Chapter 19 #2
Something in her attitude reminds me of Ekaterina. She loves confronting me and striking me with sharp replies.
“Then an omelet, please. And then a banana.”
“You’ll be the death of me...” she mutters, then immediately gets to work.
That gives me the chance to turn my attention to my phone and call Dima, who answers on the first ring.
“Pakhan.”
“Report. What is she doing?”
“They haven’t left the house so far. The man who infiltrated their laptops confirmed that they canceled all the meetings they had scheduled for today.”
“Perfect. Keep me informed of everything they do.”
“Of course, Pakhan.”
I end the call and turn my attention to the two men at the table.
“Anything new?”
Sasha is the first to speak. “Clean and with flawless skin, ready to work on it. We managed to make one of them scream in rage about an hour ago when we shoved ice down his pants.”
“They still have clothes on?” I ask, lifting one eyebrow.
“I wanted to handle that, but Yar wouldn’t let me.”
“If we stripped them, they would have become even more alert, and neither of them would have had the tendency to relax even a little. The idea with the ice was to play with their minds, wasn’t it?”
“Correct,” I confirm. “To give them the impression that when they think we have calmed down, we are actually destabilizing their inner peace.”
The two of them smile with delight.
Sasha more than Yar, since Yar is as restrained with that gesture as I am.
Or as I used to be, before having Katya beside me, who always had the power to draw that reaction out of me.
A beam of light in my darkness-ruled life.
A calm melody in a sea of cold, furious voices.
I cannot help being devoted to her or deny my desire to have her beside me for the rest of my life.
But for now, I look at the other woman who torments my days when she sets an enormous omelet in front of me, along with a platter full of cheeses and vegetables. On top of that, a plate of pancakes beside maple syrup, chocolate, strawberries, and, of course, a banana.
“Eat as much as you can,” she says in a rush, as if excusing the fact that she has served me far more than I asked for.
I glance at her from beneath my brows. Normally, I would not appreciate someone failing to do what I say, but in her case, I tend to hold back, precisely because she has earned my trust and respect over so many years.
“Thank you, Polina” I say and begin to eat, eager to get to my toys as soon as possible.
Our nest is not a classic one, despite what the word might suggest. In fact, everything happens in the basement of a rather modern building, which also houses an enormous supermarket, meant to give us the perfect cover whenever we want to remove... damaged goods from this place.
Has blood spilled somewhere, or does it smell like rotten meat?
It is expired meat we want to throw away.
Does it have eyes?
Well, what? Lambs don’t have eyes?
Is someone screaming?
A box of water probably fell on an employee’s foot.
Practical and uncomplicated.
The room where the two prisoners are being held has decent ventilation, but after a night like this, the place smells of urine and tobacco, after my brigadiers waved their cigarettes in front of their faces, probably to stir their appetite a little.
“We sprayed them with the hose for a bit, but apparently it wasn’t enough,” one of my men excuses himself when he sees my nose wrinkle for a second.
“No problem. The stench will soon be replaced by something much more... aromatic,” I tell them, heading straight for the iron table.
Almost five feet long, it has a beautiful selection of tools neatly lined up on it, winking at me and communicating with my hungry voices.
I choose a pair of pliers, opening and closing them twice as I turn toward the two men and study them again.
Lean bodies. I could even say they are almost as massive as Yaroslav, with tattoos on their chests and arms, but no symbols affiliated with any mafia group.
The first thought that comes to me is that they are mercenaries. I don’t care where their mothers are from. What interests me is who the fuck sent them.
“My birds are telling me you two are very quiet,” I say calmly, approaching their pale bodies.
Both are shivering because of the bucket of ice thrown in their faces a few minutes ago, not because of fear.
“A quality I admire too, but only in my men. I respect it in everyone else, though today it may be your greatest enemy.”
I play with the pliers between my fingers, a little over three feet away from their chairs.
“You are going to die either way. Your choice is whether you want to die quickly, or whether you want to give me the chance to play with you according to the scale of what you did last night. So?”
Their jaws clenched, but their chins are lifted with arrogance.
They are rather cute. They truly believe they will survive my charm.
“Wonderful,” I tell them, a small victorious smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
The door opens, and Sasha storms into the room, carrying two huge bags of popcorn in his arms. Behind him, Dima holds a bottle of vodka.
Yaroslav, who was already here with me, shakes his head and sighs at our younger brother.
“Popcorn, knyaz13? Seriously?”
“I know this will be a damn good show,” he answers with enthusiasm in his blue eyes. “I have chocolate too, but I’m not giving you any.”
Then he drops onto one of the chairs by the door and asks us quickly. “What did I miss?”
“They don’t want to cooperate,” Yar answers, stealing one of the popcorn bags from his arms and taking a seat beside him in another chair.
“I told you we needed nachos too,” Sasha scolds Dimitri, who remains standing beside the two of them.
“Hold this for a moment,” I tell Sasha, handing him the pliers.
I take off my jacket with deliberate care, placing it neatly over the third chair.
“Can I play too?”
My brother is like small child, but with the intent of a murderer.
“Of course. But not now.”
“Anyway, right now I want to eat.”
“If you want to touch them, you don’t eat chocolate,” I tell him while rolling up the sleeves of my black shirt, over which I keep the dark vest.
“That’s not fair!” He complains, deeply displeased.
I lift one shoulder carelessly, which makes him sulk, but he also pull a chocolate bar from the breast pocket of his jacket and unwrap it in front of me.
And in front of the two idiots tied to chairs, who are probably half faint from hunger.
Because that is the whole plan: to torture them by attacking their most vital needs.
“Fortunately for me, I’m just as happy watching as I am participating,” he smirks, with a small implication, biting into the caramel-and-chocolate bar.
“Your choice,” I tell him and take the pliers he had left in his lap, turning back toward my toys.
Watching them sit there, exposed like two offerings brought before a king, the voices whisper to me.
They want revenge, because these two, together with their already dead friends, kept me from reaching dusha moya. And even if they start talking, I will continue mutilating them until my rage calms and the voices go quiet.
“We’ll start with simple questions.”
“Favorite color,” Sasha adds loudly and enthusiastically from behind me.
“Good question. Sasha, you get a point.”
“Yes!” he exclaims, and I don’t need to look at him to know he is flaunting his little victory in front of the others.
“One of the most painful methods of torture is tearing out fingernails,” I address the men in front of me. “It produces a pain that remains just as agonizing for hours. Answer the questions, and you get a glass of water or a shoot of vodka, which may numb your senses during our little game.”
I realize they are going to break the moment they look at each other.
Whether they know one another or not, that is their problem.
What is certain is that, right now, they betray themselves by the fact that neither of them knows exactly what to do and is waiting for the other’s confirmation.
So, I need to make at least one of them break, and then the other will start chirping too.
“Honestly, boys, do you really want to die in agony for someone who sent you to be sacrificed on my territory, fully aware you would either be killed or, worse, captured?”
I click my tongue and shake my head with false disappointment.
“So, if you tell me your favorite color, you get the reward.”
Dima pours a dose of alcohol into a small glass, then sets it on the metal table and remains motionless there.
It doesn’t take long before one of them mutters something.
“I didn’t catch that,” I say calmly.
“Blue,” he repeats, clearer this time.
“What kind of blue? Like the sky, or like the sea in Greece?”
More precisely, like my lover’s eyes, but I do not elaborate.
“Like the sea in Greece,” he says, with an unmistakable British accent.
I smile.
We have discovered who won the bet.
“Ah, blyad14,” Sasha curses loudly, though the other two are no more discreet. “Do you take card?”
“No.”
One by one, they all take money out of their pockets or wallets and place it on the table beside the bottle.
Before we arrived here, the bet changed so that if I was right and the prisoners were British, they all had to give me the money. I told them all my winnings would go to Polina so she could buy bananas. More precisely, we have gathered three hundred pounds for a fruit they don’t like.
I turn my attention to the other one, who is still playing hard to get, so I go back to the first.
“Water or vodka?”
“Vodka,” he says without hesitation.
Dima comes with the glass and helps the man drink, his hands being tied to the arms of the chair. Both of them are now exposed, filthy bodies, hands bound, completely at the mercy of my madness.
“And you, my friend?” I ask the other one in a dry tone.
“Go fuck yourself, you filthy Russian!” He speaks in a language I recognize immediately, spitting at my feet, a strand of saliva clinging to his dry, cracked lips.
“I know exactly who you are and that you’ll kill us no matter what game you have in mind. You’re a psychopath who has no business being in this country.”