Chapter 23 Drowning #2
"I expanded into that business when your wife died," Kirill continues, watching my face for reaction, "I saw my opportunity.
You were distracted. Broken. The perfect moment to accelerate everything.
" His smile is almost apologetic. "Had to expand operations in that area temporarily.
Built the connections I needed. The infrastructure. "
"Temporarily." The word tastes like ash.
"I don't deal with minors anymore." He says it like absolution. Like it matters. "Stopped taking those contracts a year ago. Now I just facilitate transportation. Safe delivery for others who do the actual...procurement."
He's compartmentalizing, splitting hairs between doing it himself and enabling others.
"That's your moral line?" I lean closer. "You don't personally traffic children anymore, you just make sure other people can do it safely?"
"We all draw lines somewhere, Anton." Kirill's eyes burn with something between defiance and self-loathing.
"You kill for money but won't touch trafficking.
I facilitate logistics but don't handle merchandise directly.
The Quinns deal in weapons but draw the line at some chemical agents.
" His laugh is hollow. "Everyone gets to feel righteous about something. "
"You became what your brother was."
"No." The word cracks like a whip. "I became better than what he was. More efficient. More careful. More successful." He pauses, breath rattling. "Vadim died because he was sloppy. I built an empire because I learned from his mistakes."
"An empire built on—"
"—on the same blood money you use to buy flowers for Fee," Kirill cuts me off. "Don't pretend your hands are clean just because you draw your line six inches to the left of mine."
He continues, gaining momentum despite the drugs. "You kill fathers, brothers, sons. You think the families you destroy don't create more monsters just like us?" His smile widens. "At least I'm honest about what I am."
He's right. Monsters, both of us. But our lines are drawn very differently.
I don't give him the satisfaction of showing him that his point landed.
"You tried to erase Fee's mind."
"To save her from you." Kirill's voice drops, intimate.
"Because dating the ghost means everyone she loves becomes a target.
It means wondering every day when the next threat comes.
When someone decides she's the perfect leverage.
" He pauses. "I would have given her a new life.
A clean slate. She would have been safe. "
"She would have been your prisoner."
"And what is she with you? Free?" Kirill laughs and leans forward against his restraints.
"Or is she a twenty-one-year-old girl who thinks love conquers all?
Who thinks she's invincible because daddy's Irish mafia and her boyfriend's the ghost?
She has no idea what she's signed up for.
But she will...when the next threat comes.
And the one after that. And the one after that. "
He's not wrong. Loving people like me comes with risks most can't comprehend. Fee knows the theory. She's lived in this world her whole life.
But knowing and experiencing are different things. I just hope to God she never changes her mind. I'll make it my life's purpose to make her the happiest woman in the world.
"You wanted to erase everything she is. Rewrite her mind. Make her forget her family. Her life. Herself."
"To protect her," Kirill says.
"To control her," I cut him off. "There's the difference, Kirill. I kill. You're right about that. But I've never taken someone's mind. Never stole who they are and replaced it with something else."
His jaw tightens.
"You think we're the same because we're both killers?" I shake my head slowly. "We're not. You wanted to destroy the woman I love and replace her with a puppet. That's a different kind of evil."
"And you think your way is better?" Kirill spits. "At least she wouldn't remember the fear. Wouldn't wake up screaming from nightmares about bullets and blood. I would have given her peace—"
"You would have given her nothing, because she wouldn't exist anymore. That's not saving someone. That's murder disguised as mercy."
Kirill's breathing quickens, the drugs and rage fighting for control.
Ruslan steps forward, syringe in hand. Kirill's eyes lock on the needle, then back to me. Still defiant.
"She would have loved me," he says quietly. "Given time. The right conditioning. I would have made her forget this world exists. Forget you exist."
"You wanted Fee's mind." I watch Ruslan connect the syringe to the IV port. "Now you get to experience what you planned for her. Only worse. Much worse."
Ruslan pushes the plunger slowly, deliberately. The drug slides through the IV line. Kirill's eyes widen, then narrow, then widen again—his brain already fighting the chemical invasion.
"Every minute will feel like an hour," I tell him as his pupils begin to dilate, swallowing the color. "Every hour, like a day."
A strangled sound escapes his throat. His mouth works, trying to form one last sentence.
"Worth it," he manages. "All of it."
I move to the instrument table and take the drill. Heavy. Purpose-built.
I nod once. Two men step in, pinning Kirill's shoulders and forearms, forcing him back against the restraints.
Kirill fights them for half a second before the drugs steal his leverage. He can't move anymore.
When I turn back to him, his eyes track me, despite the chemicals flooding his system. Still calculating.
"This is going to be very unpleasant," I tell him. "By the time we're done, you'll think you've been here for years."
I position the drill at his knee joint, fine-tuning the angle until it's right.
Joints are precise things. Rush it, and you lose access. Torture isn't something I do often. Men usually die too fast. But here we are.
His breathing stutters when he realizes what I'm lining up. The drugs keep him present, aware enough to understand what's coming, not enough to stop it.
I lean in just enough for him to hear me over the whine of the motor.
"Enjoy drowning in your own mind, Kirill," I say quietly. "It'll make what follows feel endless."
Kirill:
I float through a crimson haze, consciousness ebbing like dirty water through a rusted drain. Time slips. Pain, bright, screaming pain—then darkness. Then light again.
A girl materializes before me. Young. Trembling. Real? Not real? Her dark hair falls across tear-stained cheeks as she kneels, hands bound with plastic zip ties that bite into her olive skin.
"Por favor, senor. Tengo familia. Mi madre está enferma." Her Spanish echoes through my skull. Mother sick. Family waiting. Always the same excuses.
"Shh." I press a finger against her lips. They're chapped from dehydration. "You are important. Special merchandise," I tell her in Spanish.
The dignitary from Qatar has specific requirements. European features. Virgin. Exactly 110 pounds. I'd measured her myself, slapped her when she was two pounds over, withheld food until she complied. Blue eyes that would look up at him in terror. Those always cost extra.
"You go to someone important," I explain to her. But her sobs intensify. I grip her jaw, forcing her to look at me.
Then, the world tears sideways. A shrill whine splits the air. Heat detonates through my knee, and I retch, violent and uncontrollable. Bile floods my mouth. I choke on it, gagging, blind with pain.
Hands grab me, holding my head, forcing me forward so I don't drown in my own vomit.
Let me die. The thought barely forms before it's ripped away.
"Not yet." Anton's voice. Calm. Close.
Darkness rushes back in.
When I surface again, the girl is still there. My body shakes uncontrollably, pain blooming and receding in waves that don't follow any order I understand.
How long has it been?
A day? Three? Five minutes?
Time no longer behaves.
The drill screams again, and I'm torn back into my body, into the room, into the understanding that this will end when he decides.
Now Vadim leans against the wall, arms crossed, approving smile on his face. He's wearing the same clothes he died in.
"Good business, little brother," he says. "You've built something impressive."
Pride swells in my chest at his words. I was always the skinny one who needed protecting.
"The merchandise quality has improved," Vadim continues, inspecting the girl. "This one will fetch fifty thousand minimum."
"Seventy-five," I correct him. "She's untouched. I verified personally."
The girl flinches at my words.
Vadim laughs. "You've surpassed me, Kirill."
White-hot agony rips through me. The warehouse. The girl. Vadim. All dissolve into static.
I'm screaming. The sound seems distant, detached from my body. My eyes focus on the concrete floor beneath me. A pool of blood spreads outward, impossibly vast. At its edge sits my left foot, still wearing its Italian leather shoe.
"Back with us again." Anton's voice. Calm. Detached. Professional.
My vision clears enough to see him wiping a bone saw with a white cloth. The metal glints under harsh fluorescent lights.
"You won't die yet," he promises. "That would be mercy."
Pain flares. Darkness.
Then light again.
A girl kneels in front of me. Shaking. Real or not, I can't tell anymore.
She's younger. Not the Spanish one. Russian.
I can't remember her name. She'd tried to escape.
"You said I was special, too," she whispers.
"Business," I try to explain, but blood floods my mouth.
Vadim stands behind her, his expression changed now. Disgusted. Disappointed.
"I never touched them," he hisses. "I ran numbers, moved money. But you, little brother, you became something worse."
Pain blooms again, shocking me to awareness. The dreams and reality blend as someone hits me with rhythmic determination, whomp, whomp, whomp. I'm swinging like a punching bag, absorbing blow after precise blow.