Chapter 19 #2
When I start to walk towards him, Damien says, “We took his laptop and phone. I’m going to fly out later today and give it to Niki myself.”
Tom’s eyes dart around the room, watching and listening even though he doesn’t understand a word of what we’re saying.
His blond hair is cut short, his clothes about as preppy as you can get, and there’s a sneer to his mouth that reminds me of all the spoiled little fucks I went to high school with.
He’s the kind of guy who will always look down on others, no matter how much money they have, no matter where they’re from—if you don’t fit his exact criteria, then you’ll always be below him.
I’m guessing my tattooed, law-breaking family doesn’t check a single one of his boxes.
Even though he doesn’t have a gag, he’s not saying a word, not screaming in fright, not begging to be released, just silence. I’m curious to see how long he can hold out.
Not wasting any time, I step closer and ask, “Who’s Cupid?”
He lifts his eyes to mine, but keeps his mouth shut. I point my knife at him. “You’re the one who gets to decide how bloody this gets, Tom. I can make your death as quick and painless as possible, or I can make it so that you slowly bleed out all over the goddamn floor. Your choice.”
When he still doesn’t say anything, I grab his zip-tied wrists and haul his ass up. He doesn’t fight me when I drag him to the nearest hook that’s hanging from the ceiling and attach his wrists to it so he’s hanging with just the tips of his toes hitting the ground.
“Still don’t want to talk?” I ask.
He finds his voice and says, “I can’t tell you anything, so you might as well kill me now.”
“Don’t rush me, Tom. We’re just getting started.
” I let him see how sharp my knife is as I cut through his nice Polo shirt.
Hanging from a hook in a warehouse full of Bratva men is bad enough, but doing it naked is a whole other experience.
I can feel the change come over Tom as I start to strip him.
There’s a vulnerability to being naked that usually tips people over the edge and gets them talking, and sure enough when I cut through his plaid boxers, he opens his mouth.
“I’m not being stubborn,” he insists. “I genuinely don’t know anything. I would tell you if I did.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I say, ripping the last bit of fabric from his body and then relieving him of his socks and shoes. “The problem is that I don’t believe you. You’re the one he got in contact with. You’re the one in direct communication with him.”
I step back and run my eyes over Tom. “You really should’ve eaten more protein when you had the chance, Tom. You are skin and bones.”
Despite what he might think, I take no pleasure in exposing a man’s dick and making him feel weak and useless.
I don’t feel bad about it, but I’m not getting off on it either.
It doesn’t excite me the way stabbing him will, but what I told my uncle is true.
I really doubt I get hard from it. Cyn hasn’t taken away my need for this, but she has changed it.
There’s no longer any sexual arousal at what I’m about to do, but I do still love the control, and I’m still fascinated by how the body works and how the mind cracks when the body breaks.
“What were they going to do with all those women?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says.
My Uncle Matvey says from behind me, “The fuck you don’t. We’ve been around enough sex-trafficking bastards to know what we saw last night. Who were you planning to sell those girls to?”
“I don’t know,” Tom insists. “He doesn’t tell me anything like that. He contacts me and lets me know where I can pick up the pills, and then it’s up to me to sell them. I don’t know anything beyond that.”
I do a slow circle around him, and when I see his bony ankles, I can’t resist running my knife along the tendon that’s so clearly visible.
Tom screams as I do first the left ankle and then the right.
He flails on the hook as blood oozes from the deep gashes.
He can no longer use his toes for support, so he swings gently on the hook while his feet flop uselessly beneath him.
“I’d like you to think a little bit harder,” I tell him. “You see, the reason I’m so pissed about this is that my fiancée was one of the girls that was taken last night.”
“Oh fuck,” he whimpers, finally realizing the trouble his ass is in.
“Yes,” I agree. “Oh fuck.” I walk around and face him again. “Where were they going to take her?”
“I didn’t know they were going after your girl. I just orchestrate the drug sales. I don’t check who they’re using them on. How can I possibly control something like that?” he asks, pleading with me for understanding.
“Oh, I don’t know,” my Uncle Vitaly says, “maybe don’t sell roofies to douchebags who are going to rape women.”
“That’s a good point,” my Uncle Roman says. “You got your ass into a nasty business, Tom. Makes me wonder about the kind of guy you are.”
“I’d say he’s the kind of guy who can’t get laid unless the poor girl is unconscious,” Mia says.
Tom’s face is growing paler by the second, and a light sheen of sweat has already broken out all over his face. The pain must be intense, but it’s not unbearable, not yet anyway.
“Who are you to judge me?” he snarls at us, letting the pain fuel his superiority complex. “Like everything you do is legal.”
“We don’t drug and rape women, you sick fuck,” my dad says.
“And we don’t sell them,” my Uncle Matvey adds, “but we enjoy killing the men who do.”
I shrug at Tom and run my knife over his hip, giving him a deep cut that bleeds a lot faster than his torn Achilles. When he’s done screaming, I say, “Some sins are worse than others. My family happens to think abusing women and children is as low as you can get. How unfortunate for you, right?”
“I don’t hurt kids,” he gasps around the pain.
“But, Tom,” I tell him, “you don’t know what they do with the pills after you sell them, remember? How do you know who’s being drugged?”
“There are rules,” he says in a shaky voice.
“Such as?” I ask.
I let Tom catch his breath, but my patience isn’t infinite, and when he starts to take too long, I bring the knife to his other hip to get him to hurry up.
“Wait,” he begs. “Just please wait a second.”
I give him ten before I start to cut. As soon as the knife pierces skin, he starts babbling.
“Girls,” he says in a rush, “young women only and pretty. College girls.”
“So Cupid has a preference after all. What are his exact instructions to you?”
“To sell the pills and to make sure we don’t get caught.
A few of the frat guys were given special instructions to find a specific girl and drop them off at the house you raided last night.
Once they did it, they got paid. Only a few guys knew about it, though.
For everyone else, it was just selling the pills. That’s all I know. I swear.”
“And you told them to use our club? Not a very wise decision. Why our club?” I ask.
“That’s just where Cupid said to go. I think it’s just because it’s the most popular club near campus.”
“And your girlfriend Christine is there to help you all out by leaving the side door open,” I say. I give a soft laugh and add, “I killed your girlfriend last night, by the way. It did not take her long to rat your ass out.”
“Fucking bitch,” he groans as more blood cascades down his legs to join the ever-widening puddle beneath him. “Cupid would’ve had her killed for talking if you hadn’t done it for him.”
“We’re going to find him,” I tell Tom. “We have your laptop and phone, and our cousin is a hell of a lot smarter than this fuck. We’re going to find him and kill him.”
Tom uses what little strength he has left to shake his head. “You won’t. He’s too smart. When he realized you’d raided his house, he cut all ties, just fucking disappeared. He’s gone, a fucking ghost, and you’ll never find him.”
“We’ll see about that,” I say, having complete confidence in Niki.
Tom gasps for air as he desperately tries to get his feet to work so they can help support his weight. They don’t, and he’s left flailing around again.
“I’ll tell you something if you promise to end this quickly for me,” he begs.
“Sure,” I say, knowing I can still kill him slowly if I need or want to.
“I don’t know who Cupid is, but I tried to find out.
I did everything I could think of, and I still couldn’t figure it out.
He’s smart and always one step ahead. He always knew what was going on, even without me telling him.
” He lifts his weary eyes to mine. “He doesn’t like to lose.
If he went after your girl, then he’s not going to let it go until he gets her.
She’s not safe, not until you catch him.
Whether you realize it or not, you started a war last night. ”
Instead of responding to him, I ask my family in Russian, “We need anything else from him?”
After a few seconds of discussion, I hear my dad say, “No, son, we’re good. You can finish him.”
As soon as I get the green light, I slice his throat from ear to ear before he even has a chance to scream.
“For fuck’s sake,” I hear my Uncle Vitaly yell as he jumps aside to avoid the arterial spray.
The blood spurts out in time to Tom’s fading heartbeat, losing its luster pretty quickly.
I was right about not getting hard. My dick is soft in my pants, and a big part of me is relieved by that.
I don’t want to be aroused by anything that doesn’t involve Cyn.
If she were standing in front of me right now, well, that would be a very different story.
But since she’s not, I watch Tom’s bloody body take its last breath, and all I feel is a fascination and a vague sense of satisfaction at a job well done.
“Was that absolutely necessary?”
I turn to grin at my Uncle Vitaly. “Just keeping you on your toes.”