Page 85 of Ballistic

Through an incredulous grin, I stared back, trying to wrap my head around the lies tumbling from his mouth, like little devils taunting me to hurt the pitiful bastard. “Are you shitting me?”

Nabbing hold of his third toe, I positioned the cutters again, but he jerked.

“Wait! Yeth. Yeth, it was me.”

“It was you. In the video. You tried to kill her.” I studied his eyes—dark, soulless orbs bearing no sign of remorse, as if he hadn’t thought about it a single day since. An observation that made me want to rip them right out of his skull so I didn’t have to look at them right then.

“The’s not what you think. That girl ith crazy. Fucking thyco.”

“Thyco?” I snickered and sighed. “You know what’s psycho, Kenny? Me. After watching that video.” I crunched the cutters through his flesh, cutting off his next toe, which I chucked with the others. “This little piggy ate roast beef.”

A gurgling scream ended on a deep-belly cough, and he turned to spit a wad of frothy red blood. “Pleath! Pleath, thop! I’ll do whatever you want.”

“What I want is to watch you bleed. And then, eventually, I want to see you consumed by your own kind.” I lifted the cutters, twisting them around in front of him. “D’you know, pigs’ll eat bone? They’re like land carp. Nothing goes to waste.”

Shifting inside the too-tight binds, Kenny whimpered. “I’m thorry. For everything I did to her. I’m tho thorry.”

“No. I don’t think you are, Kenny. I think you’re lying again.” He jerked his leg, as I slammed my palm against the top of his foot and sliced through his fourth toe, though that one took a bit more effort than the first three.

His cries turned hoarse, his throat probably as dry as cotton from shock and loss of blood.

“This little piggy had none.” Without taking my eyes off him, I threw the toe over my shoulder and smiled. “Baiting the swine.”

The rise and fall of his chest grew frantic, and he rolled his head against the tree, moaning. If I had to guess, the alcohol’s numbing effect had begun to wane.

“Jasper’s dead, in case you might be wondering where this is headed.”

“I wanted to thcare her, ith all. Dathper wanted her dead. He thed the’d go to the cops.”

“Did someone commission this video?” As I gripped his pinky toe, his face pinched with misery, and a sob tore through his chest. One sharp yank silenced his sobbing. “No lies, Kenny.”

“Yeah. It wath.”

“By whom?”

“Pleath. Don’t. Don’t.”

I ran the snipper blades over his toe, not yet pressing into it.

“I don’t know. I thwear I don’t know.” Head rolling against the bark, he squirmed in his binds, his fight growing weaker by the minute. “Dathper thed it wath commithioned. He never thed who paid him.”

“But the request came through Tesarik?”

“Yeth. Dathper wath part of a club. They like to wath that thtuff. He put together the video.”

I didn’t get the connection between Tesarik and Nicoleta. How she’d even end up on his radar. “Why?”

“I thwear I don’t know. I thwear!”

Nicoleta must not have known about Tesarik’s involvement. If she had, she’d have undoubtedly attempted to kill him herself when she’d had the chance.

Still unable to look at the fucker’s eyes, I let my gaze roam the scars that crinkled his cheek. Deep grooves and patches of poorly healed skin across the right side of his face that extended chin to hairline. “What happened to your face?”

“Had a run-in … yearth ago. Burned it on a sthove.”

“Bad shit just keeps happening to you, doesn’t it, Kenny?”

His brows pinched, nostrils flickering with rapid breaths, but he remained silent.