someone lives, I don’t like them picking up on my accent, but it’s necessary here.

Once I was contacted by his wife, I did some deep dives and a little light stalking. His online activity confirms that he was catfishing a twelve-year-old boy but pretending to be a boy named Andy of the same age. I spoofed the child’s account early on and anonymously sent information to his parents so they can be more present in their child’s internet activity. People like me aren’t around to be hired by concerned citizens. He’s been talking to me. He invited the boy to his “birthday party” in a remote location but he met a bigger predator.

Pushing his blond hair out of his face, he stared at me with dead brown eyes, pretending to be friendly. I know a defective person when I see one. He grunted in pain and slumped to the ground when I knocked him on the head - like he would’ve done to that child - and dragged him farther into the woods. His van waited for him a little beyond where we met, and I threw him in the back like he would have. It’s satisfying to enact the same thing he would have done so he can feel the terror that he’s dished out in the past. If I were less disciplined, he would’ve been beaten to death on the spot.

Now, he’s stripped naked and tied to a medical bed covered in plastic. Torture is not always on my to-do list. I’m not against it, it’s just time consuming. Unfortunately for the sick fuck on my table, I have time today. The room is soundproof so he can yell as much as he wants, and no one will help him.

“Did you listen when the children begged, or did it turn you on? Is it disappointing that I don’t get any kind of sexual gratification from this?”

His blood splats hot on my glove when I stab him with an ice pick. I leave it in his side so he cannot bleed out. Going to my tools, I grab a scalpel just shy of surgical sharp. I want him to feel every bit of what I’m about to do.

He fights against the restraints when I grab his limp dick.

“You know the suggestion for pedophiles?”

As he begs for me to show him mercy, his yells are piercing. His face is bloody from his ass whopping and mixed with his tears, spit, and snot.

“No, no, no, no!” he cries like a give a fuck.

Slowly, I begin to carve off his dick while he bucks and yells. Blood coats his thighs as I work to sever his dick off his body. He shits himself halfway but that’s his problem. I only stop to revive him because he needs to live every moment.

Eyes squeezed shut in agony, he sputters. My hand leaves behind blood when I smack him.

“Wake up,” I sneer.

Squeezing his jaw until he screams, I shove his dick into his mouth. His head is strapped in place, so I grab my ice pick and take my time cleaning my tools as he asphyxiates on his own vomit.