His teeth fused with remembered rage. He’d paid back some of the players involved. Not all of them. Not yet. Let them figure out he was coming for them and then let them sweat in fear. Let their nightmares be fueled by memories of the wrongs they’d committed.

They’d always said he was too puny to fight back but brute strength only took a person so far. He worked out now, though. No one called him their bitch any longer.

He pulled up an image on his private phone. Smiled at the memory of making a fat man consume his own testicles. Tension fell away from his shoulders in a wave of relief.

Sometimes life felt very, very good.

He yawned and rolled his shoulders. He was tired but he was about to take a long vacation. He’d earned it along with the fifty million in crypto he’d saved for his upcoming retirement. Another reason for owning his own secure vault.

He pulled up the screen capture he’d taken of Sphinx who’d been attempting to get into his machine a few days ago. If he hadn’t been waiting for her, watching for her, she might have found a weakness to exploit and found him. As it stood, he’d been the one doing the exploiting, not that it had gotten him very far. Yet.

She was really very pretty.

He’d run reverse image searches and facial recognition programs. She hadn’t turned up anywhere. It was almost as if she had something to hide too and that intrigued him more than anything had in months.

Setting up the Feds had been a lot of fun and had given him the information he needed—so sad that Special Agent Monteith had died in the line of duty. A smile curled his lips. Maybe he’d go after the widow next…except she was pregnant and he didn’t ever touch children. That was the only line he wouldn’t cross.

He turned everything off and decided to hit the sack. He had a few loose ends to tie up. And, for that, he needed a weapon.

He wasn’t a big fan of guns. Guns made heroes out of idiots. Made people feel like bad-asses whereas the thought of running a knife over flesh made them piss their pants. It was easy to dissociate from the act of murder when you simply pulled a trigger or lit a fuse. Skin on skin killing took a lot more balls and was a lot more satisfying.

Unfortunately, this time, he didn’t think he had a lot of choice. He’d have to settle for a bullet.

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