No.
I want to go to her. To comfort her and placate her with lies. But I won’t lie to her. I can barely even speak to her. I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say.
Conor pops his head in the door beside her, and I narrow my eyes in his direction.
“Sorry, Fitz.” He grabs Sasha by the arm and tries to usher her away. “I had to take a piss. I didn’t know she was down here.”
My chest heaves as he wheels Sasha away with certain revulsion and disgust on her face. She knows what I am already, she didn’t need a reminder. And like a switch has been flipped inside of me, this entire situation has managed to stoke my temper.
Mocking laughter echoes from behind me, and I turn to find Donovan has managed to spit out the bloody cloth.
“You should see your face,” he slurs.
I ignore him and retrieve the pruning shears from a hook on the wall along with a metal basin. His hands are already strapped down at his sides, and he starts carrying on again when I wrap a tourniquet around his arm.
I rest the metal basin on his torso, and each snip of his finger is followed by a resulting thud into the dish. By the time I wheel around him and start in on the second hand, Donovan is on the verge of passing out. I slap him on the face and throw some cold water at him before finishing up the job. When all of his fingertips have been removed, I grant him a small reprieve only to keep him from going into shock.
“You’re a sick fucking freak,” he snarls. “You know that? It all makes so much sense now.”
He’s never appeared more ridiculous than he does at this moment, toothless and with bloody stumps at the end of each hand. And yet I indulge his antics, against my better judgment.
“What does?”
He grins, and it’s gruesome with the blood all over his face. “Have you sampled her? Because I have. Plenty of times.”
I smile back at him politely. Donny is too dense to understand that won’t work on me. He’s hoping to provoke me into giving him a quick death. But he’s wrong. I’m in control. Always in control. There’s nothing he can say to change that. My limits have been tested by others much smarter than him.
I turn my attention back to my tools, seeking out another for what I have planned next. But the following words out of Donny’s mouth prove I am wrong. He is capable of pushing me in a way I could not have predicted.
“She was doing it to protect you. Did you know that? The stupid whore thought she needed to protect you. I saw you that night Ronan. I saw you hauling Blaine’s body out to your car. And Sasha saw me. She knew I could have ratted you out any time I felt like it. So she kept me quiet, with her mouth as payment.”
Heat spreads through my veins, threatening to tear me apart and devour everything in this building if I don’t cop on to myself.
I grab the drill from the table and flick my eyes to Donny’s one last time before it’s guaranteed he won’t be able to get a coherent thought out.
“If you were so ready to die, all ye had to do was say so.”
I reach for his trousers and pull them down, allowing the cool air to hit his shriveling dick. This was a part of him I never had any intentions on seeing. But it’s also the part of him he touched her with.
“I hope it was worth it,” I tell him.
“I have a failsafe,” Donovan threatens. “You should know that. If I disappear, Niall will find out what you did. What you and Sasha both did. I can promise you that.”
His words won’t change anything, but they always try regardless. There isn’t a thing on this earth that can save him from me now. When he recognizes that on my face, Donovan’s eyes finally abandon all hope.
My face hurts, and when I step forward, it occurs to me that I’m smiling.
***
Once I’ve washed up and disposed of the body, Conor and I drive to Donny’s duplex to clean up. It’s standard procedure any time a member of the syndicate dies under these circumstances. If they’ve paid a visit to me, it means they can’t be trusted. That stands for their home and possessions as well.
Donny was many things. A liar being one of them. But his words about the failsafe won’t stop playing through my mind. I believed him when he said that. I saw clearly the conviction in his eyes. It wasn’t a bluff. He was so sure that would save him somehow.
I doubt I’ll find it here, in his flat. But it won’t stop me from checking.
I’ve never been to his place before. Never saw a need for that, fortunately. It’s in a seedy part of Roxbury. The paint is faded and peeling and the yard is overgrown. I suppose he felt spending his cash on whores and cocaine took precedence over everything else.