Page 57 of Ruthless with a Rogue
Lady Elliot’s voice rang through the chamber, the hardness halting him in his tracks just as his hand landed on the door handle.“I must request a favor, my lord.”
He glanced over his shoulder, arched a brow.
“Make him suffer.”
Derek nodded.“I will see that it is done.”
Derek followed Ryker down the stairs that led to the cellar ofThe Devil’s Eye.Ryker paused before the door.Derek walked up next to him, caught Ryker’s green eye.
“Whatever you need, it’s at your disposal,” Ryker said meaningfully.“I have already laid out…some things you might enjoy playing with.”Excitement reflected back at Derek, Ryker’s pupils blown wide, his words slightly breathless.That right there was why Ryker was terrifying.The man had earned his reputation as a devil, as King of the Underworld.He got off on it.Punishing the parasites of the world.
And in that moment, Derek fully understood the other man’s bloodlust.He pushed through the door and walked into the dim cellar, the scent of mustiness and earth filling his senses, Ryker hot at his heels.He strode past the organized mess of cases and barrels, toward the flickering light coming from around the corner in the L-shaped room.
Derek turned around the bend and halted.His nostrils flared, every vein freezing over with fury, so black, so fierce it scorched like an icy flame.There he was.The fucking swine.
Pennington was on his knees, arms spread wide where they were tied to ropes that secured him to each of the side walls.He was hunched forward as much as the bindings would allow, head hanging like a rag doll, back lifting and falling with gasping breaths.Something dripped from where his face was hidden behind his shaggy hair, falling with soft plops that barely pierced the pounding of blood in Derek’s ears.
Bruiser leaned casually against a side wall, one leg bent at the knee, foot propped up against the wall.“Dunmore,” he said with an easy smile.It never ceased to shock Derek that this man with his lop-sided smiles and juvenile antics was one of London’s deadliest pugilists.But that was life, wasn’t it?No one truly knew what hid beneath the surface.
Pennington’s head snapped up at Zavi’s greeting, beady eyes locking on Derek’s.And Derek went blind as rage ripped through him.His feet moved, hand sliding into his boot.Metal glinted.His arm lifted.
“Youfucking bastard!”
He slammed his knife down with the full weight of his body into Pennington’s thigh.
The man’s piercing scream rebounded off the stone walls.Echoed over and over in Derek’s ears.But it wasn’t enough.Not for what the maggot had done.And would have done if Ryker hadn’t gotten there in time.Derek’s chest surged as the nightmare came to life behind his eyes.Of what almost was.He wanted a fate worse than death for this man.
The scum’s body expanded jerkily, whimpers falling between ragged breaths.
“Look at me.”Derek barely recognized his own voice.The lethality that laced it.
Pennington slowly lifted his head, sweat-drenched hair falling over his brow, blood pooling in his mustache.One eye was nearly swollen shut; his face already painted with bruises and cuts courtesy of Xavier Kozington.
Derek twisted the knife, and Pennington’s eyes shot wide, a strangled sound ripping from the man’s throat.He pulled the blade out with deliberate slowness, reveling in the pained shriek leaving the reprobate in front of him.Apt that the man would squeal like the swine he was.
The rattling of metal and the squeak of wheels disturbed the chamber.Derek glanced over to where Ryker had pushed a metal cart a few feet from Derek, laden with metal instruments on top—various sized daggers, cane swords, what looked like pruning shears, and surgical implements.
“Doctor Jones donated some of his things.”Ryker’s feral smile, all teeth, flashed in the candlelight.
Derek’s gaze locked on the pruning shears.Something ugly and heady rushed through him, adrenaline from the events of the night pumping through his heart at an alarming rate.Increasing as visions of what he was about to do flashed through his mind.
He picked up the shears and walked to where Pennington’s left arm was suspended in the air by a rope at his wrist.Derek grinned down at a white-eyed Pennington.He snapped the blades of the shears, a hint of what was to come.
A whimper fled Pennington at the same time he clenched his fist tight.But he was helpless.He’dtouchedher.Derek had made a silent promise in this very gaming hell of what he would do if this man touched his minx.Derek snarled.Fucking his.Derek peeled back one of Pennington’s fingers.He lifted the shears, settling Pennington’s finger between the blades.He locked eyes with the man.And squeezed the handle.
Pennington’s ear-splitting scream had glee pumping through Derek’s veins.
“You touched her,” Derek said softly.He moved the shears to another finger.“You won’t be able to touch anyone ever again.”Squeezed.Another screech.
Tears streamed down Pennington’s face, and he dry-heaved.But Derek wasn’t done.
Make him suffer.
Another finger hit the ground.Pennington couldn’t even scream that time, choking too heavily on his pain.
And another.Blood dripped down Derek’s wrist, the handle of the shears slipping in his grasp.One more.Pennington’s thumb hit the ground.The man gagged, and he finally emptied the contents of his stomach.
Derek released the man’s wrist, blood pouring from what was left of the uneven, knubby hand.
