Page 58 of Brutal Queen

He shakes his head and drops his brow to the table with a dull thud, obviously having seen in her eyes that his fate is sealed.

“As much as there’s a certain catharsis to this particular punishment, I think given our surroundings, there’s a way for me to teach this lesson in a much more effective manner,” she says. With great heaving sobs wracking his body and tears streaming down his face, Jack turns his face from his friend at the same time as Charles flinches and looks away.

I fist my hand through Charles's hair, yanking his head back up. “You’re not going to want to miss this bit,” I grate out, refusing to allow him tohave a reprieve from the horror in front of him.

Aurora stands and stalks back to the wall, tapping the tips of her nails against the generator, teasing him with the gentle snick as she walks her fingers towards the dials. I’d almost forgotten the wires dangling off the end of the rod still wedged deep inside his ass. It seems that he had too, because he doesn’t make a peep as she circles the pad of her finger leisurely around the rim of the dial.

She pinches the dial between her thumb and forefinger and twists. Charles screams out a horrified cry a fraction of a second before Jack does, but Jack's screams are louder. The second the current goes live, Jack’s body starts convulsing. The rigidity of his body fluctuates in time to the changes Aurora is making to the two dials on the wall. She fiddles until Jack arches his back into a permanent spasm, straining against the ties.

Aurora drops her hand and leaves it running.

The smell of burning flesh gets stronger and stronger, and Ifind myself missing the aroma of burning hair from earlier. His body is flexing so hard he can’t open his mouth to release his scream. Instead, all we can hear is a desperate muffled cry scraping against his vocal cords.

While it feels like forever, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for Jack’s heart to give out. There’s a garbled choking noise before his cries die and all that remains is the persistent hum of the generator still running. Jack’s muscles don’t fully relax until Aurora turns the dials back to zero.

Charles’s heaving sobs pull our focus to him. He’s a mess—lost to his own terror—and running his mouth in a nonsensical stream of worthless apologies. More than one of us roll our eyes at his hysterics before Aurora nods towards Sinclair.

“He’s all yours, Sin.”

Sinclair isn’t one for theatrics. If it were Nico or even Aurora, I’m sure that they would be tossing Jack’s body aside and preparing the same fate for Charles here. But Sinclair is more understated. I doubt anything will ever scare Charles as much as the thought that he will suffer the same fate. His whimpers betray that much. Which is why he doesn’t see the next part coming.

Thinking that Sinclair is leaning down to loosen his ties in order to drag him over to the table, he’s not ready for the viper-like strike as Sin buries a large hunting knife in the centre of his chest. He glances down at the handle protruding from him while the life drains from his features, freezing his expression in a death mask of shock and surprise.

Fucking idiot, who’s got the time or patience to butt fuck another one of them with an electrified rod? We got all we needed from them, and Tweedledum is just as dead as Tweedledee. Time to move on.

Aurora takes her phone from her back pocket and walks out of the unit, assuming a perch on the side of the desk.

“Etta. Do you want the good news or bad news?” she says, pausing only momentarily before continuing, “Bad news is that I made a little bit of a mess. Good news is that we’re all big fans of this set up.” There’s some nodding while she listens to Etta's response before her eyes flick to mine and she pulls the phone away from her face to shout at me. “Did you fucking complain to Etta about the ventilation?”

“I did not make a complaint. I made a suggestion, and it’s a valid concern. No one likes the smell of burning flesh,” I say defensively.

“He’s got a point, phoenix. I’m gonna be smelling fricasseed frat boy for hours. These clothes are going straight in the trash when we get home. It’s bullshit when people say it smells like bacon. It smells like something up and died in a crock-pot,” Nico adds.

“Etta says you can all go fuck yourselves and you're welcome for having it ready on short notice,” Aurora calls out to us before lowering her voice. They talk back and forth for a while before she ends the call.

“Etta says to roll down the shutters and leave it for the clean-up crew. They’ll be a couple of hours. Apparently, there was an incident on the North side. Some local heavies decided to pick a fight with some businesses under our protection. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t end well for them when Leandro turned up,” Aurora relays.

“You gotta love Leandro. He gets the job done,” Benny pipes up.

“There’s no denying protection was the best fit for him,” I say, nodding my agreement.

“I wouldn’t fuck with him,” Sinclair adds as he picks his stuff up from the desk and packs it away. “I got dropped here so we can allhead back together.”

“There’s a garage through that door. Pick-up’s through there,” Nico says.

“Let’s go then. And you’re not wrong. I need at least three showers to get the smell of burning asshole out of my hair,” Aurora shouts back to us.

“Thanks for that image. Coulda done without that,mia guerrierotta.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

AURORA

I’m lathering my hair for the fourth time in the hopes that this time the orange blossom from the shampoo finally drowns out the lingering smell of burning flesh. When I tip my head back, the shower rains down on my scalp, making it tingle as it pelts me with hot water. As it sluices through my long strands, it sends bubbles down my spine and over the curve of my ass, making me smile as they tickle their way down.

After conditioning my ends, I pull the showerhead down from the cradle. I move it in a slow trail across my shoulders, down my arms, and then across my midriff. The heat helps soothe the tender feeling around the scar tissue where Max stabbed me. The scar has begun to fade from red to silver, but the memories tied to it are still vivid. I can still remember the bite of the knife as it pierced my skin, the glide of the blade through my flesh, and the image of my father’s dead body as I passed out.

I close my eyes tight shut and turn to face the wall, letting the water continue to pummel my skin. I’m so lost to the sensation massaging away my aches and pains that I don’t hear the door open.

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