Chapter Four
Adriana
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “I paid extra for this room. The guy, he said everyone knows not to mess with whoever’s staying in the murder suite.”
Ricky rolls his eyes. How he can look handsome while acting like such a pompous, know-it-all ass — and also be a murderer — is beyond me. Fuck him for being good-looking. Fuck him for what he’s making me feel. Fuck him.
“Those guys aren’t guests, Adriana. They don’t know the rules about the murder suite. Though they are going to break down your door and commit murder in about ten seconds.”
I blink at him. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
“I heard their accents when they were shouting. They’re Russian.”
“And?”
“Maybe I owe a lot of money to the head of the local Russian mob, Ruslan Volkov.”
“I will not let these guys take you. You’re mine, Ricky.
” A fraught decision flies through me at adrenaline speed.
I sigh. “I’m setting you free. Help me fight these guys off, and we can finish what we started after.
” I undo his handcuffs, undo the bindings around his legs. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Ricky stands unsteadily in the tub, flexes his wrists and grimaces. “You got any spare weapons?”
I gesture to the corner, where the dick torture device sits in a jumble. “There’s your weapon.”
He picks it up, turns it over in his hands, winces.
“It’s heavy, and fucking scary as anything I’ve seen.
Send me out there alone, I’ll wave this thing at them; should be enough to send them running once they figure out what it is.
” Taking a closer look, he shudders. “It says ‘Stretcher sold separately’ on it.” Grunting, he hefts it over his shoulder like a heavy club.
From the front room, I hear a heavy, wood-cracking kick being leveled against the door.
“They’ll be in here any second. They’ll want me alive — with the money I owe, Ruslan will not let them kill me until after he collects.
But you… they don’t give a shit about you.
So stay behind me; let me take the brunt of this. ”
The front door shudders, groans, and, with a prolonged, agonizing crack, falls inward. Several sets of footsteps echo through the room, along with raspy voices grunting in Russian. Ricky takes a deep breath, then steps out of the bathroom into the hallway. I stay behind, listening.
“I’m going to give you shits to the count of three to get the fuck out of here, or else I’m going to use this on you,” he says. “One… Two…”
More footfalls as the men come closer. One voice — both smoky and high-pitched, like a soprano singer with a three-pack-a-day habit — answers, “What the fuck is that?”
“Why don’t you take your dick out and let me show you?” Ricky replies.
A moment of heavy silence hits the room out front harder than any impact from fist, foot, or gun. That moment stretches into another, and another, until finally, the smoking soprano Russian says, “You want me to take my dick out? Why do you want access to my penis?”
Another moment of peaceful, disturbed silence.
“Your dick goes in this hole,” Ricky says.
“These clamps go on it. You turn this crank, then this contraption goes down and compresses it, while this poker thing goes in your… well, I don’t know what the fuck it does, and I don’t really want to find out.
But if you come one step closer, I will beat the living piss out of you, and then you’ll learn exactly what this contraption can do. ”
“Enough fucking around. Take him, and don’t let him touch your penis,” says the smokey-voiced one. “And take the contraption, too. Put that in my trunk. It’s mine. Kill everyone else. Mr. Volkov wants no witnesses.”
No sooner do the words land than the room erupts with the sound of violence — thuds, a gunshot, a heavy crash, the sound of something breaking wetly, followed by a thickly accented scream. “He stuck it in my fucking eye.”
Ricky bursts into the bathroom again, blood smeared across his forehead, dripping from his knuckles, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. The device is slung over his shoulder, blood dripping from the tip of the penetrator.
“We need to — ” he starts.
Then the bathroom door bursts inward, three men push their way inside, guns raised, fists up, one with blood dripping from the socket of a mutilated eye.
I raise my knife and leap forward. Screaming, I slash into one, the blade cutting a deep furrow across his forehead.
He staggers backward, clutching at his face, and his gun goes off, the bullet biting into the ceiling and raining moldy drywall down upon us.
I follow him, still slashing, still stabbing.
These men want to take justice away from me.
These men want to rob my sister’s death of any chance of meaning.
I can afford no hesitation — it is either kill them all, or let my little sister down again.
My knife sinks into his chest between his ribs, skittering across bone before slipping through flesh and muscle. Blood burbles in his mouth, and he releases a soft, wheezing moan as he hits the floor.
Behind me, Ricky screams, taking advantage of the small space to use the device as a bludgeon, crowding the Russians, bashing them like a maniac, pressing them so close they don’t have room to raise and fire their guns.
He smacks the one-eyed Russian across the forehead, sending him crashing into the bathroom mirror, which shatters into pieces.
The other Russian swings his gun in retaliation, clubbing Ricky on the back of the head, sending him tumbling into the bathtub.
The Russian grins, raises his gun, finger tightening on the trigger.
I scream and slash. My knife cuts him across the side of his torso, cutting through his jacket, his shirt, the flesh of his flabby midsection.
Blood sprays, he screams, the gun fires and the bullet shatters shower tile and splinters pepper my face.
I shut my eyes and slash blindly again. Hit something.
Deep. Bloody. Someone screams again in Russian.
I open my eyes just in time to see the one-eyed Russian swing a fist at me. It hits. Impacts my jaw, and I gasp and fall backward. My head cracks into the bathroom door, and I land on the cold linoleum floor, the world swimming in a red-tinged haze.
“Fucking cunt,” he says as he towers over me. “Won’t kill you right away. No, I’ll take my fucking time with you. You’ll beg, you’ll moan, but I promise, you will not enjoy it.”
“God, shut the fuck up already,” Ricky yells, loud enough to make the Russian turn his head just a little.
I seize the opening.
“As if anyone would enjoy fucking you,” I snap and lash out with my foot, catching him in the crotch.
His eyes pop wide. I leap forward, letting my momentum carry me and my knife into his midsection.
He mewls as the blade sinks inches deep into the space above his belly button.
Warmth spurts out, soaks my hands, my shirt, my jeans.
I retract the blade, and something red and veiny pokes through the hole, pulsating with the fading heartbeat of the Russian.
He gasps. “What the fuck did you just do?”
“I think I killed you,” I murmur in disbelief while he thuds to the floor.
Blinking, I turn to see Ricky on top of the other Russian, using one chain from the torture device to twist around the man’s neck, squeezing until his eyes are bulging, blood-shot and wild. With a shudder and a violent kick of his left leg, he expires.
“Holy fucking shit,” I whisper as I survey the bloody bathroom of the murder suite. “What the fuck just happened?”
“You’re talking like this is over. It isn’t over,” Ricky says. “This was just the start.”
“What do you mean?”
My question barely leaves my lips before the rapid rat-tat-tat of submachine gun fire tears into the front room.
Growling, Ricky throws an arm over me and pulls me to the floor and covers me with his body.
Even though he smells of old, bad whiskey, blood, and body odor, it’s not an altogether unpleasant experience.
His lips touch my ear, and when the shooting stops, he whispers, “Because these guys never come alone. Not when it’s this much money. They know who you are now.”
“What?”
“You and I are in this together. We’re stuck. And they won’t stop coming for us.”
“Fuck, I didn’t think it was possible to hate you any more than I already did, but I do. I hate you so fucking much.”
“Great. Hold on to that hate, save it for when you get the chance to kill me. But until then, follow my fucking instructions, because I refuse to let Vanessa’s sister die because of my shit.
” He rises just a little, casting a look about the room.
Then he grunts. Outside, I hear more footsteps.
More Russians. More guns. More death. “What floor are we on, Adriana?”
“Second. Why?”
“Because this is going to hurt, but it’s our only fucking option…”
“What’s our only fucking option?”
“We either jump through that fucking bathroom window and run like hell, or we die.”