Page 80 of Ballistic

“His dad will probably think he had a nightmare.” Sitting back into the seat, I started up the ‘Cuda and revved the engine. “People don’t usually break into houses in Detroit without taking some shit with them.”

30

Dax

The clock read just after one in the morning, when the rattling buzz of my phone left me scrambling for it before Nicoleta could wake up to the sound.

She’d calmed down a bit once we’d arrived back at the apartment, and both of us had come to the decision that we’d need to remove those kids from the picture before going after Kenny. Even if it meant placing him at the mercy of protective services instead of her long-awaited revenge.

Having grown up with social workers and foster care my whole life, I admittedly hadn’t developed a shit ton of faith in the system, but it was worth a shot. I’d planned to make a few calls to some contacts first thing in the morning.

I rubbed my eyes and stared down at a notification popped up on my screen. The accompanying message from China bore a warning:

I don’t know who these bastards are, but I hope you make them pay for this. Watch at your own risk.

With a quick glance back at Nicoleta, I slid from the bed, grabbing my pack of smokes from the nightstand, and threw on the pants I’d draped over the chair. Damn the pounding of my heart, as I snuck out the front door and down the staircase. I didn’t want there to be any chance Nicoleta might see, or hear, the video, which, from the sounds of it, would undoubtedly throw her straight into another night terror.

Christ, I knew firsthand how that felt, seeing someone you loved murdered. I’d watched my sister’s snuff video and ended up beating one of my friends to death as a result.

Stomach churning, I rounded the side of the building, well out of sight, and clicked play. The video started out with a man sitting in a chair, his face hidden beneath a pig mask—one of the creepy Halloween variety. The darkness behind him made it difficult to see anything else in the room. Piggy by Nine Inch Nails played in the background, low enough that I could hear sniffles and crying from somewhere in the room beyond.

Pigmask unzipped his pants, turning just slightly, and crooked his finger. From the right side of the screen, a young girl, whose age was difficult to pinpoint from her profile, crawled toward him on her hands and knees. Her body too skinny and bruised. Long blonde hair hid most of her face as, sobbing, she knelt down in front of him. The second he whipped his dick out of his boxers, I had to fast forward ahead. Couldn’t watch that shit. It was one thing to watch staged porn, but to know the girl had actually been kidnapped and murdered by the end of it only made the scenes in between more sickening.

As the video went on, the scenes seemed to worsen.

In the next, she’d been tied naked to a bed, while two in pig masks poured buckets of what looked like blood onto her. The girl screamed and choked, covered in thick red blood that made it impossible to see her face through the mess.

My pulse hammered, muscles stretched thin with the tension running through them.

I imagined being in that room with them, and what I’d do to those pigs. How I’d turn them inside out until they were coated, like the girl, in their own blood. Spasms of pain struck my skull as my jaw locked with anger, and I fast-forwarded again.

One of the pigs held a meat cleaver propped to her neck, while he raped her from a side-view angle, her face and hair, coated in blood, turned away from the camera.

I slapped my hand over my eyes, my fingers digging into my temples, as I paused it a moment to collect myself. What I’d seen so far would haunt me the rest of my life, and I knew the worst was yet to come.

I kept on. I didn’t know why. Couldn’t get through about eighty percent of it, but maybe I wanted to be inside Nicoleta’s head. To understand her better. The rage was fuel, exactly what I needed to help her avenge the poor girl’s murder, as I’d struggled to go after Kenny earlier, not having established any personal connection to Eden. Up until that point, I could empathize with Nicoleta, but it wasn’t enough to help her kill.

The video had stoked my wrath. I not only wanted to avenge the girl, but to make a fucking spectacle of it. I wanted the dirty pigs to suffer and plead, just as she had.

In the next scene, the girl had been cleaned up, the blood no longer staining her skin, and as the camera panned past her, over the river and the moon’s reflection glistening across its surface, I knew I’d finally reached the end.

The part of the video that’d undoubtedly fuck me up.

Hands bound in front of her and a blindfold over her eyes, the girl stood naked on the dock. Her bronze skin glowed against the long blonde locks of hair that fell around her shoulders, and she visibly trembled, looking vulnerable and terrified. A large steel anchor had been tied to each of her ankles, by what looked like faded white nylon rope when the camera zoomed in, and sat precariously close to the water’s edge.

My body mirrored hers, the tightness in my chest clamping down on my lungs.

The camera stayed in place as both pigs approached her from either side, shrinking her size between them. The pig on the right, carrying a fifth of alcohol, smashed the bottle against the anchor behind her, and both laughed when she screamed. The only sound either of them had made throughout the video.

Then one of the men removed her blindfold.

No. Fuck, no.

My heart caught in my throat.

I blinked hard, staring down at the screen, trying to determine whether, or not, I was seeing something that wasn’t there.

I couldn’t fucking breathe. Lungs locked up. Skin crawled with panic.