Brutal Prince Bonus Scene (Brutal Birthright, #1.5)(66)

“Do you know what’s right there?” he says.

I don’t want to play this game with him.

“No,” I say.

“Your appendix. A little three-and-a-half-inch tube of tissue, extending from your large intestine. Likely vestigial for the modern human, but sometimes brought to prominence when it becomes infected or inflamed. I don’t see any laparoscopy scars, so I assume yours is still intact.”

I stay stubbornly silent, refusing to play along.

The Butcher rests the flat of the blade on the palm of his hand. “I had intended to wait until after the election for this, but you had to make a nuisance of yourselves, smashing up my casino and bothering my mistress in her place of work. So here’s what we’re going to do. The Gallos are going to return the money they stole from my casino.”

I don’t know how much they got, but I hope it was a fuck ton of cash.

“You’re going to sell me the transit property, at a steep discount.”

Nope. Also not happening.

“And you’re going to provide me with a city government position of my choice, after your election.”

When pigs fucking fly.

“As a down payment on these services, I’m going to take your appendix,” Zajac says. “You won’t miss it. The surgery, though painful in the absence of anesthetic, won’t be fatal.”

He raises the point of the knife once more, positioning it directly above the apparently non-essential portion of my guts. He takes a breath, readying himself to slice into my flesh. Then he begins to press the knife into my belly.

He pushes it in agonizingly slow.

I grind my teeth together as hard as I can, eyes closed, but I can’t help letting out a strangled yell.

It really fucking hurts. I’ve heard that being stabbed is more painful than being shot. Having recently been grazed in the arm by my loving wife, I can definitely attest that having a knife slowly, torturously burrowed into your guts is about a hundred times worse. My face is sweating, and my muscles are shaking harder than ever. And the knife is only an inch or two into my flesh.

“Don’t worry,” the Butcher hisses. “I should be done in an hour or so . . .”

“Wait a second, wait a second . . .” I pant.

He pauses, without taking the knife out of my stomach.

“Could you take a break for a second and scratch my nose? I’ve got an itch, and it’s driving me crazy.”

Zajac gives an irritated snort and tenses his arm to drive the knife deeper into my body.

At that moment, a bottle comes flying through the doorway, with a smoking rag stuffed in its neck. The bottle shatters on the cement floor, the flaming liquor spreading out in a pool, and shards of fiery glass spinning outward. One catches the bouncer’s sleeve. He spins around, trying to slap it out again.

There’s another smashing sound, and then an explosion, loud and close.

“Deal with that,” Zajac hisses to his men.

The blond one splits off at once, skirting the wreckage of the Molotov cocktail and heading through a side door. The bouncer heads straight for the main door, only to catch a bullet in the shoulder the second he walks through.

“Pierdoli?!” the Butcher hisses. He jumps behind me, in case the shooter is about to come through the door.

But as we wait, no one walks through. And I know Zajac is torn—on the one hand, he doesn’t want to leave me here alone. On the other, he’s now unprotected himself. He has no idea how many people are storming the warehouse. He doesn’t want to be caught in here if it’s my men who come barging through the door.

As the seconds tick by, and we hear the confusing sounds of shouting, running, and something else smashing, but it’s impossible to tell what’s going on. The Molotov is still burning—in fact, the flames are spreading across the cement floor somehow. Perhaps the paint is burning. It creates clouds of acrid black smoke that make us sweat and cough.

Finally, Zajac curses again. He strides over to the table, seizing a cleaver in one hand and a machete in the other. Then he hurries out through the same side door where his blond lieutenant disappeared.

The moment I’m alone, I start wrenching and working on those ropes. My left arm is almost totally numb now, but I can still move the right one. I pull as hard as I can. My hands, my wrists, my arms, and shoulders are all screaming. It feels like I’m going to dislocate my thumb. But finally, I twist the right hand free.

Just then, a figure comes sprinting barefoot through the door, jumping over the fallen body of the bouncer who was shot in the shoulder.

It’s Aida. Her dark hair streams behind her like a banner as she flies across the cement. She nimbly avoids the flames and shattered glass, pausing only to grab a knife off the table. She presses it into my palm.

“Cut the rope!” she cries. “It’s too high for me to reach!”

She’s got blood running down the right side of her face. Her left hand is wrapped in a rag.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, reaching overhead to saw at the rope still holding my left hand in place. “Where’re your brothers?”

“I have no idea!” she says. “Those goons took my phone. Took my gun, too—Dante’s gonna be pissed. I’m the only one here!”

“What!” I say. “What the hell was all that noise, then?”