Page 90 of The Price of Mercy
“No final words for your dad, Sam?” Kane shakes his head. “What a pity. He loves you so much.”
“Shut up.”
Malachi tilts the candle towards the oldest man in the room, and the flame flickers as Samuel exhales harshly through his nose, his mouth stuffed with what looks like a white rag. His hands are bound behind his back, but his feet are free. Rather than run, because I assume he’s outnumbered and he knows it, he stares down the bridge of his nose as the flame brushes his cheek.
An agitated garble of sounds catches on the gag in his mouth. He flinches back and slams his head into the brick wall, but the smell of burnt flesh fills the air.
My brother is torturing a man, and everyone is letting it happen.
“Are you—” I hold my tongue as the wordcrazythreatens to slip past. “Malachi, look at me. What are you doing?” In the past, he’s had trouble controlling his anger, but that’s why he was sent to a strict boarding school; he was supposed to learn coping mechanisms so that these kind of incidents didn’t keep happening. “Stop!”
He ignores me and relights the candle as it goes out. “During the witch trials, people often died of smoke inhalation before thefire burned them alive.” Waving the candle in front of Samuel’s face, he hums to himself. “But those fires often started at their feet and worked their way up. If we start here—” He holds the flame beneath Samuel’s chin. “How long do you think it will take for someone to die? An hour? Ten?”
Tears pool in the corner of Samuel’s eyes, but he finally fights back. Kicking Malachi in the shin, he makes a run for the stairwell.
Sam punches him in the face before he even gets close and knocks Samuel to the ground. “You don’t get to run,” he hisses, hauling him up by his shirt collar. The expensive suit jacket I’d spotted earlier has disappeared, along with the top few buttons of Samuel’s shirt. Jagged cuts, mostly shallow, line his chest like tally marks, including the diagonal slash for counting fives. Blood pools along the deepest ones, staining his dress shirt.
“I thought Samuel was crazy, but your brother?” Kane whistles. “He’s on a whole nother level.”
“Don’t call him that.” I stare at my brother’s back as he fiddles with something in his dominant hand. Something catches the light and shines in my eyes. A coin? A compact mirror? Only when he lifts his hand to wipe blood from his wrist do I recognize what I’m looking at.
It’s a shard of glass, like the ones we found on the floor upstairs.
“I thought you were going to make this quick,” Zane sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Someone will notice he’s gone.”
Kane grunts noncommittally. “So is Sam. It’s fine. They came together, they left together.”
“You’ve been planning this?” I stare at Zane in disbelief. “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
Zane keeps his face neutral but can’t hide the twitch of his brow.
“We didn’t want you to worry,” Kane says, “like you’re doing now.” He nuzzles my cheek. “Everything’s under control.”
“Anyone could come down those stairs. Someone could have seen you. Mygrandmotherknew you were down here! Seriously, guys? This is your big plan?” A laugh bubbles up inside my chest. Unbelievable. Three brains, and they couldn’t come up with a better plan.
“Well, this part is alittleunplanned.”
“No shit,” Sam snaps, dragging his dad deeper into the room. He tosses him against the far wall and crosses his arms. “I told you guys that I’d handle it so that no one was any wiser, but you justhadto start shit, didn’t you?”
“He started it,” Kane grumbles.
“You’re not supposed to take the bait, dumbass.”
A growl rumbles through the air. “Shut up!” Malachi drops to his knees in front of Samuel, thethudof bone on stone making me flinch. “He’s going to rot here.” Dropping the candle, my brother strokes the shard of glass against Samuel’s burnt flesh, dangerously close to the man’s eye. “In this prison cell. Where he’ll choke on mold and smell his own rotting flesh for eternity. All alone, where no one will ever come looking for him.” He laughs darkly and punches forward, piercing Samuel’s flesh.
I look away before I gag.
“How does it feel, Samuel? To know that your family has abandoned you? Isn’t that what you told me, hm, all those times you came to visit? I wasn’t—fucking—listening.”
Taking a shaky breath, I focus on Sam’s pinched expression. “Did you know?” I flinch at a wet, fleshy sound. “That your dad was visiting my brother?” The school told us that he wasn’t allowed visitors as a disciplinary measure, but the ban never lifted, and every appeal we had was denied. Trips home for the holidays became less and less frequent as time passed. Phone calls, even, were scarce. I’d gotten a letter in the mail once, but itdidn’t sound like my brother, and it was typed. I’d doubted it was him when I first received it, and I still doubt it to this day.
Sam’s lips press together in a fine line. “No. I had no idea.”
“Must have been bad,” Kane muses softly. “For him to be this aggravated.”
“He’s upset.” I sniff and instantly regret it. A copper tang in the air makes my stomach churn. “I would be, too.”
“It’s not your fault, Siren.”
