Chapter 23
Zoya~
While I hadn’t been certain what to expect, my naivety had hit me in the face again when I had questioned Kasimir on why it’d been taking so long to find Daryll and Jim, and he’d had to explain the logistics to me as if I were a child.
Unlike in the movies, kidnapping someone took actual planning, especially when the person had responsibilities like a job, family, and/or friends-his words, not mine.
Put in my place as if I were nothing but an idiot, Kasimir had also gone on to explain how it was easier to snatch someone off the street prior to their days off from work because that eliminated the immediate ‘missing’ factor from the equation.
Since they weren’t expected to be at work for two days, then that put the cops two days behind.
Their personal lives were also something else to consider.
As a single man, those circumstances were easier to manipulate.
However, if either of them was co-habiting with anyone or had shared custody of any kind, then that might cause problems. In the cases of kidnapping grown adults, time really was of the essence, and the police always tended to scramble needlessly when they were playing catch up.
Now, during his detailed explanation of why he hadn’t gone out the next day to round up Jim and Daryll, Kasimir had also informed me that one of their secret weapons included a genius hacker by the name of Poppy, and that she always did a thorough digital recognizance of their victims before they stormed the castle.
It was how they’d all manage to remain out of prison for so long.
Well...that and their deep pockets when it came to buying people off, including law enforcement.
So, after Poppy had done her due diligence, they had learned quite a bit.
Jim Giles was married, but he had no children as of yet.
His parents also lived in Arizona, so there were no Sunday family dinners happening there.
He also worked as a real estate agent, which was helpful since it wasn’t a profession that clocked in and out like most jobs.
As for Daryll Joseph, to his credit, he wasn’t married, so him hooking up with Marcelle had been agreeably acceptable in my eyes.
Now, he did have an ex-wife, but that marriage had ended years ago, and from what Kasimir had explained, it had sounded like a childhood sweethearts sort of situation gone bad once adulthood had emerged.
He also had no children, which made me feel a little bit better about the situation.
Though I still wanted them to get their comeuppance, if no children were involved, then we were all the better for it.
Daryll also worked as a state inspector in the water and utilities sector, and so he traveled a lot, spending most of his time in his work truck.
Yeah, he had to show up every morning at the office, but he didn’t spend all day there, which was another plus.
He could easily get mugged in any of the remote places that he visited or something like that.
However, according to Kasimir, that wasn’t the plan.
Daryll worked Monday through Friday, so he was going to get taken some time Friday night, no one expecting him anywhere until Monday.
As for Jim, he worked the weekends, and so Poppy had hacked his phone to search his calendar for appointments, and as luck would have it, Jim was scheduled to take vacation on Monday.
Seriously, we couldn’t have scripted it better ourselves, and I liked how Daryll was going to spend two days going out of his mind until Jim joined him in the fray.
Psychological torture was a real thing, and I’d bet my life that Kasimir was skilled at that as well.
At any rate, right now, we were at the docks, and Kasimir was walking me into a storage container that smelled like what I imagined death to smell like.
Though it looked to be very sizable, it was still a storage container with no windows, so fresh air was not a constant inside this thing.
I also noticed the padding on the walls, and no one needed to explain that to me.
Since storage containers were made of metal, every sound would echo inside if not for the padding, and any screaming would carry for miles without that precaution.
There were also no hidden corners to hide in.
The putrid environment was laid completely open, and right in the middle were two men, and they were not strapped down in adjacent chairs like I’d been expecting.
Instead, they were strung up by their wrists, the thick chains that were holding them in place impossible to escape.
As the smell lingered in my nostrils, it suddenly hit me why we were here.
Being on the docks, the odor of decaying flesh could easily be masked by the different scents that floated off the river.
Though experienced police officers would be able to tell the difference between rotten human flesh and dead fish, it still might take them a second to recognize that difference.
All-in-all, this was the perfect place to ‘question’ people that needed to be questioned.
Despite the padding, the soles of our shoes still echoed dully against the metal underneath our feet, and that’s what had both men lifting their heads.
Then, that satisfaction that I’d been hoping for bloomed in my chest as a pair of familiar blue eyes and a pair of familiar brown eyes widened when they noticed me, and it felt good.
It felt really good.
“Remember me?” I asked, cocking my head as I waved my broken fingers at them.
“Je...sus Christ...” Daryll sputtered, his voice weak...nothing like when he’d been beating me.
“Oh, God...” Jim whimpered quietly, but I didn’t know if that was from having been hanging for so long or because he finally realized what this was.
“So, my guess is that Marcelle failed to mention my connection to the Korolevs when she recruited you guys to rob me,” I remarked, forcing my voice to sound stronger than I felt.
Despite the satisfaction that I was feeling, discussing that night was always going to make me feel something bigger than the objective.
“A very important detail that she probably should have shared, no?”
“We...we didn’t know...” Jim wheezed, though that hardly mattered.
“So, it’s only okay to rob and kill women who aren’t associated with the Korolevs?” I asked, knowing that there was only one right answer to that question.
“It...it’s...it wasn’t like that...” Daryll lied.
Letting that go, I said, “Well, here’s another bit of information that would have been nice to know. There was no money, and do you want to know why?”
Before either of them could answer, Kasimir’s voice sounded in the empty container. “Because there’d been no need. As my fiancé, Zoya has access to every dollar that I have, so it seemed ridiculous to give her the money when it was hardly necessary.”
Jim’s head dropped in defeat, and I was surprised by the second rush of satisfaction that hit me, watching it all sink in. They both knew that there was no getting out of this, and they both knew that Kasimir wasn’t going to make it easy on them.
“We’re...we’re sorry...” Daryll choked out, letting his desperation already seep through.
“Sorry for what?” I practically snapped. “Trying to rob me? For beating me unconscious? For scaring and hurting my mother before you killed her? Or for shooting me and leaving me for dead? I mean, there are so many options to choose from, so I’m curious as to what you’re exactly sorry for.”
Daryll shook his head tiredly. “We...she lied to us.”
“Well, I don’t know if she lied to you exactly,” I drawled out, acting as if I did this kind of thing all the time. “She just omitted a couple of very important facts before tempting you with all that money.”
“We’ll...we’ll do anything,” Jim stuttered, ready to begin the begging portion of the night.
“Sure, sure...” I replied evenly. “I’ll just wait patiently as you bring my mother back to life, yeah? I mean, that should make things all better, I think.”
“We didn’t know!” Daryll yelled.
“You know, I remember a lot of begging of my own that night,” I replied.
“I remember begging to the point of hysteria. I remember begging for my mother’s life as well as my own.
I can even remember begging so much that my voice cracked from the effort.
I even remember my throat hurting the next morning, something that felt so damn unreal at the time. ”
“What...what are you going to...to do to us?” Jim asked, finally looking at me again.
“Oh, me?” I quipped. “Oh, I’m not going to do anything.
You see, torture really isn’t my thing. Unlike my fiancé here, I have a conscience, and no matter how much I believe in getting even for killing my mother, I don’t need to spend the rest of my life with your screams in my ears.
Plus, having never tortured someone before, I might mess it up and send you to your graves a lot earlier than Kasimir would like.
After all, the man really does enjoy his craft. ”
Daryll visibly paled, and Jim looked like he was on the verge of tears as he said, “I have...I have a wife.”
“Oh, so...are you offering for her to take your place?” I asked coldly.
“God, no,” he screeched.
“Then why are you bringing her up?” I cocked my head again. “Why should I care about your wife when you didn’t care about my mother?”
His head dropped again, and that’s when it occurred to me that I was done here. I’d made my point, and the only thing left was to leave Kasimir to have his fun, which didn’t sound as horrifying to me as it should. However, I also wasn’t the same person that I’d been before meeting Kasimir.