Page 113 of Breaking Rosalind
I raise my free arm to fight back, when a guard unleashes a barrage of punches that leave me seeing stars and gasping for breath.
“Bitch,” he bellows as the room spins.
The last thing I think about as my eyes roll to the back of my head isn’t my failure, or even if Britt made it to Miranda. It’s my colleagues’ cowardice and utter betrayal.
They agreed to fight with me and escape. Instead, they set me up as a scapegoat. Even in a life-or-death situation, these bastards never change.
From this moment on, I will take any chance I get to save myself and to throw the Moirai under the bus.
FORTY-FOUR
CESARE
I’m not cold-blooded like my brothers and Leroi. My anger runs hot.
Think of it like a clock. At twelve, I’m neutral. Three, annoyed. Six, furious. Nine, incandescent with rage. It rises until about eleven, then once it heads back to twelve, my head clears, and I regain control.
That’s when I’m capable of the cruelest and most calculated acts of violence.
When I was younger, Dr. Brunelli told Mom it was a dissociative state, saying that my mind disconnected to deal with intense anger. That was his explanation for why I supposedly killed the rabbit and tore out her unborn kits.
They were all wrong.
And not because I would never hurt anything I deemed innocent and cute.
Sometimes, a man gets pushed too far.
These days, a man can’t enjoy his pet without some other bastard trying to spoil his happiness.
I straighten my surgical gloves and turn back to the shooter. He was extremely talkative while I was preparing him for surgery, told me his name and spilled a slew of facts about his mission, but I was beyond the mood for mercy.
Axel thrashes within his restraints on the leather operating table, his mouth wedged open with two steel cheek retractors that I attached to his head brace.
His mouth is packed with cotton gauze to soak up the blood. If I gave enough of a shit, I would crack open the box containing the suction wand. Since I don’t, I’ll have to rely on my leather apron to keep me clean.
“Tell me more about how you fucked Rosalind in Paris,” I say, my voice coming from afar. “Tell me again how you made her come all over your cock.”
Axel’s eyes widen, and he tries to shake his head within their restraints. As I shift the table, adjusting his position to a more upright angle, his breathing becomes loud and strained.
A strangled noise echoes from his throat, sounding almost like an apology. He’s already proven himself mentally weak and can’t hide his emotions like my pretty little pet.
My lip curls. “Next time someone tells you to shut up or they’ll cut out your tongue, don’t call their bluff.”
At the first sight of my new Bard-Parker No. 4 scalpel, he screams.
“Enough of that,” I snap. “It’s too late for explanations.”
I grab his tongue with the forceps, pulling it taut. With my free hand, I make the first incision along the floor of Axel’s mouth. My blade slices through the tissue, releasing a pool of blood which gets soaked up in the sterile gauze.
Carefully avoiding the major arteries, I cut the sides of Axel’s tongue, replacing the soaked gauze to maintain a clear field of vision.
Blood runs down the sides of Axel’s mouth, down his chest, and into the leather.
“This isn’t working,” I mutter. “You’re bleeding too much.”
After pulling out the gauze, I pick up a kitchen torch and grimace. “This was all I could get at short notice.”
Axel doesn’t reply because he’s lost consciousness. I make a mental note to see if I can acquire a drug to keep prisoners awake during torture.