16. Anton
ANTON
I throw open the door to the back room, where two of my men are standing over our latest target.
Sergei Bitovsky. A name that I hadn’t so much as heard until now, but, as he slumps down into the chair, trying to ease himself away from me, I know there is nowhere he wants to be less than in our clutches.
I glance to my men, jerking my chin towards the door.
“I can handle this,” I tell them sharply, and they move to the doorway, standing just outside where I can all on them if need be. I grit my teeth, running a hand through my hair, and turn my attention to the man bound on the chair before me.
He already looks pretty roughed-up, his eyes bleary and distant, dried blood crusted on his top lip where his nose has been burst. He does his best to meet my gaze, but he struggles, clearly drifting in and out of conciousness with every passing second.
But I’m going to get what I need out of him before I put him out of his misery. I grab his chin roughly, forcing him to meet my gaze, and he lets out a groan of pain as I force his face around to me.
“Look at me, you fucker,” I order him, and he manages to draw his gaze up to meet mine, though I can tell it causes him no end of strain.
He flicks his tongue over his parched lips, the scent of alcohol leaking from his pores. No wonder it was so easy for my men to get their hands on him, it looks like he can barely keep himself upright as he looks back into my eyes.
“You work for my brother, is that right?” I demand.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protests, voice throaty and distant. “I–I was just coming back from work when those bastards jumped me, and—”
“Careful what you say, asshole,” I mutter. “Those are my mine. And we know who the fuck you work for, understand? Stop trying to bullshit me and get to the point.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, clearly trying to bring himself back down into the moment. His body tenses, and I swear I can almost see his mind racing as he tries to figure a way out of this.
“Artem,” I continue, dropping my gaze down, locking eyes with him. “What does he have you doing?” I soften up my tone slightly, enough to lull him into a false sense of security that finally convinces him to speak.
“He has... He just has me watching the doors at one of his warehouses,” he replies, though this time, his eyes slide to the side, and I can tell he is lying.
A surge of fury rushes through me, and I bring my hand back and land a sharp slap to his face, that sound echoing out around the room. He cries out, blood spattering on the floor below where I have re-opened the bloody mess on his nose, and I grasp his hair and yank him back roughly.
“Don’t bullshit me, Sergei,” I hiss. “Tell me the truth, and you might get out of here alive. So, I’m going to ask you again—what do you do for my brother?”
His gaze flicks back and forth between mine, as he tries to parse the best course of action here, tries to figure out if there is a hope in hell of him getting out of this place. But he has another thing coming if he believes that he can just walk away from this as though it’s nothing.
The rage in me has taken on a new form now, having laid eyes on my child for the first time. Because they’re what I’m protecting, with everything I have, with every inch of power I have to my name.
It’s not just about me, my father, the family business any longer. No, it’s about crushing the threat that stands against my family, even if it comes from the very same blood that pulses in my veins.
“I... I broker the women that he brings in,” he admits finally, and a hot rush of acid rises in my throat.
Brokering women? What, like they’re nothing more than objects? The thought makes me sick to my goddamn stomach, but I know I’m on to something, and I can’t back down now I’m getting close.
“What does that mean, exactly?” I demand. “You get them for him? You identify the women who you’re going after next? What, exactly?”
He tries to take a breath, but I yank hard on his hair, his scalp straining as a few strands are nearly pulled out.
“Answer me!”
He finally manages to speak again, though I can hear the enormous weight in his voice.
“He finds the girls and gets me to do recon on them,” he tells me, at last, the words spilling out of him in a great rush like he doesn’t want to risk keeping them to himself any longer.
“I find out if they have something we can use, some kind of debt, and gets me to meet with them to offer a way out of it...”
I drop his head roughly, and he goes careening forward, nearly toppling the chair over with the sudden change of gravity.
Jesus fucking Christ. So, this is a focused thing, then, what my brother is doing—tracking down women who are desperate and have no way out of the circumstances they have found themselves in, when he comes swooping in to offer them a chance to begin afresh.
I can only imagine the relief they must feel, thinking that they have finally found a way out of the mess that they have landed themselves in, no matter how it came to be.
Only to discover that my brother is auctioning them off, to the kind of men who will not see them as anything other than a piece of meat they have the right to do with what they want.
“But you have to understand, he has stuff on me, it’s not like I would have chosen to do this out of my own—”
I spin around to face him again and slam a fist into his jaw before I can think twice. Pushing my face close to his, I lock eyes with him again, finding his terrified gaze staring back at me.
“Don’t try to feed me any fucking excuses,” I snarl at him. “You do what you do because you want to. So don’t think that you can make me feel sorry for you, you hear?”
He gurgles slightly, swallowing down a thick wad of blood that has formed at the back of his throat from my onslaught.
I stare at him for a moment and wonder if I’m looking at the very man who got Maya pulled into all of this in the first place.
The thought is enough to make me sick, but I push it aside.
I don’t have time to get pulled into emotion right now, I need to focus on the facts, what I can shake loose before I grow too furious with him to continue.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, blood and saliva bubbling over his lips, but I can hardly hear him.
I pace back and forth as I try to make sense of it, try to figure out what I can make of this. “You have names, then?” I demand. “Of the women he’s targeted?”
He nods slowly. “A few...”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t have them on hand, I would have to go back to my apartment to—”
I catch his hair again, dragging his head back so hard I’m surprised his neck doesn’t snap. “Tell. Me.”
And this time, he gives up on trying to stop me.
He must sense that I’m not going to let this go, no matter how badly he hopes I might, that I’m going to make him pay for everything he has done over the last few years.
Whatever justice he has been evading all this time, it has finally caught up with him, and there is nothing he can do about it.
“Ruby,” he replies, finally. “I know one of the girls is called Ruby, and she used to work at the bar before she had to leave to take care of her mom. That’s one of them...”
“Who else?” I insist.
“Kyra,” he continues. “Kyra Kelso, she’s one of the ones he’s keeping an eye on. And... and Iris Langford, she came from a wealthy family, but she ended up hooked on pills, she ran up a big debt with him and he’s trying to make good on it now...”
He spills as many names as he can, clearly hoping that if he tells me enough, I might be willing to spare him the hell that I want to rain down on top of him.
I gesture for one of my men to come in and order him to take note of each and every name before I send him out to try and track down as many of those girls as he can.
“Go,” I order him, and the other guard glances in past him, checking to see what is going on. I gesture for him to enter, not looking back at Sergei sitting behind me. I can hear the chair creaking, as he no doubt tries to loose himself from the binds that are keeping him trapped in place.
“Get rid of him,” I tell my guard, shooting one last look down at Sergei. His face pales, the blood on his face standing out even brighter against the bloodless visage below it.
“No,” he pleads with me. “No, you have to understand, there’s more I can give you. I can—I can take you to his warehouse, I can—”
“You should have done it when you had the chance,” I spit back.
I turn my back on him and head for the door, but I can hear his desperate cries behind me, echoing around the concrete of the basement we’re holding him in. I don’t look back, don’t need to. The choice has been made, and I’m not going to let anyone change my mind on this.
What’s done is done, it’s as simple as that.
And soon enough, I know that my brother will be the one done for. And that I’m going to be the one to deliver the killing blow, no matter what it takes.
Because he has been left to roam this city far, far longer than he ever should have been able to. And it’s my duty, as the only person who can stop him, to do just what.
Not just for me—but for her. For Maya. And for the child that I feel so fiercely protective without so much as knowing their name.
If this is what it means to be a father, then so be it. The man’s voice suddenly fades to nothing, a sure sign that he is finished.
I wait for the flicker of regret or guilt, but it doesn’t come. And it won’t. Not until all of this is over with.
For good.