Chapter 8 - The Anatomy of a Parasite
Julian gasped for air, his hands clawing desperately at Edward’s left wrist. The skin beneath his fingers was like cured rawhide, unyielding and hot. Julian’s face turned a mottled, dark purple, his eyes bulging as the oxygen supply to his brain was throttled down to a trickle.
Edward did not shout. He leaned in until his stubbled cheek was three inches from Julian’s nose, his pale gray eyes dead, cold, and bottomless.
"You had seven days, Julian," Edward whispered.
The words were spoken with conversational intimacy, a private whisper between an executioner and the condemned.
"You had seven days in this house. You had my food in the refrigerator. You had my credit card for the groceries. You had my trust."
Edward increased the pressure on Julian’s throat by five percent. Julian’s heels kicked frantically against the floorboards, his nails scraping bloody furrows across the back of Edward’s tattooed forearm. Edward didn't even flinch; he didn't feel the scratches.
"You watched my seven-year-old daughter carry her dying brother on her back while she scrubbed your floor with a scouring pad," Edward continued, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You ate an apple while she choked on bleach fumes."
Edward reached down with his right hand, his fingers sliding into the pocket of Julian’s performance joggers.
He did not find keys. He found a thick, heavy wad of folded cash—ten thousand dollars in banded hundred-dollar bills, fresh from the bank withdrawal—alongside a sleek, silver electronic key-fob bearing the crest of an airline private jet lounge and a one-way business-class boarding pass to Grand Cayman departing from O'Hare at five-thirty that evening.
Two hours from now.
Julian had timed the domestic terror to the minute. He had forced the little girl to scrub the entrance so the house would look undisturbed when the cleaning service arrived on Monday, while he boarded an international flight with three hundred and eighty thousand dollars of stolen family wealth.
"You weren't refinancing," Edward murmured, tossing the boarding pass onto the floor. "You were running."
Julian’s lips parted, spit bubbling at the corners of his mouth as he wheezed through his crushed airway: "Ed... please... I'm your... your cousin... family..."
"My family is on that bench," Edward said.
With a sudden, violent twist of his hips, Edward released Julian’s throat and drove his right palm forward in an open-handed heel strike directly into the center of Julian’s sternum.
CRACK.
The sound of the cartilaginous joint fracturing beneath the blunt force was loud and sickening. The breath exploded from Julian’s lungs in a violent spray of saliva; his body collapsed forward onto his knees, his forehead striking the floorboards beside the puddle of dirty cleaning water. He curled into a tight, shuddering ball, clutching his chest, gasping like a stranded fish, vomiting water and bile onto the marble.
Edward did not look down at him.
May you like
He reached out his right hand, grabbed the solid brass surface bolt on the oak door, and slid it backward with a sharp, heavy clack.
He pulled the service door open, reached around the jamb into the hidden key-cubby beside the utility panel, and retrieved his spare set of heavy truck keys.
