Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
KIRILL
My knuckles drip with his blood, his body sliced in so many places a medical examiner would have a field day trying to catalog them all.
But despite looking at what I’ve already done to him, I know this is still generous compared to what I have planned next. Even Konstantin’s pigs eating him alive would be kinder than the death waiting for him in this room.
Eventually.
My basement smells like iron and sweat, most of it his.
Eli hangs in the center of the room where we chained him hours ago, his arms stretched above his head so his weight pulls painfully at his shoulders every time his body spasms. His shirt has long since been cut away, leaving his torso open to every slice of the blade and every burn of the torch.
Blood runs down his sides in thin rivers that dribble onto the concrete floor beneath him, pooling in the places where his legs used to end.
Both feet are gone. Sawed off clean hours ago while he screamed until his voice shredded itself raw, the stumps wrapped tightly now with thick cloth and plastic to slow the bleeding.
I even pumped him with antibiotics. The last thing I want is for him to die too soon. Death would be an escape, and I’m nowhere near finished with him yet.
Three hours. And I’m not even tired.
Eli, on the other hand, barely resembles a man anymore. His head hangs forward, hair matted with sweat and crimson, chest heaving in shallow, desperate breaths as he tries to stay conscious, and every time his eyes start to close, I remind him why that isn’t allowed.
He whimpers the second I slap him awake.
“Please…” His words crack apart, barely more than a rasp now. “Just stop…”
My smile grows as I lift the pliers, making sure he can see them through his blurred vision. “This? This is nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.”
He knows what’s coming before the metal even closes around the next fingernail. His whole body starts shaking, panic taking over before I so much as tug.
“No, no, please—”
The nail tears free with a wet snap, and his shriek rips through the basement. I let it ring out while I drop the nail to the floor and calmly move to the next one.
“Stop,” he chokes out, sobbing now, body sagging in the chains like there’s barely anything left holding him up. “Please…just kill me.”
A chuckle slips out. Death would be mercy, and mercy is the one thing he doesn’t get. He took my fucking kids. He hurt my wife. No one survives that.
The next nail comes out slower. I take my time with it, listening to the way he screams, watching his body jerk uselessly against the chains. He’s barely coherent now, shaking, drooling blood and spit down his chin.
When I finish with the last one, I toss the pliers aside and step back, studying the damage like an artist deciding where the next stroke should go. My gun is sitting on the table nearby, and when I pick it up, Eli barely manages to lift his head as I move back toward him.
Then I press the barrel into the deep gash carved across his stomach, pushing it into the open flesh until his body locks and a broken cry escapes.
“Oh God…please…”
I bend closer, close enough that he can see every part of my face and know exactly what’s still waiting for him. “This pain you feel? Multiply it by every second you had my sons.”
His eyes clamp shut and his head tips back. “I didn’t hurt them. I swear I didn’t.”
“But you did.” I drive the barrel deeper, and his screech fills the room.
But all I feel is rage. Rage when I think about what he did to them. The accident. The kidnapping. Sloane bleeding in that car alone until I got to her.
He did that. HIM.
“Stop…please…”
“That’s not happening.”
After that, he starts coming apart completely, each uneven sound dragging through his throat like staying conscious is hurting him.
I stand there watching it happen until, out of nowhere, a weak laugh breaks from him, and it makes me go still.
“Bring…bring her here.”
“What?” His head lifts slightly.
“Eden,” he croaks. “Tell her…I-I know what happened the day her…her mother died.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “What did you just say?”
He swallows thickly. “She’ll want to hear it.”
I slam my fist into his gut. He jerks violently, and a broken grunt leaves him, barely more than a sound.
“You can tell me.”
He lets out a dark snicker. “Fine. Just kill me.”
Fuck.
If this is something that might matter to her, I can’t let this svolich die before he talks.
“You’d better not be saying anything that will hurt her.”
The next punch lands across his jaw, and laughter bubbles weakly through the pain.
I shouldn’t even be entertaining this, but I still remove my phone and call one of the men upstairs. He answers right away.
“Bring Sloane down here.”
“Khorosho.”
I end the call and slide the cell back into my pocket before turning to Eli again.
The tip of the knife drifts down his abdomen. “You’d better pray what you’re about to say is worth keeping you alive for.”
SLOANE
The second Kirill’s bodyguard told me he needed me in the basement, my mind went straight to the worst possibilities.
I know Eli is down there. What I don’t know is why Kirill wants me there too. Does he want me to hear something? See something?
Is Eli dead already? And if he is, do I even want to look at what’s left of him?
By the time one of Kirill’s men leads me down the hall and toward the basement stairs, my stomach is knotted so tight, I grow sick.
The second we start descending, a man screams from below. The sound booms up the concrete stairwell like something torn straight out of a nightmare, filled with pain so deep it makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
My steps falter, but the man ahead of me keeps going. Another scream follows as I take the next step, weaker this time.
Eli. It has to be him.
When we reach the bottom, the man pushes open a heavy door, and the smell hits me before anything else—thick and metallic, blood hanging in the air so heavily it makes me gag.
Then I see him.
My mind won’t make sense of it. The man chained up from the ceiling barely looks human, let alone like Eli. His body is covered in cuts and burns, skin torn open in places, and then my eyes drop lower and…
Oh my God. His feet are gone.
My knees almost give out at the sight, and before I can crumple, strong arms come around me from behind.
“I’m sorry I had to bring you here.” Kirill faces me, lips grazing my forehead, thumbs brushing over my cheeks. “But he had something to tell you.”
He draws to my side while I stare at Eli and wonder what else could possibly be left to say. I think he’s said enough.
Eli gradually lifts his head, his face so disfigured, I barely recognize him.
“You made it, Eden.” He coughs up blood as he attempts a laugh.
My hands begin to shake, but Kirill slips his into mine.
“What do you want, Eli?” I demand.
“You…you should know what happened to…” He fights for the words, blood slipping from the corner of his mouth before he forces the rest out. “…to your mother.”
I know what happened. I pushed her into the water, held her face under before Camille stopped me, and then left her there with my drowning mother.
“What about it? Is this another one of your games? Because that’s over now.”
Kirill’s grip tightens around me.
“No…no games.” He swallows hard. “You didn’t…didn’t kill her.”
I scoff. “Then who did?”
His attention locks on me, and I’m instantly terrified. Then he says the one word that shatters everything.
“Me.”
My body shudders. “That’s not possible. You weren’t there. It was just Camille and me.”
A broken laugh drags out of him. “Camille told you that, and you believed her.”
All the blood leaves my face. “What the hell are you saying?”
“I was the one who held her under.” His body shakes with a groan before he forces himself to go on. “She wouldn’t shut up. Kept talking and talking, so I shoved her face into the water. Your sister helped when she fought me. We both held her there until she stopped moving.”
My stomach drops so fast it's as though the room tilts.
All this time, she not only knew what happened, but actually helped kill our mother and blamed me for it?
My body threatens to give out, but Kirill’s arm locks around me before I can fall.
“No.” I shake my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you even have been there? You didn’t even know Camille.”
He licks blood from his lip and grins, or at least tries to. “We were fucking behind your back for years.”
I pinch the bridge of my noise, everything spinning.
“Your sister came up with it,” he says. “Making you think you killed your mother. She wanted you blaming yourself for the rest of your life. That’s how much she hates you.”
“No.” Tears burn in my eyes. “You’re lying.”
Kirill says something under his breath in Russian that sounds a lot like a curse.
“How else do you think I ambushed you?”
“Oh my God…”
I wrench away and stumble to the nearest garbage can, dry heaving into it while Kirill gathers my hair back from my face.
“You don’t have to hear any more. I will take care of the rest.”
“No.” I wipe my mouth with the handkerchief he presses into my hand and force myself upright. “I want to know. I have to know. If she had anything to do with what happened to our kids, I want to hear every damn word.”
He studies me, then nods once. Together, we turn back to Eli.
“What else did Camille do?”
He looks almost pleased with himself now, probably happy he gets to ruin another part of my life.
“Are you saying she helped you steal our boys?” Kirill grits out.
Eli nods. “It was her idea. She’s diabolical.”
“Oh my God.” My hand flies to my mouth. “Why? What was she getting out of this?”
“Because she wanted me,” he explains, another weak chuckle grating out. “She wanted you gone so the two of us could run off together without you dragging her down.”
Icy dread creeps through me, freezing everything in its path.
“Your sister always wanted more than she had.” Each word is frailer than the last. “When she sent me a picture of you with Kirill at the diner and I told her who he was, she said we could steal from him so we’d have enough money to start over.
She wanted to use you. Thought you were desperate enough to do whatever it took if it meant Milo would be safe.
” He pulls in a shallow breath. “She thought I’d marry her. Isn’t that pathetic?”
A wet, gagging cough spits out of him. Beside me, Kirill goes completely still.
“I already knew about the ledger, so we built the plan from there. But when that failed, she called me the day before the accident and said you were going somewhere.”
Oh my God, why was I that stupid?
“She told me if I followed you out of the house, I could grab the boys. That Kirill would pay for them, and then we could disappear.”
Everything spins, every muscle in my body strung tight while disgust lodges in my throat, unable to believe how deeply she truly hated me. Not only did she want to hurt me, but those sweet babies too? What kind of person does that?
My hands curl at my sides, nails biting into my palms, needing the pain. I can’t breathe. All I can see is her face, and I want to claw it open with my bare hands.
She’s no sister. She’s a monster. A bigger one than I thought.
“Why did Barrett always think I was the rat?” I ask the one thing I’ve never understood.
When Eli doesn’t answer, Kirill steps forward and slams the butt of his gun across his face hard enough that fresh blood bursts from his mouth.
“When my wife asks you a question, you answer it.”
Eli spits onto the floor, choking before he finally manages to speak. “Because I told him it was you.”
“You son of a bitch! I knew it.” My face fills with pure hatred.
“He liked you too much,” he whispers. “I thought he’d replace me with you as his second, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
The room spins again.
I thought my life was bad before, but now…I don’t even know what to think or feel.
My sister’s face flashes through my mind. The way she sounded scared, the way she claimed Eli hurt her for information.
It was all an act.
“If I find out you lied to me, I swear I will rip your eyes out,” I tell him.
“I-I’m not. Go ask her. Let her deny it. But deep down, you know…” He coughs up blood. “You know how much she hates you.”
Ignoring him, I angle toward to my husband. “Take me to see her. I need to look her in the eye when I speak to her.”