Page 147 of The King of Hearts

I want nothing more than to skin this man alive. To tear off his flesh, piece by piece and shove it down his rotten fucking throat.

He threatened to rape my wife, did rape her with a gun. Had his fucking hands on her. Tortured and taunted her. Fucked her mouth so brutally that it left the skin raw and bruised for days.

I force myself to stay in place, though. His death isn’t mine to deliver. It belongs to the two women who stand stoically beside the bed. One who happens to be the half sister I never knew I had.

I’ve had nine days to come to terms with the idea. Each time she enters my mind, I think of all the ways she suffered throughout her life by the hands of our brother. I think about the night Aunt Rosa brought her to the house, and I think about how she came into existence. The night my father disappeared and was believed to be dead. The night my mother was raped as she watched her husband “die.” I’ve always known what happened that night was so horrid that it pushed her over the edge of sanity, but I could have never guessed at the magnitude, the pure fucking torture, she endured.

For weeks after the incident, my mother was coherent. She spoke, she communicated, she fed and bathed herself. She slept with me at night, curling her body against mine, as if cocooning my small body protectively. I heard her soft sobs after she thought I was asleep. She was still my mother, alive and functioning, only a saddened version. It was to be expected.

It wasn’t until she went away for those few months that she came back different. Broken and non-responsive. Barely a shell of her former self. I now realize why. Having a child stolen from her for the second time shattered the last part of her thatwas barely holding on. Her mind couldn’t cope, so she shut everything out, completely closed down.

I’ve never blamed my mother for the shit Aunt Rosa did to me. I saved all of it for my father. My hatred for him started the first day my aunt touched me. It was an irrational and grief-stricken emotion in the beginning because I believed he was dead. I hated him because he wasn’t there. Wasn’t there to bring my mother back, and wasn’t there to save me from what was being done. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I suspected he was still alive when I received a letter in the mail. The note only had one simple sentence.

Your father is alive.

By then, I had already started searching for answers of what happened that night, but I never found anything. And nothing was ever mentioned about my mother having a child while she was in the hospital those months. I believe my uncle may have had something to do with the missing information. He must have had her records deleted and either paid off the staff or had them killed. I split my search from that night to searching for my father. I never found proof he was still alive, but in my gut, I knew. And that only made my ire grow and fester. He left us and stayed away, and I wanted him to fucking pay for it.

According to him and the information Emo gathered, my father never willingly stayed away. He was kept from us by a madman set on a vendetta against his brother because the woman they both loved chose my father instead of him. Fucking unhinged obsession royally fucked with so many lives.

Theodore kept my father locked in a basement for twenty years. Feeding him just enough to survive, but keeping him weak. Several weeks ago, because of the dismal conditions in the basement, my father developed pneumonia. That was why he was hooked up to an IV when Emo found him.

A rustle of air comes from my left, and I side-eye the man beside me. Alexander stands with his hands shoved into the pockets of his tailored slacks, his body rigidly still, his eyes spewing fiery hatred. He looks as if he’s struggling to hold himself back just as much as me. Seeing his daughter the way he did nine days ago and being just as helpless as I was must have been torture for him.

Besides myself, Alexander, Savina, and Liliana, Bishop and Cassio are the only other people in the room with us. The brothers insisted on being here. Bishop has had his eyes mostly on Liliana the entire time. I’m surprised my father gave up the opportunity to be present for this, but he wanted to stay home with my mother. He believes he alone can help my mother break out of her catatonic state. He hasn’t left her side since he walked into the house over a week ago and saw for himself the condition she’s in. She’s shown some signs of cognition: a hand twitch here, eye movement there. She even licked her lips the other day.

I focus my attention back on the two women. They’re situated on either side of the bed. Savina is on the opposite side, so I can see her face, and Liliana is on the other. Both of them have some form of torture device in their hands. They’ve been working Aiden over for the past hour, and it’s been fucking glorious to witness.

After we forcefully extracted as much information as we could from my brother, the first thing Savina did was cut out his tongue. It was to shut him up because his incessant begging was getting on all of our nerves. Now the only thing that comes out of his mouth are the sweet sounds of his agonized cries. They’re music to my ears and they make my cock hard as fuck.

Down by the end of the bed, Savina turns a pulley, and there’s a mechanical clicking sound, which is quickly followed by Aiden’s high-pitched scream of pain. The rope that’s wrapped around his ankles is attached to that pulley. With each twist, hisfeet are pulled down, but his body stays in place. He’s slowly being pulled apart by the ankles. I can already see the skin separating as little drops of blood form on his skin and seep to the slab of metal beneath him, mixing with the blood and bodily fluids that are already there.

It’s a slow form of torture, meant to last hours because you turn the pulley in increments. Apparently, my little sister has a dark, devious side since it was her idea. While she’s been staying at the Rivers’ estate, she’s been spending her time researching torture methods, preparing for the time when she was able to exact her revenge against the brother who sexually abused her for years.

If the situation was different, Savina and I would have done this together, but given the promise The Raven Group gave to Lili and her own nightmare she endured by Aiden’s hands, I gave my place to her.

Aiden thrashes as best as he can, and his constant screams fill the room. A peaceful, almost serene look enters Savina’s eyes as she gazes down at him. My vicious little angel is in her element. Lili seems to be as well, going by the tranquility on her face. Most people wouldn’t be able to handle shit like this, but when you grow up in the lives we all have, blood and gore isn’t so bothersome.

“You want the honors?” Lili asks Savina, holding out a scalpel over Aiden’s torso. Her eyes fall on the shriveled up piece of flesh hanging limp between his legs.

“You can do it,” my wife replies. “But I want it once you cut it off.”

Cutting off a man’s dick is Savina’s forte, so I know it was hard to give that up. But I understand her reasons. Lili suffered for years due to that disgusting appendage.

No one in the room questions Savina’s request to keep Aiden’s dick, they don’t even blink an eye. We all watch withrapt attention as Lili side steps until she’s beside his waist. She pinches the head of his dick, pulling it taut. She looks gleeful as she starts running the blade at the root. Blood spurts, some landing on her face, and Aiden’s screams intensify. Due to the sharpness of the scalpel, it doesn’t take her long before she’s holding the piece of meat up and hands it over to Savina. My Vicious takes it and shoves the thing in her back pocket for safekeeping. A severed penis in my wife’s pocket… it’s almost comical.

“Jesus,” I hear Bishop mutter. “Remind me to never piss her off.”

“For real,” Cassio mumbles.

Alexander grunts, but otherwise doesn’t remark on his daughter’s depravity.

“Wait a fucking minute.” Bishop cocks his head to the side, his eyes narrowing on his sister. “Is she the fucking Butcher?”

Savina lifts her head and regards her brother, her expression giving nothing away, but she answers, “Yes.”

“Fuck, Sav,” he grunts. He swipes his hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because it was my little secret.”

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