Page 26 of Under Your Scars

One of them whimpers and it pulls a satisfied chuckle from me. Keeping my voice calm and collected, I crack my neck.

“My angel told me that Valenti made her work naked, and you assholes touched her all night. That was a big fucking mistake on your part. Elena ismine.Mineto scare.Mineto chase.Mineto touch.” I choose one of the men at random, the one second from the right with the stab wound in his stomach and the missing ear, and I point my gun at him. “Tell me which one of you touched what’s mine first.”

The five of them all tense up together and they begin looking down the line frantically, begging each other to keep quiet because none of them want to admit the truth to me.

“Start talking,” I threaten, my gun still aimed for the fucker’s massive forehead. He says nothing, trying to force his face to go blank. If he’s trying to convince me he’s not scared, he’s doing a terrible job. I can see it in those green eyes of his that he’s on the verge of pissing himself too. After about a minute of silence, my patience wears dangerously thin. I shoot him right between the eyes, the force of the gunshot sending him and his chair toppling backwards. His friends cringe as his skull cracks against the ground and his blood pools under him.

I point my gun at the man whose kneecaps I shot out. “I saidstart talking.”

“Mike!” he shouts. “It—it—it was Mike! He slapped her ass!”

Mike whimpers and starts writhing in his chair. “You dirty fucking liar!” he growls at his friend. Mike then looks me dead in the eye. “Look man, I promise I didn’t touch her.”

Another bullet leaves my gun and lands in Mike’s brain for the crime of lying to me. I look back to the one who sold out his friend. “Who touched her next?” His breathing hitches and becomes erratic. I narrow my eyes. “Was it you?” I ask quietly. The man bites his lip and trembles as he nods. I slowly stand up from my chair and take two big steps towards him, circling him like a hawk. “Tell me what you did to her.”

He stays quiet, so I come to a stop behind him and pull his head backwards with his hair, forcing him to look up at me. “Don’t make me ask again.”

A pungent odor fills my nostrils through my mask. He’s pissed himself too.

He gulps as well as he can with his neck bent backwards unnaturally. He admits to me that he licked Elena’s nipples. I proceed to cut his own off and feed them to him, before slicing his throat and watching him gurgle and choke on his own blood.

Dickhead number four made Elena sit in his lap with her ass against his dick and grinded into her until he was rock solid before rubbing one out in the bathroom thinking about her.

He told me that Valenti said she was off limits from raping. I asked him if he wanted to.

His small intestine is wrapped around his throat, so I trust you can imagine what his answer was.

The man I promised to save for last, who surrendered when I came here, told me he tipped Elena by shoving bills in between the lips of her pussy and her asscheeks.

I cut a hole in his chest and shoved a Benjamin into the bleeding wound before slitting his throat, groaning with satisfaction when his arterial blood spurts across my chest and neck.

Bloody. Just the way I like my kills.

I stand in front of the carnage I just inflicted on five men for touching my angel, and I wish I was a good man. I wish I could say I felt any semblance of guilt, or remorse, or hell, even nothing. I’d take feeling numb over loving the taste of death.

But what I feel when I kill can only be described as relief. Relief that the monster inside me has been fed and will recede back into his decrepit cave until he’s hungry again, and that’s when I’ll kill next.

Eight. I’ve given him eight souls since September sixth.

It should have only been one.

It should have only been me.

Taking a deep breath after a moment of reflection, I plaster red duct tape over the mouths of the five men I just turned into the past tense. It’s the icing on the cake of my kills.

Valenti will eventually come back, and the first thing he’ll notice isn’t his dead friends, but my sadistic calling card and his name spelled out on the walls in their blood.

Over. And over. And over. And over again.

CHAPTER 8

THE ANGEL

I don’t remember falling asleep last night, but I do remember the Silencer holding me to his chest and stroking my hair. By the time my alarm went off for me to get ready for myactualjob, he was gone.

Exhaustion hits me hard while I’m at my desk. I can feel my eyelids grow heavy as I stare at the Reeves Enterprises logo on the wall across from me.

After I chug my third cup of coffee, I’m certain my ability to be a functioning human being does not exist anymore.