Pretty soon, Dean emerged with a heater and a cage holding two of the biggest fucking rats I had ever seen in my life.
“Shit. What is the owner feeding those fuckers?”
Dean laughed. “I’ve seen bigger, but they’re pretty big, aren’t they?”
I shook my head with amusement.
He grabbed the rope and looked round. Finding a wooden crate, he kicked it over. “We need him to lie on this so his back is off the ground. We need to saw a hole into it so that the rats can escape.”
I looked over to the scumbag and saw his eyes widen. He looked at me and gave me a pleading gaze. There was no way I was helping this fucker. He was pleading with the wrong person.
I looked at Dean quizzically and smiled before turning my attention back to the scumbag. “Looks like he knows what we’re doing.”
Dean nodded. “Looks like he messed with the wrong woman, doesn’t it, Jimmy?”
I scowled at Mark. “Yes, it does.”
The scumbag strained against the gag. Dean looked at me. “I think he wants to say something. Shall we grant him this request before the rats play with him?”
I nodded. I had no doubt he would plead for his life. It was something I would get a lot of enjoyment out of.
Dean bent down and undid his gag. Scumbag breathed heavily and looked at both of us. “Look, man, I’m sorry. I promise to go away and never come back. Tara never has to see me again.”
I growled. “You got that fucking right. I’m going to see to it.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I just get so angry.”
I balled my fists. “That’s no fucking excuse.”
“I know. I know. But she killed our baby. Did she ever tell you that? She was pregnant with our child and killed it. What kind of woman does that?”
His eyes were wide and angry. The revelation shocked me, but I knew Tara must have had her reasons. He probably thought this would shock and anger me. He was right, but it was him I was angry at. Not Tara. I could never be angry at Tara.
Instead, I bent down and grabbed his shirt. “She was probably saving the child from a miserable future she knew the baby would have with a fucking scumbag like you for a father.”
His eyes narrowed. “What, by killing it? No child deserves to be killed. I was brought up in a pro-life household. Tara knew this and she knew it would fucking kill me. She wanted to get me back and she did it in the most evil, sadistic way possible. How could anyone forgive someone for that?”
I couldn’t take much more of his shit. Tara never told me anything about this baby, but I knew what kind of heart she had and I trusted that the decision she made to abort the baby must have been a difficult one. I also trusted that she made that decision because she felt it was the right thing to do. What drove her to do it made my head explode in anger. This shithead wanted me on his side, but all he did was make me angrier than ever. He made her come to that decision. She must have been heartbroken, but he made her do it.
Without hesitation, I placed the gag back around his mouth, making him scream around it, and turned to Dean. “I don’t want to hear anymore from him, Dean. Let’s just get to it. We’ve wasted enough fucking time on him as it is.”
Dean nodded and we got to work making a hole in the wooden crate. With a heave, we placed his back over the hole. Dean found some mesh and formed it into a cage with the bottom and top missing. He grabbed a knife from his pocket and handed it to me.
“Make an incision in between his ribs. The rats will do the rest.”
I smiled back at him. “It will be my pleasure.”
I knelt down and scumbag’s muffled screams could be heard. It wasn’t going to help him now. He sealed his fate the day he came back for my Tara.
I pressed in the knife and cut the middle of his torso. The blood came pouring out at the same time his screams intensified. I knew he was in pain, but I didn’t care. I also knew I should have been worried because I was enjoying this moment. I tortured people, but I never got enjoyment out of it. It was just a job, pure and simple, but this was personal. This man needed to pay for making Tara suffer all these years. It wasn’t just the physical abuse she had to endure. It was the daily torture she lived, wondering if he would find her. It was the nightly torture when she would sometimes scream out in her dreams for someone to help her, rescue her from a man she would never be free of. I was going to free her. I was going to give my Tara her life back. She would never have to worry about whether he would find her. Tonight, we’d make sure of it.
Once I made the incision, Dean pulled the rats out of their cage and set them down over his torso. They didn’t waste any time. They started gnawing into him the minute they smelled his blood. The scumbag screamed in agony and I knew he would soon pass out from the pain. It was only a matter of time.