23. Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
M y fist crashed into the soon-to-be-dead cartel member sitting before me. With my good eye, I could see he wasn’t doing so hot. His blood was dripping onto the stone floor.
“I don’t have all fucking day,” I growled.
The Venezuelans had gotten too uppity. It was time for someone to take them down a peg. That someone was going to be me.
He spat blood at me. I stood by, unamused, as he cackled. “You can’t stop us. We are already here.”
He threw his head back and laughed. I held myself back from putting a bullet between his eyes.
I gripped his throat, dragging his face in front of me. “What does that mean?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, fool?” He spat on my eye patch.
I was at an end. We’d been interrogating the prisoners for hours. Far longer than I’d promised my malen'kiy angel I would be. I glared at the man in front of me. His existence made me want to tear my remaining eye out .
Stubborn ass. He wasn’t afraid of death. It was why I hadn’t granted him one.
“Sir?” A soldier came into the room.
“What is it?” I didn’t move away from my prey.
“Leverage.”
That had me turning in place and focusing on the grunt in front of me. He walked to me hesitantly, a photo in his hand. I grabbed it from him, and saw the bloody man who sat in the chair behind me, healthy, his arm wrapped around a younger carbon copy of himself.
I spun back to my prey. “I wonder if you would tell me where your boss is, if my men had their way with your son.” I took the photo and caressed his face with it. Soft. Like a lover.
His eyes filled with tears, but I would not be swayed. My men weren’t gay, as far as I knew, but they would carry out my orders without complaint. I’m certain they would even enjoy themselves.
I told my prey that last part and he cracked.
“A-all I know is he’s hiding out in a safe house, somewhere near the Ukrainian border,” he spat.
So they were here. “Not good enough.” I grabbed the high-voltage stun gun that was mounted on the wall. There were many Tasers and stun guns, but this one was my favorite.
“Do you know why this weapon is one of my favorite devices?” I asked my prey.
He shook his head no, blood flying out of his mouth like a rabid dog.
“It’s military grade, and the handle is long enough that I don’t have to be close to you to get the results I want.” I jabbed the device into his leg and watched as his body convulsed before me.
Joy rushed through my veins and a sense of power emboldened me. “Dance, monkey, fucking dance!” I jabbed him in the side of his neck and watched as he urinated on himself .
I cackled with glee, the lights brighter and shinier. “Where is he?” I bellowed, pulling the stun gun off his neck to give him room to relax.
“R-rostov-on-Don,” he coughed out, once he caught his breath. “That’s where you can find him. I’ll draw you a map,” he spat.
I motioned for one soldier to come and grab the stun gun. I pulled a handkerchief out of my shirt pocket and cleaned my fingers off, before handing it off to the nearest grunt.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
He glared at me as he tried to get his hand to work, his nerves completely shot after the last round. His fingers wouldn’t clasp together to grab the pen he was trying to hold onto.
My men waited patiently while he took his time, coughing and wheezing, through the drawing of the map. I rolled my eyes, ready to head out once he stopped being so dramatic. He drew one last shaky line and breathed a sigh of relief.
I smiled inside, knowing he thought this meant I was going to let him go. Sure enough-
“You got what you wanted. Can I leave?”
I chuckled. “Sure you can leave, Jose. Do you mind if I call you Jose?” I knew it wasn’t his name, but I didn’t give two fucks. I motioned to my men.
Two left and came back in, shortly after, dragging a bloody body. My prey whimpered as soon as my men revealed the man’s face. As bloody and smashed in as it was, he looked exactly like Jose.
“I’ll let you leave, Jose. I’m a reasonable man,” I drawled. “Your son can stay in your place.”
I motioned to my men to let my prey go. They walked toward his chair, but he started begging hard.
“Please don’t kill my son. I’ll do anything. Please.” His head hung in defeat .
“Oh, I will not kill your son.” I pulled my gun off my holster and handed it to him. “You will.”
My prey started sobbing. “P-please. We will leave Russia. I didn’t even want to be here.” He cried harder.
His son was barely breathing after the beatdown he’d received from my men. “The clock is ticking. If you want to walk out of here, all you have to do is take your son’s life. But believe me,” I paused, grabbing my lighter and a cigarette from the pack in my pocket, and lighting up. I blew the smoke out slowly into the air with a satisfied sigh. “Only one of you is leaving here alive. Which will it be?”
The man sniveled and sobbed, while his son hung limply between two of my soldiers. He held the gun to his head, praying in Spanish to his God. I smirked, knowing the man would save his son by killing himself. A fitting outcome for them selling drugs on my streets.
In the blink of an eye, the man turned the gun on his son and pulled the trigger, dropping it with a wail and sobbing into the concrete floor. The room was silent as me and my men processed what just happened.
“That’s fucked up,” one of them whispered.
Another went to retrieve my weapon off the floor and handed it to me. I shook off my initial shock. “Well, that was surprising now, wasn’t it?” I asked the sobbing father on the floor.
I walked toward him. He looked up at me, babbling in Spanish, holding his hands between us like a prayer. I held the gun to his forehead as his eyes widened in surprise.
“I guess what they say is false.” I pulled the trigger, and watched his head fly backward and hit the ground. “Blood isn’t thicker than water.”
I tucked my gun back into its holster and left the room. It was time to take out the man who was causing all these problems to begin with. The one who called himself a father to my malen'kiy angel.