Chapter Vadim
Vadim
Tau had earned his place in the derelict building.
The structure had been chosen for exactly what it was—remote, unremarkable, the kind of place that appeared on no record worth checking.
The walls held damp the way old buildings do, the cold finding every gap in the masonry and settling there permanently.
What remained of the roof offered little shelter from the bitter nights.
The smell had developed its own character over the days—rot, rust and the distinct sourness of a body under sustained duress.
Men who had done this work before stopped noticing it after the first hour.
The newer ones breathed through their mouths and said nothing.
Bogdan had taken his place back at the house. Ruslan and Konstantin had joined today’s proceedings instead.
The click of the lock made me rotate my head in preparation for what the room had become.
Tolam lay curled in the far corner, his clothes torn and dark with blood and other evidence of the days he had spent here.
His breathing was audible from the doorway—shallow and deliberate, the breathing of a man who had learned to conserve everything.
I could see why he had led his organisation.
He had held his tongue longer than most men would have.
But there was a point every man reached eventually, and he was approaching it.
Konstantin crossed to the bucket and filled it from the standpipe with icy water, the sound of it hitting the metal loud in the damp silence.
Tau moved toward Tolam without hurry. He studied him for a moment—the assessment of someone deciding where to begin—then moved away again to collect a length of thick rope from the corner.
Konstantin threw the bucket.
A rude awakening for my guest.
Tolam gasped and tried to curl tighter. Tau nudged him with his boot—not hard, but with the particular patience of someone who had all the time available and knew it—until he lay flat on his back. Then Tau crouched over him and began to work.
Each movement was precise. The rope looped and crossed and looped again with the methodical care of a man following a pattern he knew by heart. Neat. Deliberate. Somehow more unsettling for the neatness of it.
Even Tikhon had stopped in the doorway to watch.
“What fresh fuckery is this?” Konstantin said, scratching his head.
“I like it,” Ruslan said, rubbing his chin with the considered appreciation of a man reviewing a technique worth learning.
“As long as it’s painful,” I said, with a shrug.
“I bet he does this to his women,” Konstantin snickered.
Tau tied a final knot through a loop he had created before he answered.
“It works in business and my personal life,” he said.
The room went quiet.
We looked at each other. Then at Tau. Then at each other again.
Tau never discussed his personal life. We had operated under the reasonable assumption that he didn’t have one—or that whatever he had existed in a compartment so separate from this work that it might as well not exist. The idea of Tau having women.
Having a personal life. Applying the same precise methodology to both.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Tau ignored us all.
He took a fistful of Tolam’s hair and dragged him to the centre of the room without ceremony—the specific efficiency of a man for whom this was simply the next step in a process.
He tossed the rope over the rust-covered metal beam overhead, tested its hold with a single sharp tug, then began to hoist.
Tolam’s face told the story before the sound came—the strain arriving in his expression first, then the sharp hiss of breath as his arms were pulled upward behind him, the position finding every weakened muscle and making its presence known.
Konstantin moved without being asked and took the rope, securing it around a nearby pillar with the knot of a man who had tied things down in various contexts and found the skill transferable.
He didn’t hide the curiosity. Or the faint edge of something that might, in different company, have been called admiration.
“Are you going to take up bondage?” Ruslan asked, catching sight of Konstantin’s expression.
“I don’t need to tie my women down,” Konstantin muttered, watching as Tau crouched and bent Tolam’s legs behind him, beginning to wrap a second length of rope around them with the same methodical precision as the first.
Tolam struggled. What was left of it—the weakened version of resistance from a body that had been here too long. The strain on his face deepened with each additional loop of rope, the position becoming its own instrument without anyone having to touch him.
Tau stood and assessed his work.
“Do you want some time alone with him?” Konstantin asked.
Tau’s glance was brief and entirely disgusted.
“Start heating the coals,” Tau said, pulling a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with the unhurried ease of a man settling in for a long afternoon.
I looked at Tolam’s exposed foot soles and understood immediately what he intended.
“Yes,” I said, moving to stand beside Tau and taking a cigarette from the pack without asking. “The poor man is freezing.”
The brand didn’t matter. I drew the smoke in and let it sit for a moment, my eyes on the soles of Tolam’s feet—pale and defenceless, facing upward, entirely available.
My mind was already on the pain it would produce.
And how long it would last.
??
??
??
“I’m getting hungry,” Konstantin complained.
Ruslan shook his head.
“This is human flesh cooking.”
“What’s your point?”
Tau picked up a fresh piece of coal with the tongs and pressed it against Tolam’s sole. Another roar erupted—raw and animal—his body writhing against the restraints, the movement pulling viciously on his strung arms, the position turning his own resistance against him.
“It was Sergei,” Tolam screamed, his crazed eyes finding mine across the room. “Sergei Dragunov. Betrayed by your own bloodline.”
Maniacal laughter followed. The laughter of a man who had decided that if he was going to break he was going to break with everything.
I stood there.
Sergei.
My father’s younger brother. The uncle who appeared at family occasions with the particular quality of a man maintaining an obligation rather than honouring one.
Kept his distance. Visited twice a year if that.
As far as anyone knew he had been legitimate for twenty-odd years—energy sector, all above board, a quiet departure from the Bratva in the early days after helping our father establish the foundations.
A man who had made his exit cleanly and apparently without grievance.
Apparently.
Another howl of pain.
Tau wasn’t finished.
“He wanted his bastard son to take your place,” Tolam continued, his voice cracking between screams. “He promised me import and export routes. A coalition over European territory.”
“Ruslan.” I turned to my advisor.
He shook his head slowly. “I’ve never heard of a son.”
“The name,” Tau said, pressing the tongs down again.
Konstantin moved without instruction and crouched beside Tolam’s other foot, producing his lighter with the ease of a man who always had one.
“He never told me,” Tolam sobbed. “I swear it. I never met the boy. But he works for the Bratva. He’s inside.”
Inside.
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
I was already turning to Ruslan and Konstantin, the logistics assembling themselves—men to coordinate, locations to check, the precise urgency of moving before the rat sensed the net closing.
Sergei had kept his distance precisely because proximity invited scrutiny.
He had been patient. Twenty years of patience, watching Lev pass everything to Vadim, watching the bastard son he’d fathered in secret accumulate nothing while the legitimate line accumulated everything.
Burning quietly. Feeding Tolam just enough to keep the arrangement alive.
I didn’t know what was worse—betrayal by the brotherhood or betrayal by blood.
No.
I knew.
This was worse.
My own blood had tried to decimate an entire arm of the family tree. Had put a truck through my wife’s car. Had taken my son before he drew a single breath of outside air.
No one knew we had Tolam. The rat was too arrogant to run—arrogance being the specific weakness of men who had been patient for so long they mistook patience for invincibility.
I would find him.
And his spawn.