Bad Bishop Bonus Content

Tiernan taking Igor’s Life

It was called the Forbidden Fruit Club.

Ironic, when you think about it, seeing as Tiernan was about to sink his teeth to the sin he’d planned on committing since he was three years old.

He’d imagined doing this a million times. Had fantasized about it to the point of a stiff cock and pooling saliva in his mouth.

Igor.

In his hands.

At his mercy.

Begging. Pleading. Bargaining.

Tiernan knew this wouldn’t be a quick and clean death; a bullet to the head, a precise break of a neck. No. He was going to really take his time. Make the most out of it.

“He’s heading out through the backdoor,” one of his soldiers said in his earpiece.

Tiernan slipped out of his car and into the night, tucking himself into the alleyway behind the Forbidden Fruit Club. Technically enemy territory, pissing off the Ferrantes was a risk he was willing to take. Come to think of it, he couldn’t name one thing that would stop him from killing the monster who’d made him one.

Igor’s frame spilled into the passageway, a Bratva soldier on each side of him. He was a tall, broad man. Somewhere between buffy and athletic. His once brown hair was now receding and white—Tiernan knew that not from watching him now, but from hours and days and years of surveillance. He consumed every crumble of information about Igor Rasputin. Gorged on it to a point of nausea. Each time he received a photo, a report, a piece of information, a mixture of adrenaline and sickening hatred slammed into him.

The soldiers.

He’d have to get rid of the soldiers, first.

They were all armed, he knew, but he was bulletproof to the last inch of his bleeding body.

Raising his arm with the already cocked pistol in his hand, he sent two bullets to either side of Igor.

Pop. Pop.

Bang in the center of their foreheads.

They fell down with a thud. Igor had a split second to decide whether he was going to unholster and try to shoot, or turn around and run. To Tiernan’s surprise, he picked the third option.

Stood still and gave a little, understanding nod.

“You finally came.”

The words, spoken in Russian, nearly made his knees buckle. They sent him back to that camp. To the violence, and gore, and to that little boy who went to sleep every night not knowing if he’d wake up.

With his gun still aimed at Igor, he made his way to him silently. He didn’t reply to the man’s words. Did not trust his voice not to break. When he reached Igor, he dug the muzzle of the gun to the old man’s forehead.

“Down on your knees.”

Four words, and it took everything in him to speak them clearly, calmly, and without stuttering. He didn’t have a speech impediment, but something in Igor always made him lose his breath.

Slowly, Igor did as he was told, raising his arms in the air. His joints squeaked and moaned, like floorboards of an old house, as he descended to the ground. Igor kept his blue eyes on Tiernan. There was hatred there. Pride, too.

“Can I ask one thing?” Igor said.

Tiernan didn’t answer. His enemy was completely calm, and he didn’t like it. Dammit, he should’ve been screaming.

But how had Tiernan not anticipated this? Igor wasn’t a crier, and wasn’t a pussy. Of course he didn’t cry or scream.

“How did you do it?” Igor asked. “How did you escape?”

No answer.

“You know, Worm, every night when you went to bed, I wanted to take you and your sister out. But that year, when you escaped…” Igor trailed off. “I promised myself I was going to put a bullet in both you and your sister as soon as I came back. Had a feeling you were growing too smart and cunning for your own good. And look at you now. You beat me to it.”

Tiernan smiled, then.

“You should be so lucky that I’d put a bullet in your head,” Tiernan’s Russian was impeccable. Smooth and accent-free. Even after all these years of refusing to speak it. “Open your mouth, asshole.”

Igor did as he was told. Tiernan knew better than to damage Igor’s skull—of shooting it—but a little party never hurt nobody.

“You know what rape feels like?” Tiernan asked. It was Igor’s turn to be silent. “Not very fucking good, that’s how.”

And then, he fucked Igor’s mouth with his gun. Hard.

Rammed the muzzle all the way into the back of his throat until he gagged, pulled back, then thrust it inside again. Blood gushed out of Igor’s mouth as Tiernan bruised his mouth. He gurgled choking on it, gasping for air.

“Don’t be such a wuss,” Tiernan groused, reciting the words Igor had told him when he was so young and was forced to fuck whores as punishment. “Take it like a man, Igor. That’s it. Open big and wide for me.”

The next time he shoved the gun into Igor’s mouth, he split both his lips and knocked out a few of his teeth. Tiernan laughed. He wasn’t easily amused, but watching a Rasputin suffer always seemed to do the trick.

“Know what I think?” Tiernan jammed the pistol into Igor’s mouth, cocking it, the silent-but-deadly ringing through the air. Igor fell backwards with a soft gasp. Tiernan crouched down with him, one knee pressing against his neck, cutting off his airway, the gun still in Igor’s mouth. “I think I’m going to do just this to your little Katya once I’m finished with you. Fuck her face with my gun, then pull the trigger.”

Igor’s eyes widened.

Tiernan knew he’d get him to beg eventually. It just turned out not to be for his own life.

He had no intention of raping Katya. In fact, touching any Rasputin voluntarily sounded like an abhorrent idea. But he would kill her. Oh, yes. He would kill all of them. Wipe that DNA off the face of the earth.

Igor shook his head animatedly, murmuring “no, no” around the gun.

“Yes, yes,” Tiernan responded, grinning. “She’ll love it, too. Just like your late wife did…when I killed her.”

Oh, the surprise on his face. That was priceless. But Igor didn’t know, did he? That his precious Natalia didn’t really die from a stray bullet on her Miami Beach vacation. Recognition filled Igor’s frosty eyes, and he tried to buck, fight back. Put his fingers around Tiernan’s neck.

Tiernan simply laughed. It really was pathetic.

“You called me Koschchei growing up.” Tiernan’s cocked pistol traveled from Igor’s mouth down the side of his face. His knee was still pressing against the pakhan’s air pipe. “Deathless. But I don’t think it’s true. I plan to die. Very soon. A year from now, to be exact. But I want you to know.” Tiernan’s gun traveled further south, down Igor’s torso, toward his stomach. “That before I die, I am going to murder your entire legacy with my own fucking hands. No matter the price. No matter the method.”

Pop.

He shot Igor in the kidneys. They exploded immediately. The pain shone in his eyes.

But of course, he raised him well. Tiernan might not be Igor’s son—far from it, in fact—but whether he’d ever admit to it or not, Igor had taught him how to be cruel, deliberate, and malevolent. He was going to die of blood loss, experiencing the most atrocious pain.

And he didn’t have long.

Igor had to choose his last words carefully. He only had a few, and wanted them to have an impact. As his life flashed behind his eyes—eyes that were now seeing nothing but red and shadows—he admitted to himself things could’ve been better.

If he had killed the twins in the womb.

If he had let Lyosha live with him instead of a camp, so they would be more like family and less like a boss and employee.

No matter. He didn’t have time to dwell on that now.

“I put a curse upon you, Tiernan,” he slurred out the words. “That you will fall in love, so hard, so deep, so insanely, that she will take everything from you,” he spat out, his tongue lolling about his now-toothless mouth. “You will lose your most precious thing. Spend the rest of your days with a Cainn Mark upon your forehead. You will not know peace. You will kill the sibling I didn’t get a chance t—”

He would’ve finished that sentence, but there was no point.

Which was why Tiernan decided to put both of them out of their misery and shut him out with a bullet to the throat.

Messy. Gory. And most importantly—a method that’d keep the skull clean and ready to be stripped of flesh.

Tiernan tapped his earpiece, his dead eyes on the body splayed at his feet.

“Tear his body limb from limb. Dump his remains at the Ferrantes’ club’s door, I want them to know what happens to my enemies. And give me his head.”

He walked upon all over his torturer’s back, his wingtips cracking a few useless bones as he leisurely made his way back to his car.

And for the first time in twenty-eight years, he felt alive.