Page 224 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter
“Fucking cowards,” he continues. “Resorting to stringing me up?—”
“Oliver fought you,” Penn interrupts. As he talks, he squats beside the car battery and attaches one of the clamps. “Beat you fair and fucking square. That didn’t matter to you so much when you attacked him at Sydney’s apartment. Two on fucking one with your brother.”
“We weren’t there for him,” Bear growls.
Oliver frowns.
“Two guys to pick on one girl, then, huh?” Penn laughs. Coldly. “That doesn’t make your case any fucking better.”
He reaches out and clips the free cable clamp onto the waistband of Bear’s pants, so one side of the metal is pressed to his skin. The reaction is instantaneous. He goes rigid, every muscle tensing and spasming, little tremors seeming to run through his legs. Electricity is always trying to find its way to the ground, after all.
That’s why the prospect of them touching higher than my heart was what freaked out my doctors. They said the electrical pulse could’ve stopped it.
Should’ve… might’ve…
I breathe out slowly. I don’t remember where they touched me with that clamp, just that it felt like I was being bit by an electric eel.
Penn and Carter seem content to watch him struggle. I move around, into Bear’s line of sight. I go to the car battery and kick it. The battery goes tumbling away and the clamp disconnects.
He sags, the chains over his head clanking.
My guys regard me. Oliver moves behind Bear as I step closer. Like this, stretched to his maximum height, he towers over me. And Oliver, too. All of us. He’s a beast of a guy.
The truth of the matter is that he didn’t need his brother. He didn’t need to bind me up and watch me struggle to breathe. He didn’t need to fucking torture me. He’s big enough, he’s strong enough—he could’ve overpowered me the old-fashioned way.
But he didn’t.
He chose to watch me choke. He chose to wear a mask for the terrorizing—not for the anonymity. Whatever twisted his brother up on the inside, it did even more damage to him.
“Henry Bernstein.”
His real name. It deserves to be spoken now, right? Spoken into the quiet, forced out into the open. I break the silence with it. I smile when his eyes open and he flinches first, glares second.
“Henry. Bernstein.” I inch closer, and Oliver mirrors me behind him. “What’s your brother’s name?”
He grits his teeth and looks down at me, then spits out, “Max.”
“Well. Max is buried in the woods behind the warehouse.”
He goes still. His muscles tense, like he’s about to move—but Oliver is faster. He drops a looped cord over Bear’s head and pulls it snug around his neck, stopping his idea of forward motion.
I shuffle backward. Bear roars, his body contorting and struggling. He kicks out, barely missing me, and Carter drags me farther away. While Oliver just?—
“Is he going to kill him?”
Penn shakes his head. “Maybe.”
When Bear stops fighting and goes slack, Oliver releases the rope. It hangs loose around Bear’s neck—nothing compared to the prolonged trauma I endured.
“What else?” Penn asks me.
My gaze drops to the blood under Bear’s feet. It’s soaked into the concrete, dry little flakes of it sticking to his shoes. It’s my blood. My trauma.
Carter nods and moves forward. He sinks the blade of his knife into Bear’s stomach.
The guy comes awake violently again. His eyes are so fucking wide, and he stares down at the blade protruding from him. He passes out again.
I’m so fucking tired, and I can’t tell if this revenge is making me feel better or worse.