17. Damian #3
The guards shut the lights off, except for a dim one at the far side of the room where they watch.
It makes time feel as if it moves differently—there are no windows in this room, so I have no idea how long I’ve been in this cell, no idea how long I was out cold for.
It might have been hours, or it could have been days.
I feel sure that it can’t have been more than a day or two, at most, if even that long—as soon as we didn’t make it back, Konstantin would have started mobilizing. And he will find us.
The question is whether or not he’ll find us in time to save Sienna, or whether I can get out of here in some fashion in time to do so myself.
My body aches from the taser, my throat is sore from screaming, and I’m exhausted, but that doesn’t stop me from pacing my cell, testing every bar, the lock, looking for any weakness that I can exploit.
Every second that passes is another second that Sienna is in danger, and I can’t abide that.
I can’t let that go on any longer than I have to.
I have to get to her.
There’s nothing in the cell for me to use.
No bed, no toilet, no sink. Nothing but cold, hard floor and bars all around me.
Nothing for me to use. They’re smart enough, at least, not to give me any means to try to escape, which is maddening.
All I can do is pace like a caged animal, running through possibilities in my head, trying to come up with a strategy.
At some point, what feels like hours after Sal left and the dead body of the guard was taken away, I hear footsteps in the corridor again. Multiple sets, moving with purpose.
There are eight guards, with Sal bringing up the rear. “Get him out,” Sal says flatly. “Shoot him if he moves. Somewhere non-lethal and non-vital, but shoot him all the same.”
So they want me alive, at least for now. That’s useful to know .
One of the men unlocks the door, the others forming a wall to keep me from making a break for it.
They’re all armed, but don’t have their weapons in hand.
Smart . Harder for me to disarm them, but I don’t doubt that if I put a foot wrong, any one of them could have their gun out and shooting before I could stop them all.
Even if I stopped the first one, that would give the others time to disable me.
I can’t help Sienna if I’m injured. I have to be smart about this. I need to bide my time, even if I want to tear all of these men apart from head to toe, rip them to pieces like an animal.
“What’s this?” I growl as two of them enter with handcuffs, and Sal chuckles, that grin firmly back on his face.
“Boss wants to see you.” Sal shrugs. “You’ll find out why soon enough.”
I could try to fight them. I fucking want to. Even outnumbered, even without weapons, I could take out a few of them before they brought me down. But if I’m hurt…
They’ll hurt Sienna. I can’t help her if I’m caged again. If I’m disabled. I have to wait.
I’ve never had a hard time with strategy before, with cold calculations and caution.
The irony of it is almost laughable. Just when I need my years of training and cold brutality the most, I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams, like I’m nothing but a beast made of rage, all because of one woman.
A woman I never expected to meet in my life.
I let them cuff my hands behind my back and lead me through a maze of corridors that smell like mold and decay.
This is the kind of place where people disappear forever, where screams echo off concrete walls until they fade into nothing.
This is a torture chamber, an executioner’s haven, a place for blood and fear and death.
And now, something else, too—a hub to trade flesh, a place to move women who won’t be missed.
Except Sienna has someone who will miss her. Someone capable of doing something about it. And they picked the wrong man to take her away from.
The room they lead me to is one smaller than the room that the cells were in, with a chair in the center and a bright, dangling bulb overhead, the naked light after hours in dimness enough to make my eyes water.
I already know what sort of place this is—an interrogation room.
I’ve spent plenty of time in rooms like these, but it’s the first time I’ve been on the opposite side of the equation.
I’m not at all looking forward to the experience.
And then, I see who is waiting for me, standing to the left of the room flanked by several guards.
Fury jolts through me, rage boiling my blood all over again as I see Giovanni Russo standing there in the flesh, silver-haired and dressed in a clean, tailored suit, his Italian leather shoes gleaming and his bearing that of a man who believes with absolute arrogance that he deserves to rule the world.
"Damian Kutnezsov." His voice is pleasant, like he's greeting an old friend. "So good to see you again.”
“Where is she?” I growl. I don’t give a fuck about pleasantries, while Sienna is locked somewhere in this hellhole.
Giovanni’s face remains locked in a cool, pleasant expression. "Your wife? She's safe. For now."
I lunge against the guards holding me, my teeth bared. "If you've hurt her?—"
He chuckles, looking pointedly at the several sets of hands holding me back, the handcuffs on my wrists. "You'll what? You're hardly in a position to make threats." He nods to the guards. “Sit him down. We need to have a chat.”
I struggle. It’s not in me to do otherwise, to allow myself to be marched to the place I’m told to sit without resistance.
But there’s very little I can do, bound and outnumbered.
It takes longer than Giovanni would like, I’m sure, but I’m finally shoved down into the chair, locked down twice over with a second set of handcuffs on each wrist, binding me to the back of the chair.
Giovanni circles me at a wide berth, like a predator sizing up wounded prey. I sit motionless, glaring at him with a furious stare. “Let’s hear what you fucking have to say, Russo,” I growl. “I don’t have all fucking day.”
He laughs at that, a full-bellied, genuine laugh. “I like you, Kutnezsov,” he says with a grin. “I wish I had a man like you working for me.”
I twist to see if Sal is in the room; if he heard that. I hope he fucking did.
“I’d never work for a piece of shit like you,” I snarl. “I don’t hurt women. I don’t use them for my pleasure and then sell them off, and I sure as shit don’t trade in flesh. I’d never follow your orders, Russo.”
He chuckles, amusement in every line of his face.
This is a game to him, and it only makes me more furious.
“Don’t you, Kutnezsov? Use women? Or are you going to sit there and tell me that you haven’t touched that pretty, convenient wife of yours?
That you married her to keep us from silencing her and have kept your bed cold and chaste?
” He steps closer, his smile turning cruel.
“Are you going to tell me that you haven’t found out how something so sweet tastes? ”
Guilt sears through me, all of it flooding up at once like bile.
Young. Innocent. Sweet. Dependent on me.
I got off on it. I let her get on her knees and I filled her mouth with my cum and I came harder than I ever have in my fucking life, knowing she was inexperienced and trainable and too young for me.
I treated her like a toy, rationalizing that if I never fucked her, that made it better.
Giovanni sees the guilt on my face. He laughs again.
“Of course, you’re too good of a man to touch a woman who married you for fear of her life, right?
But it’s a shame if you didn’t. You’ll have to watch all of my men enjoying what you didn’t take for yourself.
Unless, of course, you’re willing to consider changing sides.
Come and work for me, Kutnezsov, and we can talk. ”
I can feel my hackles rising, fury coursing through me. “I told you, Russo. I’d never work for a dog like you. ”
“No?” Giovanni smirks. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind watching your ‘wife’ being fucked by my men, as a reward for their hard work, before I sell her off to some third-world hellhole to work in a brothel until she dies.
I have several men here, I’m sure each of her holes will get at least four men apiece.
It shouldn’t bother you at all, since you didn’t want her. ”
It feels as if something snaps in my brain every time he threatens her, like a piece of my control breaks with every word.
I lunge against the cuffs, nearly shooting to my feet with the chair still bound to me, before the guards close in and shove me back down.
“I swear to fucking Christ, Russo—” I snarl, the words guttural as they pour from my throat.
“I’ll see you in pieces if you lay so much as a finger on my wife?—”
Giovanni looks unfazed. “Your wife. You keep saying that, Kutnezsov, but I question the legitimacy of it. We’ve questioned that priest who oversaw your marriage.
It seems that there was no real passion, no genuine love between the two of you.
” He smiles, cruel and amused. “You married her to keep her out of our hands. I don’t like being managed, Damian.
Can I call you Damian? You’re in a position of subservience to me now, after all.
And if you don’t want your wife to become a toy for my men before I sell her off to some warlord in another country, or a brothel where men like to see how many pieces they can carve off of a woman while they fuck her, you’ll think very carefully about what I’m going to say. ”
“I’m not the one who should think carefully,” I growl, but he doesn’t miss a beat.