Page 30 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
I don’t need to raise my voice.
I don’t need to rush.
Because now, he understands.
I don’t wait for him to answer.
The first finger comes away under the blade, the movement clean, controlled, deliberate in a way that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with outcome.
His scream hits harder this time, his body bucking violently against the chair, the sound dragging out of him in a way that doesn’t stop when it should.
I don’t move back.
I don’t react to it.
I just watch.
Because this is where he breaks.
Or doesn’t.
Blood spreads across his hand, across the floor.
I let it sit.
Let the silence stretch just long enough that he has to feel it.
“Where is she.”
“I don’t know!” he shouts, panic tearing through the words now. “I don’t know who took your fucking whore, I’m a low-level guy, they don’t tell me shit!”
This time, I believe him.
Not because of what he says.
Because of how he says it.
Because there’s nothing left behind it.
No control. No calculation. Just fear.
He has nothing.
There’s nothing here. Nothing useful. Nothing that gets me closer to her.
For a second, I just stand there, looking at him.
At the blood.
At the damage already done.
And something shifts.
The quiet, unavoidable recognition that none of this matters if it doesn’t lead to her, that all of this, every movement, every decision, only has value if it gets me closer, and right now it hasn’t.
The knife falls from my hand. The sound barely carries. My fingers close around the gun.
The grip is different.
