The house was even nicer on the inside than it was on the outside, and that infuriated Paul as he peered through the windows.

“Are you sure this guy can disable the alarm?” Paul asked, looking up from his cupped palms at his partner, who was leaning against the wall, looking at his phone.

“Relax, bro, my boy Trev’s got this.”

Paul took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. He glanced again through the window, staring at a painting on the far wall of a landscape. Paul didn’t know fuck all about art, but it looked expensive. And he wanted it. He’d make sure to take that, even if he had to cut it out of the fancy looking frame it was in.

The click of a lighter brought his attention back to Ken. “The hell are you doing?” He asked, snatching the cigarette from his partner’s lips before the idiot could light up his smoke.

“What?” Ken asked.

“You wanna leave DNA everywhere?”

“They can’t pull DNA off a cig.”

“You wanna take that chance?” Paul emphatically pointed at him with the cigarette. Ken looked like he wanted to argue, but he kept his dumb mouth shut for once and pushed the accusatory cigarette out of his face. “That’s what I thought,” Paul muttered as Ken turned his attention back to his phone.

“Dunno what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t rat you out if I got caught,” Ken retorted, not looking up from the glowing screen in his gloved hands.

Paul nodded, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. It was true, and the whole reason they were there. Jeremy Simmons had thrown them under the bus and walked away scot-free with all the money the three of them had stolen. Twelve years later, the vast majority of that spent in jail, and Paul and Ken were back for revenge, and to get what was theirs.

“Alright, we’re in.” Ken lowered his phone and grabbed a crowbar. With practiced ease, he popped the window open. Paul held his breath, waiting for the sound of an alarm, but it never came. “Let’s go,” Ken said, slipping in through the window.

Paul looked at the cigarette still in his hand, and then jammed it in his pocket before following. Ken was already opening the front door, and Trevor, also dressed in all black strode inside, high-fiving Ken as he waltzed through the door.

“That’s my guy!”

“I do what I do,” Trevor said. “Now let’s take everything we can get out hands on.”

“Nicely done.” Paul hadn’t liked Trevor from the moment Ken had introduced them, for no particular reason he could put his finger on, but he had to give the guy his due for coming through and shutting off the alarm. Trevor didn’t seem to be a big fan of Paul’s either, and he didn’t acknowledge the praise, heading straight for the stairs. He gave Ken a look, but his partner just shrugged and followed Trevor upstairs. Paul decided to let them have the second floor, and he began making his way around the ground floor.

He meandered aimlessly, more admiring than actually taking anything. The furniture was nice, but not worth the hassle of cramming into their van and trying to pawn. All the real valuables would be upstairs, but he was content to let them do their thing. He just wanted a sense for the man that was Jeremy Simmons. He couldn’t picture the man he’d worked with over a decade ago the type to be living large in a mansion. The pristine white carpet seemed incongruous with the man whose tiny apartment once had roaches eating leftover food off the gross bare floors. The fine art on the walls didn’t match with the memory of sports illustrated swimsuit edition pages stapled to the walls of his bedroom. But the woman in the photos with the cleaned up version of Jeremy, while not a swimsuit model by any means, was still a classy dame in her evening dresses as she hung on his arm behind glass in nice frames on the mantle. She was very much not the sleazy, tattoo covered, meth teethed bitches Jeremy seemed to always have around. Jeremy had changed. A new emotion permeated in Paul as he stared at a picture of Jeremy and the woman who appeared to be his wife judging by the rings on their fingers on a beach somewhere. The rage he’d been feeling while peering through the windows was slowly giving way to jealousy. Jeremy had it all, and it had only cost twelve years from both Paul and Ken.

Paul gripped the picture tighter, pushing his thumbs into Jeremy’s smugly smiling face until the glass cracked. “You fucking prick.” He hurled the picture at the floor, the glass shattering into a thousand shards, gleaming in the fibers of the white carpet.

“Whoa, you breaking or are you taking?”

Paul spun, suddenly aware of how fast his heart was racing, and then he froze.

Ken was standing on the landing of the stairs. At first Paul thought the thing slung over his shoulder was a sack, and his friend was slinking down the stairs like the Grinch having stole Christmas, but the thing over his shoulder was no sack. A pair of bare legs flailed up and down, bare feet wiggling. The legs lead up to a rather shapely bottom barely covered by thin white panties.

“The fuck is that?”

“Oh, this?” Ken slapped the ass draped over his shoulder, and a muffled squeal came from behind him. “Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Simmons.” Ken turned, revealing the other half the woman he was carrying. Her matching white nightgown was hanging down over her head, leaving just her brown locks on display hanging beneath the hem, but above that duct tape circled her bare midsection and held her taped wrists behind her back.

Even with such a limited view and at such an odd angle, Paul immediately recognized her curves from the photo he’d just thrown on the floor. “Nobody was supposed to be home!” he hissed, suddenly feeling compelled to whisper.

“Well, our good buddy Jeremy isn’t home. But he’s in for quite the surprise when he gets back.”

“This wasn’t— This isn’t— We weren’t supposed to—”

“Relax, Paul, plan’s change.”

The plan had been to just break in and steal some stuff. Just a little fuck you to the guy who had fucked them, something small that wouldn’t attract attention back to them. Kidnapping was certainly not something small. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

Trevor appeared on the landing behind Ken. He did have a big black bag slung over his shoulder, presumably filled with ill-gotten goods. “I thought you said this guy was cool,” Paul heard him say to Ken.

“He is cool. Paul, what’d you think we were going to do? Steal some art, take some of the missus’ jewelry?” There was an indignant squeal from the woman over his shoulder. “That shit is all insured anyways. It wouldn’t hurt Jeremy. He wouldn’t even notice.”

Realization dawned on Paul. This had been the plan all along. And he’d been left out of it.

“We gotta go,” Trevor said.

“Paul, just come on, we gotta get out of here.”

He wanted to ask what the plan was then? Was it a ransom? Because if so, they were not equipped to get away with a ransom. He barely felt like they were equipped for a simple burglary. Was it revenge? He didn’t want to know if it was.

Trevor moved around Ken and Mrs. Simmons, taking the stairs two at a time and heading straight for the door.

“Paul.”

Paul looked back up at Ken. His best friend. An idiot at times, an asshole more than that, but loyal. The cops had gotten to Ken first and tried to get him to roll over on Paul and Jeremy, but Ken had kept his mouth shut. “Jesus Christ.” For better or worse, he wasn’t going to be left at the crime scene. Shaking his head, Paul ran for the door after Trevor.

The van was already running, the back doors open. Paul jumped in, kicking aside the bag of loot Trevor had deposited inside. He watched Ken jogging up to the back, panting from carrying his burden. He unceremoniously dumped Mrs. Simmons inside, and Paul finally got a good look at her.

Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, tears running down her face. Duct tape had been sloppily wrapped around her mouth several times. Her nightgown was bunched up where more tape had been bound around her waist, and she was trying to maneuver her legs up under herself to preserve her modesty.

She looked at Paul. He wished he’d worn a mask as she stared at him with those desperate green eyes of hers. He wanted to apologize; it wasn’t her fault. He wanted to look away. But he just sat there, making unbroken eye contact with the woman he’d unwittingly helped kidnap, until Ken climbed into the back and slammed the door behind him.

“Let’s examine the goods.” Ken pulled the helpless woman up onto his lap, roughly groping at her breasts while he wrapped his arms around her. She cried out through her gag, struggling and squirming in his lap.

“Don’t do that,” Paul said.

“I’m just having a little fun,” Ken said, pulling her boobs out of the flimsy garment. “She’s having a good time, aren’t you, gorgeous?”

“Mmmmph!” she cried, struggling as her captor rolled her nipples between his fingers.

Paul wrenched his eyes back up from her breasts to Ken’s eyes.

“Oh, they’re all real. At least our money didn’t go to buying you some great, big, fake ta tas.”

“Ke—“ he bit his tongue before he could finish using Ken’s real name. Not that mattered; none of them were wearing masks. That meant one of two things. Either Ken was a lot dumber than he gave him credit for. Or Mrs. Simmons was not going to live to pick them out of a line up. “Kemosabe, you want to leave her alone?”

Ken snorted laughing. But he did stop pawing at his captive. “Yeah, alright ‘Partner.’ We were just having a good time.”

Paul shook his head. “You should have told me.”

“You would have said no.” Ken’s hands returned to the woman’s boobs, unable to help himself.

“Exactly.”

“Look, you want what’s yours, right?” When Paul didn’t answer straight away, he grabbed his captive’s chin and forced her to nod for emphasis. “Right?”

“Yeah, but not like this.”

“Well there was only one thing in that house to steal that comes close to being worth what that bastard owes us. And she’s right here.” He bounced his prop, jiggling her boobs. “So in a way, I didn’t actually lie to you. I don’t think I did, anyways. Is hubby going to pay up to get you back?”

“Ppmmmph!” the gagged woman cried.

“He might not. Do you know what a selfish bastard your husband is?”

The woman slammed her head back. Ken narrowly leaned back in time to protect his nose. “Whoa! This bitch has got some spunk.” He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back, leaning over her upward pointed face. “Be careful, tits. You don’t have to go home in mint condition.”

Her eyes widened in fear, and a low whimper escaped her gag.

“Stop torturing her.”

Ken shoved her away. She fell to her knees and sprawled face first into Paul’s lap. “Looks like she wants to show her gratitude to her knight in shining armor.”

Paul ignored him and helped her sit on the floor. He reached for the tape around her mouth and started trying to pull it down. There was a lot more of it and it was a lot tighter than her expected.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting her talk,” Paul said, trying to get under the edge of the tape while she craned her neck up to make it easier for him.

“Why? What’s she going to say that’s going to make you make you feel better about this?”

Paul considered this. If anything, letting her speak would only make him feel guiltier. “Fuck you.” He said, resuming removing the tight tape gag. He got his fingertips under the edge and pulled it down. She squinted her eyes and moaned in pain as the sticky tape clung to her face. Paul wanted to apologize, but the pain of the tape was the least of her problems. She opened her mouth and retched, spitting out a crumpled, wet mass of fabric.

“Thank you,” she said, still working her jaw. Paul wished he had some water to give her. He glanced at Ken, who had leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head, watching with an amused smile on his face. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked when none of her kidnappers said anything. She looked at Paul, beseechingly.

He didn’t have an answer for her, and he didn’t want to tell her any of his theories about what his cohorts might have in store for her. “What’s your name?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Ken spoke. “Humanize her, smart.”

“What’s your name?” he asked again, softer this time.

“Beth.”

He realized he didn’t know what to do with this information, or what to say or ask next.

“Please, don’t hurt me.”

“See, now she thinks you’re going to hurt her,” Ken said, the smug smile on his face only growing.

It took a lot to ignore him. Paul clenched his fists and took a deep breath before speaking. “I don’t want to hurt you.” From the terrified look on her face, she wasn’t convinced. “We knew your husband. Did he ever tell you how he got his money?”

“In the stock market...” There was a hint of questioning in her wavering voice.

“Wrong!” Ken shouted. “We stole it! Five hundred thousand dollars. A half a million! And your bastard husband ratted us out and the feds only recovered a fraction of it and he kept the rest!”

Paul couldn’t help but feel the rage building back up as he was reminded of why’d they’d done this in the first place, and the compassion he felt for the terrified woman before him waned in equal measure.

“I— I didn’t know!” she stammered.

“You didn’t want to know,” Ken said.

“Please,” she looked pleadingly at Paul.

He still had no words. He kept reminding himself that this was not her fault, not her responsibility.

“You’re done talking,” Ken said, leaning over and grabbing the drool soaked cloth that had been used to gag her before off the dirty van floor.

“Please, I’ll be quiet!”

“Don’t put that filthy thing back in her mouth,” Paul said, finding a little pity for her again.

Ken shook the thing out, dirt and debris flying off. As the dirty white cloth unfurled, Paul realized it was a pair of panties. “If you insist. But the only other panties we have are the ones you’re wearing.” Ken grabbed her, clamping his hand on his mouth and pulling out a pocketknife. She screamed into his hand as he hooked the knife under one side of her satin underwear.

“Jesus man, the fuck are you doing?” Paul lunged forward seeing the knife, and as Ken cut through the fabric he pointed the blade at Paul. Paul held his hands up and slid back in his seat.

“Back off,” Ken growled, tightening his grip around his captive’s face, holding the terrified woman close.

“Really? You’d stab me?”

“You don’t get it Paul.” Paul’s lips tightened at Ken’s use of his name, but it didn’t matter much at that point. “You’re not the knight in shining armor. You’re not a good guy. You’re a criminal. You spent twelve years in jail. For a crime you committed. And you came here tonight to commit a crime. So stop fucking acting like you have a conscious.” He slowly lowered the blade.

“There’s a line,” Paul said slowly.

“No there’s not.” He switched grip and cut the other hip of Beth’s panties. She squealed as he grabbed the front and yanked them up from between her legs. He kept his eyes locked on Paul’s as he balled them up. He seemed to be daring his friend to stop him as one at a time he lifted his fingers from her mouth. Paul looked back, unblinking but unmoving, as his partner started cramming the shredded undergarments into the woman’s mouth. He grabbed the curled and twisted band of tape from around her neck and pulled it up, wedging it between her teeth. “We’re not good people,” he said, grabbing her and hauling her back into his lap. One hand immediately found it’s way back to her breasts, while the other plunged between her legs. “We can do whatever the fuck we want.”

Paul watched as his friend groped and fingered the innocent woman. He never broke eye contact with Ken, but he could feel Beth’s eyes boring into him while she screamed into her panty gag for help. He watched, knowing that even though he hadn’t touched her, he was complicit in her sexual assault. He didn’t feel like he was sticking it to her husband. At a certain point as her moans and muffled yelps became monotonous in the back of the van, he stopped even feeling bad for her. It was just a thing that was happening in front of him.

Trevor took a sharp turn onto an off ramp and Ken let go off his plaything to stabilize himself, and she was once more thrown onto the floor at Paul’s feet.

“You want a turn with her?” Ken asked, grinning at him. Paul didn’t respond. “She’s all warmed up for you.” He sniffed his wet fingers that had been buried deep in her snatch, and then held them in front of Paul’s face. His dirty fingers were slick with her juices, and Paul caught a strong whiff of her musky fragrance. He pushed Ken’s hand away. “Come on, when was the last time you got your dick wet?”

He’d a few chance encounters in the last few months since getting out, but things had been different since getting out of prison. He attributed it to age, just another ravage of time he’d missed out on from the twelve years of his life he’d lost, and he’d just have to get the pills they advertised for on porn sites.

“You’re no fun.” Ken leaned over for the prone captive when the van took another sharp turn, and he lost his balance and landed on top of her. She squealed into her gag. “You’d rather have me inside you anyways, wouldn’t you?”

“Nnnmmppphhh! Plmmmph nnnmff!” she screamed, shaking her head. The van turned onto a gravel road and Ken started bouncing on top of her, laughing. They were getting close to Trevor’s safe house.

Paul looked away, staring at a mark on the side of the van behind where Ken had been sitting. He’d gotten a lot of practice at staring at a single spot. Even still, he could see that Ken at least hadn’t taken his clothes off as he dry humped and groped his hostage on the floor until the van finally came to a stop. Paul immediately got up and jumped out of the back of the van. He ran into Trevor coming back from the front.

“Watch it,” Trevor said, shoving him.

Paul grabbed him by his shirtfront and slammed him into the side of the van. “Don’t touch me.”

Trevor looked like he wanted to say something, but the look on Paul’s face must have made him think twice, because he shut his mouth.

Paul let him go and headed for the house, the muffled screams of Beth Simmons echoing out of the van behind him. He went inside, making it all the way upstairs before the door opened again and once more he could hear the helpless woman screaming into her panties as she was carried inside. The thief turned kidnapper locked himself in the bathroom and turned on the shower, drowning out her cries. He stood in front of the mirror, looking at his reflection.

“There is a line.” The words felt hollow coming out of his mouth. He splashed water on his face and went back downstairs.

Trevor had Beth bent over the back of the couch. She’d lost the rest of her nightgown, and Trevor had taken his pants off. His back was to Paul, and his attention was totally focused on the woman he was raping.

He didn’t see Paul grab the loose, broken railing. He didn’t hearing the snap of breaking wood as Paul tore the wooden pole free over Beth’s frantic screaming. He did, however, feel the hard rod connect with the back of his head. He slumped forward, pressed harder into the terrified woman. A guttural cry of pain and shock escaped his mouth before Paul hit him again.  The third strike killed him, and he died still inside her, his dick rapidly shriveling as the blood pumped out of his head wounds, and he fell to the floor with a thump.

Beth looked back over her shoulder, her bloodshot eyes wide above her gag. Paul looked at her, the man on the floor, and then at the piece of railing in his hand.

“What the fuck?”

Paul turned slowly to see Ken standing in the door, even as Beth tried to shout a warning for him.

“I never liked him,” Paul said.

“What the fuck?” Ken repeated. He was holding a roll of tape in one hand, and a beer in the other. “You killed him.”

“Probably. What does it matter? We’re bad people, remember? We can do whatever we want.”

Ken took a step back, adjusting his grip on the beer bottle, cheap lager spilling on the floor as he prepared to use the bottle as a weapon if he had to. “You going to try and kill me too? Over some bitch you don’t even know?”

Paul shrugged. Beside him, Beth was trying to stand up, but he easily pushed her back down over the back of the couch with his free hand.

“I could‘ve taken that deal and ratted you out to the feds just as easy as Jeremy did,” Ken reminded him.

“Me too. But that’s when I thought there was a line we didn’t cross. Now apparently there isn’t.”

“This is different.” Even as he tried to argue, he dropped the tape and was reaching for the knife in his pocket.

Paul struck first. Ken got the bottle up, but it shattered into a thousand tiny shards of amber glass, and the railing connected with his forehead. Ken crumpled to his knees, his arms up trying to block the blows, but Paul kept hitting him. Over and over. He felt good, powerful. He felt actually free for the first time since getting out of prison. The blood was flowing, both from his friend’s face and in his dick.

He dropped the bloody wooden rod, it having served its purpose. Beth was still folded over the couch, her ass jiggling as she swung her head from side to side trying to look back, her bound hands fidgeting and grasping. She craned her neck, making eye contact with him. Through her gag he could make out the grateful “aaahnnkk ooo”s, but even garbled as they were, distorted through her panties, there was a hint of uncertainty.

“Don’t thank me yet.” He dropped his pants, his erection springing free of its confinement. He couldn’t remember ever being this hard. Raw virility coursed through his veins.

Beth tried to wiggle over the couch, her legs flailing and kicking in the air. She almost managed to slide over the front when he grabbed her ankles, pulling her back. “You’re not going anywhere.” He grabbed her hips, holding her down while he penetrated her. She screamed into her gag, bucking and struggling under him. It felt even better when she struggled. “Go ahead and fight,” he told her as he thrust deep into her. “Scream and beg and plead.”

Her muffled cries fueled him. He grabbed her and threw her bodily over the back of the couch onto her back and climbed over after her. Paul wanted to look her in the eyes while he took her. He peeled his shirt off with one hand while he forced her legs apart with the other. The helpless woman shrieked, closing her eyes and turning her head away, burying her face in the back of the couch. He grabbed her face, turning her back to him. “Look at me.”

She kept her eyes screwed shut.

“Look at me!”

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked into her savior-turned-rapist’s eyes. Paul didn’t even care that she was the man who’d sent him to prison’s wife. That wasn’t important. There was no line, and he was doing what he wanted. And he wanted to fuck this woman.

“Look me in the eyes.” His strong fingers wrapped around her throat while he pounded her pussy. He wasn’t a good person. He wasn’t capable of saving this woman. He recognized that now. And this was so much better.