squeeze the jaw bones open and pried his fingers between the man’s teeth, pulling the upper and lower jaws apart. The man’s struggling increased, and two wet pops announced the full dislocation of both his shoulders. The weakened body was no match for Paul’s strength, though. Paul hadn’t been small since well before his sixteenth year; now he was positively massive. Thanks to a brief and foolish fling with steroids, he had mass that he couldn’t lose; he was just a little less insanely ripped and a lot less irritable since he’d stopped the shots. At six foot six inches and still around two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, he towered over just about everybody he’d ever met.
Maguire moved in with the knife. The tongue plopped onto the heap on the floor and the man’s screams became throat-tearing grunts and squeals. It was a gruesome sight, no doubt. Paul thought that maybe he should feel sick at the sight of the meaningless, mewling lump of flesh that they’d reduced a fellow human being to, but he didn’t. They were pulling him apart systematically. To Paul’s mind, it was a little like working on an engine without having drained the oil first, but instead of fixing it, they were breaking it. It had all the relevance to Paul of taking a carburetor apart. Maybe that made him a psychopath or something. He didn’t give a flying fuck. He loved his brothers; he’d lay down his life for them. He figured that made him human enough.
That’s why they were here in the first place. The whimpering mess dangling in front of them had given information to some rivals. Paul and his brothers had been expecting to ride to a location near the Mexican border to pick up a consignment of drugs and illegal immigrants, which they would transport to the border with Louisiana. They’d been met by men wielding semi-automatics, who’d killed two of Paul’s friends and injured five others. The death of the worthless shit in front of them was assured, but he was enduring this pain as a message to anyone else looking to make a fast buck by selling the club out.
Paul had started on his current path by begging a job in the garage owned by the Rabid Dogs MC when he’d finished his last stint in Juvie. He’d done anything they’d asked, cleaned tools, fetched sandwiches, swept and mopped, anything. He’d started prospecting with the club after his eighteenth birthday, along with his friend Charlie. Charlie had moved to Louisiana with his dad before they patched in. Paul had stayed. Sure Charlie was his friend, but it didn’t mean he had to chase him across the state. He was comfortable where he was. He’d been awarded his full colors not long after he turned nineteen and the club had been his whole life since.
As a kid he’d wanted nothing more than freedom and control over his own life, to be just like Han Solo. He’d found his Millennium Falcon in his Harley. He could ride for days, only stopping to undertake basic bodily functions and to assuage the need to eat and sleep. Riding felt like flying; it was the closest thing he knew to being weightless both metaphorically and physically. Out on the road on his own he had no responsibilities, no cares, no worries, no stress. With membership of the MC came responsibilities and duties, but since it was something that he’d chosen, Paul embraced it all with a joyful heart.
Maguire had taken on the role of tutor in the art of torture when it became apparent Paul didn’t balk at this kind of work like some of his weaker-stomached brothers. Maguire might be nearing sixty, but he kept himself in excellent condition. Only a loosening of the skin over his muscles gave any indication of his age, and that was hard to see past the ink that covered almost every inch of his body from his neck down. Only his palms, the soles of his feet and his genitals were bare of art. Maguire’s complete lack
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