Page 32 of Making Choices

Once I’ve stowed my leather jacket and cut in my bike’s pannier, I roll up my sleeves and follow him inside. The trapdoor in the middle of the tack room is open and I climb down the steps that lead to the secret cellar below. Venom joins me, whistling tunelessly to himself as he grabs something from the steel table near the entrance and strides over to the overweight man hanging from the beam.

He threads his fingers through a set of spiked knuckle dusters and punches the unconscious man in the sternum. “Wakey, wakey, cunt.”

Blood runs down our victim’s pasty gut and the funny-sounding grunt made by Venom’s captive tells me he’s already lost some teeth. I shake my head, abandoning the pliers I was about to pick up and settle instead on a scalpel. It glimmers when I raise it to the fluorescent light to inspect the sharp edge.

“Hmmm.” I run my finger along the blade and nod when I’m satisfied it’s up to the task ahead. “Tell me, Venom… who do we have here, and what the fuck did he do?”

“He’s one of the motherfuckin’ pigs with Joseph Kingsley yesterday. Last name: Connor. He bailed us up in our room at the compound—talked shit about us bein’ in a gang.”

“Fuck that bullshit, we’re a brotherhood.”

“That we are, brother.” Venom bares his canines as he turns to face me. “He also saw Lily in nothin’ but a towel.”

My own hackles rise. Fucking Joseph Kingsley is turning out to be a bigger pain in the arse than his depraved son. Anyone, cop or not, who willingly associates with the corrupt as fuck Minister for Police deserves everything that comes their way.

I’d carve him up just for wearing a badge.

The fact he saw Cherub all but naked is the reason he’s going to die tonight.

“Figure the pigs are gonna be happy as fuck by the time we finish, huh?”

“Happy as pigs in shit I’d say.” Venom’s joke doesn’t land because the fat fuck swinging from the rafters decides to start squealing. My best friend rolls his eyes in a poor imitation of his sassy woman at the noise, then mutters in the heavily modulated voice I’ve come to expect when his dark side takes control. “Remind me to gag the next one.”

“Nah, it’s no fun that way.” He shoots me a look of disagreement and I shrug. “Different courses and all that…”

“It’s different strokes, you unit.”

“Haven’t you ever heard the sayin’, ‘different courses for different horses?’” I ask.

“Fuck, no. That makes zero sense. It’s different strokes for different folks, dumbarse.”

Knowing that arguing with Venom when he’s wound up is futile, I let the subject drop. The buckles on my boots jangle as I cross the polished concrete floor and the captive starts to whine. A stringent scent that’s clearly urine invades my nose. I step around the puddle and scowl at my best friend.

“How’s he not pissed himself before now? You been playin’ checkers or somethin’?”

“Look at him,” Venom retorts. “He’s missin’ teeth. His ear matches Evander Holyfield’s, and that shredded skin ain’t just for decoration. Not my fault, the motherfucker’s got the bladder of an elephant.”

“Whatever.”

With surgical precision, I press the scalpel to the outer corner of the man’s left eye. He whimpers. I smirk. “Not so tough now, are ya? Bet you felt like the man yesterday when you bailed up a girl in a towel for your dirty fuckin’ boss, though.”

“Please,” he begs. Tears roll down his face, the left side joined by a trail of blood when I dig the blade into his skin. “I have a wife and kids.”

“So?”

“They need me.”

“My woman needs me,” Venom cuts in. My breath catches in my throat at the sincerity in his voice. “And I need her. You were still gonna take us away from each other in cuffs yesterday.”

“It’s… my… job.”

I drag the scalpel underneath his eye, stopping when I reach the opposite corner. A flap of skin drops down on his cheek and his entire body shakes. My best friend chuckles at my handiwork. “Your job is to serve and protect,” I remind him as I tear off the piece of flesh and shove it in his mouth. He tries to spit it out, but I pinch his lips together. “What you did yesterday was not your job. What you did yesterday was fucked up.”

“I—I… it’s not my fault.” He launches into a defence the moment I allow him to part his lips. I step aside so his eyelid flap doesn’t land on my shirt when it falls from his mouth. “He made me.”

“Don’t make excuses.”

“Be a fuckin’ man,” Venom adds. He walks around behind the cop and loops a thin wire around his neck. With his mouth close to the guy’s half-amputated ear, he tells him, “This here is gonna be what kills you.”

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