Scarred (Branded Book 2)

by Scarlett Finn

  Begging and crying for Archer wouldn’t improve her situation. “I want them punished,” she said because she felt like she had to say something.

  “Some girls get off on this shit,” Hexam said.

  His sneer made her wonder if he understood how uncomfortable she was, but she remembered how pleased he’d looked in her office in Sizzle when he saw the bruises he’d put on her arm. This guy got off on pain, causing it for sure, maybe not receiving it. He swaggered over to her and slid the edge of the silencer barrel of his gun up her arm, to her neck, and crowded her in close to the covered filing cabinet she’d been cowering against.

  “Some women get off on this,” he said again. “If you’re one of those girls, and you want to let them watch what a real man can do with a woman, I’ll make that happen, and Archer never has to know.”

  She didn’t know if he was propositioning her himself or offering to set her up with a stranger. But she wouldn’t have sex with Archer, the man she loved, in front of these lowlifes, so for sure she wasn’t going to do it with anyone else.

  Her doubt was confirmed when he began to lean in. But with the gun still in her hand, she pushed him back. “Archer’s your friend,” she whispered.

  He almost laughed. “I’m still curious about the girl who’s got him by the balls,” he said. “Guess I want a taste of that magic you use to keep him on a leash.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t?” With his gun in hand, he reached past her to lean on the filing cabinet, penning her in. “Tulio would never have walked away alive unless you called Archer off.”

  Archer hadn’t been insistent about killing Tulio, he’d given the decision to her. “Archer doesn’t…” She didn’t want to use explicit terms in front of these men, even if it was true that they were going to die tonight.

  “Doesn’t he? Maybe not as a rule, but when his girl gets involved, he has no boundaries. One of my boys grabbed Archer’s girl’s ass once. She slapped it away and got offended. Know what Archer did? Strung the guy up by his ankles for four days,” he said, then laughed. “It was fucking hilarious. He let everyone take a shot at the guy. He didn’t just get spanked. He got whipped, spat on, pissed on, shat on, there were no rules. Every guy Archer knew got a call to come and take a shot at this guy. All because he touched her ass. Know how he died? Archer cut off his hands and let him bleed out, took a long fucking time.”

  Archer was possessive, but hearing what he was capable of was disturbing because it caused so many conflicting feelings inside her. “And that was your guy?” she asked. “Didn’t that piss you off?”

  Hexam tilted his head and lifted his shoulder. “I don’t give a fuck. He shouldn’t have had his hands on Archer’s girl.” This from the guy who’d just tried to kiss her. As if he read her mind, he explained. “Archer wouldn’t come after me. We’ve shared women before. It’s no big deal when you see some of the shit him and me have seen together.”

  “But you threatened his life in my office.”

  “Did I?” Hexam asked. “Is that what I did?”

  Although his back was to them, Hexam somehow noticed one of the guys sagging. He turned, lifted his gun, and fired off a shot with such precision, she dropped her gun and both her hands leaped to her mouth.

  “Don’t panic, sweetheart,” he said and picked up the gun. “Maybe this isn’t for you.” He dropped the gun into her purse. “Try the knife.” Insinuating his hand beneath her shirt, he pulled it from its sheath and put it in her palm to curl her fingers around it. “Has Archer taught you how to use a blade?”

  Archer wouldn’t teach her how to use a weapon even if she begged him to. She’d spent more time at the sharp end of his knives than the hilt end and the scars on her fingers proved it. But Nya did feel better with this than the gun.

  “Come over here,” he said.

  Guiding her forward, he maneuvered her so he could stand behind her and take hold of her hand that clutched the blade. Holding it out in front of her, he moved her forward toward the two men that were left. The other guy he’d shot had fallen onto his back and he wouldn’t be recovering from the direct head wound.

  Hexam pushed her blade to the center of the biggest one’s throat. “This is the guy you want,” he said. “He’s the one who taunted her. The one who fucked her pussy and fucked her skull. The one who beat her to shut her up. The one who goaded the others on and thought he was all that.”

  As he spoke, the blade pushed farther into their victim’s skin. Blood budded from the tip, when he tried to scream, his Adam’s apple moved and a streak of red formed against it.

  “You hold him there, see how that feels, take your time.”

  Hexam let her go and she didn’t know what he was going to do. All she kept looking at was the point of her knife, pushing into this man’s throat. Archer had spoken before about what it was to see the shine of sharp metal pushing into flesh and how rich and exotic blood looked as it seeped from a human body.

  There were no lights on in here, the only windows were at the back of the room, behind these men. Stretching from the ceiling, down a couple of feet, she could see nothing beyond the windows, but they let in enough ambient light from the city and the moon, allowing her to see what she was doing. Letting the blade twist, left and right, she could watch the glint of light against the blade and she understood.

  She must have pushed deeper than she’d intended because her victim cried out behind his gag. The quick succession of a silenced bang, bang, made her jump back. The two men who were already dead had just received a shot each to the chest.

  Hexam turned around, wearing a grin. “Just to be sure,” he said and she was sure he enjoyed putting more bullets in the already deceased men.

  The one beside her victim began to piss and she retreated, though the flow went away from her toward the corpses. He was crying and blubbering, tears ran from his distraught eyes. Hexam whipped him hard with the butt of his gun.

  “You fucking pig, she’ll get to you! You wait your fucking turn!” he yelled, but snatched the blade from her and bent over the trembling man.

  Everything around her faded out. She heard nothing, saw nothing; all she was aware of was the steely gaze of the guy on his knees before her. Nya couldn’t believe she’d been holding a weapon on the man who was now fixated on her. When she looked into his eyes, she saw it, the evil anger that had radiated from the bastard who’d stolen Jamie’s life. This was the man, the evil bastard who took what wasn’t his and made Nya burn with the need for revenge.

  The cry from the man beside forced both of them to break their stare. There was more blood on the floor, a lot of blood, spurting from somewhere she couldn’t see until Hexam stood up and backed off. It didn’t take her long to see what he’d done. The pisser was kneeling in a puddle of his own blood with his severed penis lying between his knees.

  “Solves that problem,” Hexam said, pleased with himself as he wiped the blood on the big one’s shoulder before he brought it back to her. “Sorry, boo, you were in the middle of something. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  There was more blood coming from the screaming man than there was from the two corpses. He was making enough noise that Hexam went to turn up the music that blared from the stereo by the door.

  The noise was crowding her mind, making her ears ring, and her head hurt. Nya didn’t want to look at the man who’d been under her blade.

  “You should try it,” Hexam said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

  She couldn’t let the big guy at the end see that she was afraid. It wasn’t that she feared for her safety, it was disgust that made her feel superior to the piece of shit.

  “Oh, wa, wa,” Hexam called out to the guy who was still crying behind his gag. “Stop making a fucking racket! What do you want? It’s done! You’ll be fucking dead in a minute anyway.”

  He had no sympathy.

  “You’re going to kill them all?” she asked.

  Hexam whipped around. “I’ve done m
y two. The next two are yours.”

  Murder. She wasn’t ready for that. Archer had started with Tulio because he was a nobody they didn’t need to kill, and he was helping her to build up her immunity against what might have to be done. He had never once suggested that she take a life herself, he’d only ever offered to do it for her.

  “I don’t know if I can,” she admitted.

  Much as she hated showing weakness in front of Hexam, she couldn’t stand here all night making excuses while he expected her to take action. He’d told her that when he was in a bad mood, he made bad decisions. If she took all night, he’d be pissed off, and he might take his impatience out on her.

  Hexam still had his gun in hand, he raised it and shot guy number three right between the eyes and immediately the victim dropped. “That one’s a gift,” he said. “Because the noise was giving me a headache.” That was rich because the music was what made her head throb. “But this guy…” Hexam walked between her and her victim to get behind the kneeling guy to grab the back of his neck. “This one’s all yours, boo. This is the guy who killed your friend. This is the guy you want.”

  Lunging around, he seized her wrist and pulled her forward to push the knife into the guy between them. This time, she was slightly off-center, so the edge of her blade met the underside of his jaw right at his carotid.

  “All that hatred, Nya. All those times you probably lay awake thinking about what a bastard he was and thinking about that poor girl and what she went through. Did you think about the blood spurting from her as he pounded her skull into the floor? Did you think about that? He smashed it in, she had no chance, none. Three guys on one little girl. How many of them were raping her then? How many dicks did she have inside her? They fucked every hole, did you know that? Fucked her ‘til she bled inside. You know you want to punish him. You know he deserves it. The things they did to that girl, they cut her tits, her belly, sliced her to pieces, and through all of it, she was still alive.”

  Nya knew that was true because Archer had said she’d been alive in the ambulance. Nya had watched these monsters rape Jamie and the only reason she got out was because of Archer. She didn’t know what had happened to Jamie when he was taking her out of there, or what they’d done after.

  “They cut her face, cut her hands, one of them had some idea of hiding her identity, stupid fuck, her blood was everywhere. But that only turned them on more, didn’t it, Nya? You saw it. You tell me what you saw.”

  “I saw bullies,” she said, gazing into the eyes of the man who’d killed Jamie. “I saw men use an innocent woman like she was an object they could destroy. I watched them strip her and touch her. I listened to her cry, listened to her scream as they took her apart.”

  Her teeth gritted together until she could hear them grind. The tears were probably streaming from her eyes, but they felt thick like blood, because anger made her sinuses swell and burn. Curling her fingers tight around the handle of the blade Hexam had handed her, anger made her adrenaline surge.

  “And that pissed you off? That made you angry!”

  “Yes,” Nya said. “I heard her say no and beg for her life…” She lost the words in a whisper as her lips cracked and her tongue dried out. “How could you do that to her? How could you do that to anyone?”

  She didn’t know if she wanted an answer. But Hexam loosened the gag, letting the guy gasp. After Hexam tossed the gag aside, she realized she was going to get an answer.

  “She was a fucking whore,” the rapist croaked, his voice was hoarse and weak. “And you’d have fucking got it too, bitch.”

  Nya heard her exhale turn into a pant. “You don’t deserve to live.”

  “Then kill me,” he growled.

  Maybe it was what he wanted, after what Hexam had put him through, he probably did want death. Jamie had wanted to die too. Nya would’ve taken that over what they made Jamie go through. She hated this man more than she’d hated any other. She hated like she hated Tag’s brother and her father, and Damien, like every other man who’d thought they were better than the women they hurt.

  “You tortured her. All so you could get yourself a quick lay. Was it worth it? Was it worth it to be under my blade now?”

  He leaned forward just a fraction of an inch, but Hexam grabbed his hair to pull him back. The rapist winced and a spurt of satisfaction made her lips curl into a sinister smile. “Oh yeah.”

  “You’re a piece of shit,” she said.

  “You’re a dirty fucking whore who’s standing here now pissed off that her friend got to go first. My dick’s right here, sweetheart, why don’t you do the only thing you’re good for, get down there and suck me off.”

  Rage made her growl, she didn’t realize she’d pulled the blade up in both hands above her head or driven it down into his chest until horror spread on his face. Yanking it out with a grunt, she stumbled backwards.

  The rapist spat blood and it dribbled down his chin, and his gaze fell to the wound. Hexam jumped out of the way to let the guy fall back and he landed on the floor with a thud.

  Nya couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t lick her lips or blink or do anything.

  “Wow,” Hexam said and clapped his hands once before he came over to put an arm around her. “We make quite a team, boo.” He squashed a kiss to her temple that she didn’t have the wherewithal to back away from. He whistled and the sharp sound made her stumble back. Hexam held up his hands. “Don’t worry. I’ve got guys for clean-up. We take away the plastic and the sheeting. There are no slugs. This office will look exactly like it did before we got here inside twenty minutes.”

  Someone tossed him a rag. Hexam rubbed his hands and then cleaned the blood from her blade she still clutched tight, ridding it of the stains left by the blood of the man she’d killed.

  She’d killed. Nya was a murderer. She’d taken a life.

  Her desperate eyes landed on Hexam who was changing his boots and his shirt. “Just like I promised you, boo. I’m gonna take you home now.”

  Nya was still dazed as he led her out and put her in the car they’d arrived in. Someone offered her a chance to change, but she didn’t feel like getting naked in front of these guys.

  It was clear that Hexam was hyper because his chatter was faster and more animated. Either murder got him high or he’d had a little chemical lift at some point and she hadn’t noticed.

  It didn’t even occur to her to think twice about how he knew where she lived when he stopped outside her apartment.

  “Want me to come up?” he asked.

  And that was really the first thing she actually heard since they’d left the office. “Not a chance,” she said on autopilot, her thoughts were still adrift.

  “Go up, take a shower, get some sleep,” he said. “You’ll feel better in the morning. You’ll feel pumped. I’m betting that’s the first time you’ve done that.”

  Nya only looked at him for a second before her gaze fell to her lap where she saw she was still holding the knife in both hands. “Want me to take that?” he asked and she shook her head furiously because it was almost like her hands were glued to the thing.

  She didn’t want the reminder, she wanted this weapon as far away from her as she could possibly get it. Yet, it was her only tangible evidence that tonight had happened.

  “The boys can get you a souvenir from your victim.”

  A trophy, she’d heard about those, but she wasn’t interested, and that led her into facing the next truth. “What is it you want from me?” she asked. “You told me that tonight wasn’t free.”

  He leaned over and stroked his fingers through her hair. “Just enjoy this,” he said. “And don’t be scared. Friends do each other favors all the time. It’s just that now you owe me… I told you we’d be friends. Feels good, right?”

  She owed him one, for what? For lining up the men, for murdering them in front of her, or for setting her up to take a life?

  This is what she’d wanted and the worst part was, s
he didn’t feel bad about the lives that had been lost. And if she distanced herself enough from the shock of being the one who took a life, Nya could see she was actually pleased that the disgusting men responsible for Jamie’s death were gone from the face of the Earth.

  Hexam’s methods might be unorthodox. But together, they’d done a good thing and made the world a safer place.

  “I’ll see you around, Nya. My boo.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek.

  Nya had to remind herself that this wasn’t Archer’s car, which was the only car she’d ridden up front in for a while. She didn’t have to wait for someone to open the door; it worked, so she could do it. Letting herself out, she crossed the sidewalk, but didn’t remember much about getting up the stairs or into her apartment.

  Making herself release one hand from the knife, she lifted her purse over her head. Dumping it on the floor with a thud, she stared at the weapon for she didn’t know how long.

  God, she wanted Archer, she needed him here to tell her that he’d take care of it, to tell her what she should do now, and that he would help her. He would make her feel better… after he calmed himself down.

  But he wasn’t here, he couldn’t help and she’d just done something final in front of a man she didn’t trust.

  Dropping to her knees, the tears came again and her fingers opened to let the blade clatter onto the wooden floor. Falling to her side, she curled herself into a ball, and wept. Tears of guilt over taking a life were washed away by tears of satisfaction, she’d got her revenge.

  Nya was devastated and elated, terrified and free.

  What she’d done, she couldn’t take back and she wouldn’t even if she could. But until Archer looked her in the eye and told her she’d done the right thing, she wouldn’t be secure in her thinking. He would know if it was the right thing and he wasn’t even here to support her.

  fifteen

  “You fucked up.”