The Alpha Target

Eleven

Knox had committed homicide. Cold-blooded murder. On many men who have worn different faces of the devil. And he had done it for various reasons. Whether they’d killed an innocent, destroyed someone’s life that didn’t deserve it, disrespected him, the list goes on. And now he had Alpha Charles Angus wrangled on his surgical table and unfortunately for him, Lucien had some pent-up frustration that Charles would be taking the brunt of.

While checking on his sweet Cora, ensuring she’d not been injured in the process of blowing up the auction premises, Emmet had text to notify Lucien they’d secured one of the regular guests. Lucien would interrogate the fucker, before being one of many he had killed.

He’d just needed a fix of his mate first. The bond was driving him crazy, every inch of him desperately yearning for her to give into him and the bond. To recognise him as hers the same way he recognised her as his. Seeing her reactions to him satiated that need, even if only a little. It reminded him that though she couldn’t feel the bond, she was drawn to him as such anyway. His wolf, on the other hand, had no patience for the waiting game. He was constantly driving Lucien to claim his little rose there and then. But Lucien had impeccable control over his wolf, he wouldn’t give into those primal urges until he was sure. Sure she needed him the way he needed her.

He would devour her from the inside out, until every intake of breath would only stroke the inferno Lucien had created inside her. Like oxygen feeding a fire, he would consume every inch of her sweet little body until she could think of nothing else but how to get him deeper inside of her.

She wanted him. She didn’t want to want him. But he could see the fiery lust in her eyes when she looked at him. He’d consumed her the way she’d consumed him. It wouldn’t be long now until he’d have her in his arms, and when he did, he’d never let go.

As duty calls, Lucien pulled into the driveway leading into his warehouse. It was a smaller structure, used to manufacture bikes for some shitty company that went out of business within five years. The building was foreclosed on and he bought it for dirt cheap, making it the necessary workspace for he and his men to carry out their work in successfully bringing down the s*x trafficking ring.

After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars transforming it, it was an impenetrable fortress. He had converted the main floor in his office and a gathering space for his men with state-of-the-act security. An ant wouldn’t be able to find its way into the building without Lucien knowing about it. He’d also kitted out the main floor with several bedrooms. Many days their work may go on until late in the night and he needed his men to rest in order to be proactive.

The second floor was the workspace. Dozens of computers and illegal technology that made it possible to do what he did filled the space. And the basement was where he handled off of his business – meaning where he took the vermin of society to torture and kill them when they had the information he needed. He also had an underground garage built that drives straight into the basement, making it easier for him or his men to haul a six-foot-two dickhead to the table.

Lucien sighed at the sight of Charles, he’d already got blood everywhere and he was going to have to pay his cleaning crew extra to get those stains out. With that amount of blood, anyone would ask questions, but they got paid way too much to ask stupid questions that would get them killed.

When a sinister smile creeps along Lucien’s lips, a hint of recognition flashes across Alpha Charles’ face. A look that had become part of the routine when Lucien was torturing people. The people on his table were the kind who had heard about Lucien, and despite doing things that they knew would surely piss him off, the feared ever landing in his grasp. The shocked expression filled with dread always occurred and it was orgasmic.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I can slowly cut off each of your limbs and drag your inevitable death out as long as possible, or you can be a good little b***h and sing like a canary.”

Charles’ bloody mouth forms around the word f**k and it didn’t take a genius to know what word was going to come out next. So, Lucien punched him in the nose before he could get the first syllable out. Scrap the expression, the crunch of bone beneath his fist was orgasmic.

By the time Lucien was pulling his fist away, blood was squirting from his broken nose. He spit, and a tooth flew out of his mouth onto Lucien’s floor. Knox was going to shove his foot up his ass just for that.

Charles squirms on the table like a worm on a hook and Lucien can tell by the panicked look on his face that he had a feeling. That sinking feeling that his life was hanging on the edge, and Lucien was about to send him f*****g flying off.

“Look, whatever it is, we can work out a deal,” Charles negotiated, his words a little garbled and misshapen from his broken teeth. His nose was already swelling and bruising, along with his split puffy lips. He looked as those he had gone five rounds in a boxing match with his hands tied behind his back,

Lucien only smirks, tightening the straps around the mans body. “Why the f**k are you doing this? Because of those girls?” Charles asked, his voice hysteric.

Lucien leaned close, letting him get a good luck at the scars on his skin. If it wasn’t the scars that warned people away, it was the deadly glint in his eyes that usually did the trick. Next to him was a tray of utensils lined up neatly and without looking away, Lucien grabbed the first tool his hand landed on.

A serrated screwdriver. Specially made for torturing. Charles eyes widen comically when he catches sight of the screwdriver.

Lucien smiles. “Haven’t gotten to use this one yet,” he observed, twisting the screwdriver and giving them both a good view of each sharp point. Once that sucker when in, it was going to hurt even worse taking it out. Lucien couldn’t f*****g wait.

“Bro, let’s talk about this. Those girls are not worth it. Do you realise what the organisation will do to you?”

“Did you really think I was just going to kill you?” Lucien volleyed back, quirking a brow to show how unimpressed he was with his warning. Charles’ face turned beet red, like the apples Lucien’s mother used to pluck for him from the orchard tree outside the pack house. He’d always loved those things.

Threats spill from Charles’ mouth, fuelled by rage from the organisations fate. He bellows, his veins pop from his forehead. It’s not a pretty sight.

In response, Lucien stabs the screwdriver straight into Charles’ stomach. He gaped at Lucien, his mouth parted in shock. A moment passed, and then he was coughing up blood. An array of emotions were filtering through his eyes and Lucien was pretty sure he saw the five stages of grief in there, too.

He bends down and grits out through his teeth. “What do you know?”

“You’re f*****g crazy,” Charles choked out, looking down at the screwdriver sticking out of his abdomen in disbelief. Just as his shifter healing started to kick in, Lucien slowly pulled the screwdriver out, the suctioning noise quiet against the backdrop of his scream.

Cracking his neck, Lucien takes another deep, calming breath. His temper had gotten the best of him. He wasn’t usually a reactive person, but he’d already accepted his little rose brought out new feelings in him.

“How did you find out about the auction?” Lucien asked, licking his lips while he circled Charles body until he had disappeared from Charles’ view. It was an intimidation tactic for the weak-minded. It made them nervous when he disappeared behind them for that brief moment. Their minds got away from them as they anticipated what he was going to do next. Then, they got a little relief when they saw him again.

Just to repeat the process.

It was torture in itself. Not knowing whether Lucien was going to strike. Or when.

“The invitation was sent to me,” he snapped, seething as Lucien stood behind him. “It was the day after I visited Sugar Tree.”

Sugar Tree was a b**m club downtown. Now, Lucien didn’t have an issue with such places providing those participating were both consenting. Though, Sugar Tree did nothing of the sort. The workers were forced to down alcohol before being sent out into the club, too out of their mind to think straight, while men had their way with them. Many of the women were rogue shifters who had left their pack from ill-treatment, only to land in the hands of the Sugar Tree owners. Though, the women accepted it because they were paid handsomely.

It wasn’t unusual for the women to end their shift with bruises, cuts, burns and so forth. The men could do what ever they wanted with the staff, they were their perfectly quiet slaves while the men got to live out their most brutal kinks. Henceforth, it didn’t surprise Lucien that customers of Sugar Tree were being targeted and gifted invitations to the auctions.

“Who sent it to you?” Lucien probed, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers.

“I don’t know,” Charles shouts, frustrated. “It was signed with the letters JH, that’s all I know. Why does it matter?”

“I read up on your ex-wife,” Lucien said, ignoring the stupid f*****g question. “You beat her so badly, she was barely recognizable when she was taken to the hospital. Evidence indicated that you broke a tequila bottle against her face and then stabbed her with it. Not to mention the countless broken bones and bruises. You nearly killed her.”

Charles sniffs, not the slightest bit of remorse reflecting in his cold eyes. The narcissistic assholes never are. Somehow, they twist it in their head that the victim deserved it and whatever injuries inflicted upon them were their own fault.

“She was cheating on me,” he replies petulantly. Pouting like a child that didn’t get a birthday cake.

“Did you cheat on her first?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he snaps back. “She’s the wife and I make the money. I’m the Alpha. If I feel like buying a stripper for a night, that’s my goddamn right. All she ever did was sit at home on her lazy ass and spend my money.”

“Would you have hurt the girl you bought?”

He scoffs. “I would’ve f****d her how I like to f**k. If she ends up with a couple of bruises, so what? Bitches like that s**t. They like it rough.”

Renewed anger punched Lucien in the chest. And it took all his self-control hold back his wolf and not plunge this screwdriver in his eye right then and there.

Charles wouldn't know how to have proper rough s*x if he was given a f*****g manual for it. He hurts women because he enjoys it. He doesn’t know how to push women to the edge of pain and pleasure, balancing between the two and making them desperate for more.

He just hurts them. By the time he’s done, the girl is thoroughly bruised and traumatized—maybe even bleeding. And he’s walking away with a satisfied smirk on his face, as if he was the first man to prove a woman orgasming isn’t actually a myth.

But Lucien accepts his answer because it fuels exactly what he had planned for him. And he was very much going to embody his method for s*x. Lucien would enjoy hurting him and making him bleed, and Charles? He would wish he’s never stepped foot in Sugar Tree.