The Frenchman's Revenge (72 page)

Wyatt shook his head and raised an eyebrow. Alex blushed while Nianzu gave
Elena
a wink.
Bai chortled.

“
Mon Dieu
, Wyatt, she’s your daughter.”

“Hell, Bai, I never taught her that!”

Elena gave her father a quick smile.

“No
,
Father, you didn’t teach me to use such ribald language
,
but you and
L
ei
gave
me a longing for a passionate love and
taught me
n
ot
to
settle for less.”

Wyatt hugged her.

“If I
taught
you that, honey, I gave you a great gift.”

Both Bai and Elena murmured in agre
ement
.

~~~

Bai turned back to Greg and didn’t
mask
h
is
revulsion.
He motioned Elena and Alex over to him
and point
ed
to the quivering, blubbering mass at their feet.

“
There is o
ne
savate strike
I didn’t teach you
.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to give Elena this weapon,
” he
said with a grin. “No telling how she would use it.
Men are
always
protective of
their
equipment, e
specially
like our friend here
,
who
thinks he is well endowed
,” Bai said
with a sneer
, nudging Greg’s shriveled
up
prick with
his boot
.

“
Understandably
,
a man wants to protect his bollocks because on
e or two
strategic
kick
s never fail
t
o be
problematic
for the victim
.”

He r
aise
d
his he
el and drove it
in
one
testicle
th
e
n the other
.
Greg screamed in agony and rolled from side to side clutching his groin
, blood oozing
between
his fingertips
.
Bai waited for a moment to allow the full damage of his kicks to be felt
,
then motioned to Nianzu and Alex to spread eagle him again. Once he was stretched out on his back
,
Bai moved closer
and in full teaching mode pointed to Greg’s penis.

“However
,
a true savat
e
fighter knows
that as tender as the testicles are
,
there is nothing quite
like a
full on strike to the cock.
”

He nudged the end of Greg’s prick with his boot
,
causing Greg to scream and
beg
for mercy.

Bai continued, “
While I’m not interested in
demonstrating the move
…
at the moment--do know that with a
single
well-place
d
kick
of your boot
,
one can remove
the penis
completely
.
”

He paused for emphasis.

“
It’s a move that has served me well in the past.”

He took a drag on his cigarette and
crouched
down beside the sobbing man.

“I’m short on time
,
Greg.
We can make this a
s
fast or as slow as you wish.
Where is your record book?
T
en
seconds; counting now.”

Before the words were out of his mouth Greg screamed, “Bottom drawer, left-hand side of my desk. It’s... it’s
…
in the lockbox.”

“The key?”

Through muffled sobs
,
Greg gasped
clutching his swollen
, bleeding
testicles
.

“In my
bedroom
closet, top shelf on a hook.”

Nianzu retrieved
the
book and he and Wyatt thumbed
through
it
,
comparing the list of corrupt politicians and lawmen with the list
T
om had sent.
Wyatt was amazed.

“Christ, Bai.
If anything
,
this fucker had twice the number of crooks on the take as
T
om thought he did. This is a gold mine.
”

Wyatt and Nianzu continued to leaf through the pages
,
amazed grunts
c
oming
from one then the other at the
range
of men trapped in it pages.

Nianzu looked up from the book stunned.

“Fuck, Bai, Senator Chisholm paid this son of a bitch over seventy thousand dollars in the last two years. According to Greg’s little legend key
‘
IWC
’
means…Holy
Christ;
it means ‘incest with child.’”

“Yeah,
and we didn’t have
Chisholm
on our list.
Just
think of the
evil
power that is
contained in this small ledger,” Wyatt
said with an impressed sigh.

Bai allowed himself a satisfied nod to Wyatt and Nianzu.

“
O
ui
,
evil power used to further evil ends
.
I expect
the
men in that book
will be relieved to face the public and the courts rather than living under the boot of this
monster
,
” He grinned outright
,
“And it will be my pleasure to see that they do.”

Wyatt and Nianzu continued to page through
the ledger
,
commenting on one entry after another.

Elena watched
Bai
standing over
Greg
’s
bloody shattered
body
. Bai looked thoughtful –
relaxed. Those who knew
t
he Frenchman knew what that meant. Most fighters tensed before battle, readying muscles and mind. But not Bai. The more relaxed he was
,
the more dangerous.
His rage settled over him like a comfortable cloak.

Elena
had seen the look in his eyes before and now more than ever she knew what it meant.
She felt
it
when she attacked Greg.

Bai ambled over to the fireplace and
removed
the poker from the rack of fireplace tools
. He c
rouched down and
nudged
the
pointed end
in the
burning e
mbers.
He stared at it for
several
moment
s
,
then
looked over his shoulder and
asked
in a quiet voice
, “Were you alone
,
Greg
,
at the
Palace
Hotel
,
when you spied on Elena and me?”

Everyone froze at th
e
question.
Wyatt closed the ledger and exchanged a look with Nianzu.
They both straightened and stood
closer
together.
Wyatt’s face was stone cold and Nianzu looked like an emissary of death.

Elena felt the same rush of nausea she had when Greg told her he had watched them
.
She
saw
Bai’s narrow
ed eyes
, gleaming yellow
,
and knew that he had heard
Greg’s
ugly
words
.
With a sickening jolt
,
she realized that her father and
brother
and Nianzu
heard them as well.

Bai lit a cigarette and took a deep
drag,
then repeated his question.

“Were you alone, Greg
? O
r did you bring a
bunch
of you
r
buddies to share in the fun?
”

“No Bai! No
,
God, no!
I promise you I didn’t do that.
No one else was there.”

Bai nodded and looked
down
at the poker. He rolled it back and forth in the embers then seemingly satisfied with
the
glowing
white hot end tossed his cigarette in the fir
e
and
walked
back to
Greg
with the poker in his hand.

Wyatt stepped forward
raising
a cautionary
hand. He
caught Bai’s eye
and
nodded
to Elena with
an imperceptible
s
h
ake of his head.

“You’re going to kill him anyway, Bai.”

Bai
quirked
an eyebrow
. A
grin tugged at the corner of his
mouth.
He held Wyatt’s gaze without blinking.

“So I am, Wyatt.
So I am.”

He looked over at Nianzu
.

“His head, Nianzu.”

A second later Nianzu was sitting on Greg’s chest straddling him
with
his strong thighs. He held Greg’s head firmly between his hands.

Bai
knelt down beside Greg
and
held the burning end of the poker inches from
Greg’s face
.
Greg’s screams were deafening.
Bai
moved
closer to him
and said softly, “
I wanted to give you a taste of your life in eternity. The chariots of fire
are waiting for you
at the gates of hell.
This is the last thing you will see
,
Greg.
This poker and my face.
Take it to your grave.”

He plunged the poker in one
of Greg’s
eye
s
then the other. The sound and smell of sizzling flesh competed with the
horrific
screams of the tortured man.

Elena saw
the muscle in her
father’s
cheek
twitch, his only reaction to the gruesome sight
. Alex gasped
and hid his eyes, his face white with horror.
Elena was sure her expression was as impassive as Nianzu’s and Bai’s.
Her only regret was that Bai had not handed her the poker.

Bai
stood
. He p
ut his arm around Elena and walked toward the door. He looked over his shoulder and caught Alex’s eye.

“You can finish him off, Alex.
You’ve earned the right.”

Alex was stunned.
He looked down
at
the sobbing twisting heap of a man then back at Bai.

“How…how should I kill him?”

Bai smiled
as
in sympathy.

“That’s the advantage of having all the skills you have.
Your choice
.
”

Bai
exchanged a knowing look with Wyatt and Nianzu.

“Make it memorable. They start running together after
the first dozen or so
.”

~~~

Outside
,
Bai joined up with the rest of his men
and reviewed the night
.
After they tallied the number of prisoners and accounted for all of the dead bodies
,
Bai left the group and walked over to where Quitin
’
s body lay.
He
squatted
down beside him and pulled
back
the sheet.
He reached out and smoothed Quitin’s hair back from his face
,
smiling to himself
,
remembering how Quitin tried to make his coarse hair fall softly like Bai’s to no avail.