Alena’s Revenge by K.A Knight
Chapter Twenty-Six
Idris
She’s been quiet since she wrote the message. I clean her hands in the car, and then she stares out of the window as I pull into a parking lot and check over who’s left. I shoot a message to Spider as well to make sure the police reports on Lola get leaked and that the images stay up online. It’s important to Alena. I can see it. I can see she wants everyone to know.
She wants those who were hurt to know justice was done.
She wants those who did the hurting to know we’re coming for them.
She wants it to mean something, for them to pay and suffer like women like her did. My little bitch has a soft heart under all that bloodlust and scars. She wants justice, but instead of trusting those meant to protect her, she’s now getting it herself.
Like a true fucking warrior.
“We are going after the guards now, lowlies. We’ll kill them and then Nikolić,” I vow.
“We finish it,” she murmurs and looks over at me. “Make them all pay. I want them all dead so this city is safe once again. We have to.”
“We will,” I promise as I cup the back of her neck and lean in, pressing my forehead to hers. As I stare into those determined eyes, my heart does a flip, the cold, dead organ beating for her. It’s the only time it ever beats faster. It doesn’t even increase its rhythm when I’m killing or almost dying.
Only for her.
“I won’t kill you, she was wrong,” I find myself telling her, searching those golden orbs.
“No?” she whispers.
“No. You’re the only thing in this world I fear,” I admit, and she blinks in confusion. “I don’t fear death. I don’t fear pain. I don’t even fear everything that comes between that and this. All I fear is you. Letting you close or walking away from you. Alena, Bitch, you reminded me why I do this. For them, for the faceless innocents who suffer in this vile world. I took this job to protect them, to save them, and along the way, that got lost. Tonight, you reminded me why, and now… I fear you. You have the potential to be the only one who gets close to the monster everyone fears. If you betray me, if you die, if you walk away, I’ll become the monster they all fear again, maybe even worse.”
“That won’t happen,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “But I’m nobody, just a nobody.”
“You’re not a nobody to me. You’re everything.” I swallow, the words are hard. I don’t let people close, but she burrowed her way into my black heart during our path of vengeance. Her strength, her mind, her conviction, and ability to walk in the dark with me is slowly becoming everything I didn’t know I needed nor wanted. I expected her to be weak, to break, but she surprises me at every turn.
And because of that, she wormed her way into my very fucking soul. The thing I didn’t think I had anymore. What happens when this is over? I don’t know, but I fear her because…
Fuck, because I care.
We stare at each other, neither of us knowing what to say or do until my phone vibrates, alerting me to police approaching the restaurant. We both turn and watch them pull up with their sirens blaring.
“I fear you too,” she confesses without looking at me. “I fear how important you have become to me. I don’t want to depend on anyone. Down in that hell hole, I found myself, found that I need no one.” She looks at me. “But I want you.”
What else is there to say?
We both know this thing we have going has a time limit. It cannot last. An assassin can’t… love. Trust. Have a weakness. And she needs to heal and find a place to feel safe again.
I can’t be that.
Or can I?
* * *
We don’t speak muchafter that, instead refocusing on our mission. The streets of the city run red with the deaths we execute together. We move quickly through the list as night seeps in, the streets busy as the city comes alive, but tonight, it’s filled with hesitation. Even strangers on the streets feel the anticipation of violence in the air.
The next one we hit leads us to the stables on the edge of the park. The horses are all in their stalls, apart from four that are tethered up and ready to be taken out. There are a few workers milling around, but I flash my gun and jerk my head, clearing them out. They get the hint and run, leaving us alone with the man we are here for.
He’s in a stall at the back, wearing a shirt and tight jeans with AirPods in his ears. He’s clearly here to ride his horse or check on it. Idiot doesn’t even hear us coming, too busy jamming out to… yep, Vengaboys.
Fucking hell, this one needs to be fast.
I open the stall, and the horse huffs at me and turns. It alerts the man, and as he spins around, I go to grab him, but Alena is there. She takes a rake and knocks him the fuck out with it. I turn to her, blinking as she shrugs innocently. He’s passed out on the floor, nose bleeding. Reaching down, I grab his legs and drag him from the stall as Alena coos at the horse.
“Pretty boy,” she purrs and shuts the door. “Sorry about this. Your daddy is a cunt, you’ll be better without him,” she assures him and blows a kiss before following me. I throw him into the back wall near the hay and tack, and then crouch down before him, waiting for him to come around. He’s groaning, pale, and weak, so it shouldn’t be long.
Alena sits on the hay at the side, swinging her legs back and forth. As soon as he wakes up, he starts shrieking. Lovely. I can’t even get any sense out of him, the fucking pussy, so I give up trying. I stand and leave him to scream, grabbing some of the ropes from the wall and wrapping them around my knuckles. I tug, testing them.
“Shit, okay, you’re using ropes on me later,” Alena purrs, and I wink over at her before moving to the horses. They toss their heads nervously, but I stroke their noses, talking softly to them until they settle. Animals have always liked me, it’s my only fucking saving grace.
Moving slowly so I don’t scare them, I tie one rope onto each of the four horses before reaching down and grabbing the screaming man’s arms and legs. It’s a difficult manoeuvre, but I manage to tie him to all four. I untie the horses and urge them on. Two to the back, two to the front. They move slowly at first as he screams louder, so I tap their asses until they buck and rush off.
Tearing his limbs from his body.
They stop at the door though and turn around, so I quickly untie the ropes and put them in the stalls—I’m a monster, not evil. I leave the dismembered body for someone else to clean up as Alena skips by my side as we leave.
“That was cool as shit,” she remarks. “Real Henry the VIII shit.”
I snort but carry on walking as we head to our next victim.
One is tossed from a building, another is tied to a cement brick and pitched into the river to drown. Alena guts one and bleeds out another hung from a streetlight before we hit the last name on the list.
It’s harder to find him, I have to hack into some systems. I’m not as good as Spider, but I manage, and it eventually leads us to Happy Endings—a massage parlour with a twist. It’s staffed by stolen girls and foreign women who are forced to earn their way out. They have more freedom than the trafficked girls, but not by much.
We go through the backdoor, and the security is easy to get through. Soothing spa music plays, and we pass the girls’ shower and changing room. Their living quarters are most likely in the basement—it’s not the first place like this I’ve raided.
We pass those rooms, ignoring the girls who look at us. They know better than to question two free people in this place. I bet it looks like Alena is a new girl or mine. I don’t do anything to make them believe otherwise, needing to blend in.
Stepping through another door, we reach the front area of the massage place where the actual client rooms are, and the doors shut behind us with a lock, proving they can only come out when called. It’s much nicer up front. There are stone walls with hanging candles, and it exudes money and relaxation. A woman comes from a room, tying her robe. She has tears in her eyes, her hair is a mess, and her body is bare beneath her covering. She looks up and freezes, then rushes past us, her head lowered.
Alena snarls, pulls her knife, and storms to the room. I should drag her back and focus on what we’re here for, but I don’t. She busts in the door, slamming it behind her, but I follow. The man is buttoning his slacks. He looks like a banker type, all rich businessman and slicked hair. His gold wedding band gleams on his hand.
“Another girl?” he questions, then sees me and frowns. “What the—I didn’t rough her up, I know that’s extra. What’s going on?”
I kick the door shut behind me and cross my arms so he can’t leave while Alena prowls towards him. “Did she consent?” she snarls.
“What?”
She gets right in his face and pushes him back to the rumpled massage bed.
“Did she fucking consent? You know the word ‘yes’? What about ‘silent’? Did she stay silent? Did she want to say no but was too scared to? Or did you not even bother to ask, you sick fucking rapist?” she almost yells. It’s a good thing these rooms aren’t monitored and they’re soundproof. It’s members only, after all. You have to pay, and if you kill a girl… well, in their mind, there are plenty of them on the streets.
In fact, if you pay high enough, you can do whatever the fuck you want to them.
He doesn’t respond, and she presses the knife to his mouth. “What, nothing to say? Does that mean you consent to me cutting your pretty boy face up?”
He goes to speak, and she presses the blade’s tip to the edge of his lips and slashes sideways. He howls, falling back as his cheek and lip flop open. She quickly does the other side before ripping his shirt open. Buttons fly everywhere as he hits the bed, his hands clutching his face as blood pours from the wounds.
While wielding the knife, she looks up at him. “I’m going to give you a message you will never forget.” With that, she gets to work, and when she steps back, he passes out. I raise my eyebrows.
She carved ‘I’m a rapist pig’ down his stomach.
“Why not kill him?” I ask.
“Because now he’ll suffer more. He’ll have to live with that on his chest and see it all his life. His wife will know, his family, his job. He’ll be ruined. He’ll hit rock bottom, and he’ll probably die,” she reasons as she turns. “It will destroy him more.”
Fuck, that’s evil and so goddamn incredible.
I crook my finger at her, and she walks up to me. When she reaches me, I grab her hair and yank her head back, kissing her hard before pulling away. “Good.”
We leave him there. Either he’ll die or wake up and have to go home. She’s right—he’ll suffer more. We check the other rooms, finding them empty until we reach the last one where our target currently is. His pale chubby ass jiggles as he thrusts, fucking the woman bent over the bed. She’s silently crying, her hands digging into the bed. His belt is wrapped around her neck to control her like a fucking sex toy or animal as he grunts and sweats.
Without hesitation, I shoot him in the leg. He screeches and jerks from the force before falling on the woman. She cries out, shoving at him, and I pull him away from her gently. I can’t help but see the blood smeared across her ass and pussy. He ripped her. She cries and scurries to the wall, sliding down it with her arms wrapped around her stomach.
Alena goes to her, holding her hands out as she crouches before the sobbing woman. “We won’t hurt you. We are here to help. Can you walk?”
The woman nods, swallowing hard as I restrain the screaming man. “Good, go and get the others and wait there. We’ll come back. I promise.”
With one last look at me, the woman rushes to her feet and then leaves the room. Alena turns and glares at the bleeding man. “Make it hurt,” she demands before leaning back against the wall, her eyes narrowed in fury.
So I do. Grabbing the hot stones on the side, I force one into his mouth and one into his ass, and then I pour the hot wax across his cock while she observes. We watch it sizzle as he chokes and tries to scream. I wait until he passes out, and then I kill him.
I tear his throat out and leave him there with the stone in his ass, his tiny burnt cock hanging out. We head towards the women, finding the one we saved in the dressing room with three others who look scared.
“Where are the others?” I ask.
“Downstairs.” They point at a tiny staircase in the back corner, and I nod.
“Management?”
They swallow and point out of the room. “Out front, past the rooms.”
“Stay here,” I tell Alena, and for once, she listens as I move back down the hallway, following it around to a set of double doors. Through it is a waiting room with three men reading newspapers or scrolling on their phones. I shoot the ceiling.
“Out, unless you want to die, you sick bastards. If I see you again, you’re dead,” I threaten, and then turn to a man grabbing a shotgun from behind the desk. Firing, I knock him back to his swivel seat and then move past him to the manager’s office where the door is opening. A heavyset, balding man covered in way too much gold jewellery stands in the doorframe.
I shoot him too, not bothering with small talk. He won’t know enough to help me. In his office, I find a safe, which I open with his fingerprint and eye. There are thousands inside. I pack it into two bags, grab his keys, and return to Alena where she helped the girls get dressed.
“Here.” I toss one of the bags at their feet. “Share this between you.” Keeping hold of the other bag, I head downstairs. The door at the bottom is made of metal with a sliding hatch. Unlocking and opening it, I step in and recoil at the living conditions.
Alena steps up to my side and gasps. “Fuckers,” she snarls.
They live side by side in cots with barely any blankets and zero privacy. They’re all sleeping in cheap lingerie, their makeup and hair ready so they don’t get hurt. There’s a toilet and a sink in the corner, nothing else. There are even bars on the windows. It’s disgusting, and they all look scared until Alena explains the situation. We leave them to make their escape, giving them the money we found upstairs. I know Donald will send in clean-up and get all the client lists to hunt them down. He may even use some of it as leverage—who knows? But that’s their job. We are nearing the end of ours.
All the guards, partners, enticers, and runners are dead. That only leaves one man.
It’s Nikolić’s turn.
