Chapter 19 #3
“Hold on. Let me get this straight. I have no business being in this country because I’m a psychopath or because I’m Russian?”
“Both.”
“This one’s Albanian,” Yaroslav exclaims, delighted. “Half the money is mine, pashol nakhui15.”
He jumps from his chair, proud of having identified the accent of the man in front of us.
In this moment, he is acting just like Sasha, and I wonder if this beautiful madness truly affects all of us in the family, him included.
Yar always behaves like the eldest, responsible brother, even though in the organization, I hold the power.
But when it comes to family, he is the most involved.
I smile.
“So, we have a racist motive here, though you are not English either. You seem to have a great affection for this country. Is that how he convinced you to attack me? Or was it money?”
“Both,” he throws at me proudly.
“Water or vodka?”
He frowns, confused.
“You answered the question,” I explain.
13(ru.) Prince
14блядь (ru.) - Fuck
15пошел на хуй (ru.) – Go fuck yourself
“I don’t need anything from you.”
“Then I’ll give your reward to your colleague.” I look at the other one, but he is already staring
at the bottle in Dima’s hand.
So much for their solidarity.
Perfect.
Next comes their complete division, which will
culminate in rivalry. Soon, desperation will turn them into competitors.
That is exactly why idiot number two curses under his breath when idiot number one drinks his share of alcohol without a trace of remorse.
I piece together the information I have. A British man and an Albanian…
I know, it sounds like the beginning of a good
joke. Besides money, they were motivated to attack me by racist reasons. One is British and seems willing to sell his soul to escape torment, and the second is an Albanian who doesn’t want me in England.
Something does not fit, until a small light switches on in my head.
“Yaroslav, put the money back,” I say, smiling.
“Why?”
“Because this bastard is British too, but he’s pretending to be Albanian to mislead us.”
The idiot who played actor looks away, confirming my theory.
“Fuck you,” he hisses, furious that I caught him.
His curse doesn’t impress me, but it’s time for serious things, and that immediately shows on my face as it transforms beneath their outraged stares.
“Now I want to know who is the Englishman who hired you.”
“I’ll tell you again. Go to hell!”
“You wish. But I can’t. I have far too much work here in London. Guns to sell. A wedding to prepare.”
I lean toward him and breathe into his face, finishing in a whisper. “Blood to spill.”
I straighten before he can make another filthy gesture toward me, then hand the pliers to Dima, because the smell of popcorn has awakened an appetite almost as strong as my appetite for blood.
“Right hand. Index finger.”
“I might need a screwdriver too, to loosen it from the flesh if the nail is too small.”
“Even more beautiful.”
I let him handle that part while I join my brothers. I slip my hand into Sasha’s bag and take a fistful of popcorn, helping myself without a care in the world.
“Hey,” he scolds me.
“Quiet, or I’ll take your chocolate. Or would you rather I help myself after I get my hands dirty with their blood?”
A scream of pain interrupts our confrontation as it rings loudly through the room. But it doesn’t stop. It continues for long minutes, until Dima manages to loosen the nail and tear it completely from the finger of the future corpse.
A small pool of blood is already forming beneath his chair, and that is my sign to return to the stage.
This time, I take a wide, very sharp knife from the table and approach the other prisoner.
He already has two glasses of vodka in him, and he probably imagines the alcohol will truly help him endure the unimaginable pain awaiting him.
“An easier one. What was the mission?”
He refuses to answer, so now it’s time for me to play the way I like.
With the sharp blade, I begin peeling the skin from his forearm, accompanied by his agonized screams. Blood flows in warm streams that calm my demons, feeding them with these red-soaked images.
After barely two inches, the man starts babbling.
“There were two plans,” he shouts, making me stop.
“Explain,” I demand, hungry to return to my work as quickly as possible.
“To bring you in alive, if possible. Otherwise, death was the alternative. And if we failed at either of those, we had to keep you there as long as possible.”
My body tenses. I feel my skin prickle, and I am one second away from losing control.
A savage impulse pushes me toward the limit I barely manage to hold, stopping myself from driving the knife into his thigh, his throat, his gut, splitting him open from one side to another.
And then to dig through his insides as if in a pit where I have lost something small, but important.
My lucidity, to be precise.
“You were right,” I hear my older brother’s voice from behind me, grave and touched by a note of concern.
“Vodka or water?” I manage to ask the man in front of me through my teeth.
“Vodka,” he answers in a broken voice, almost relieved, and Dima moves immediately.
I turn toward my brothers, studying them with interest. I assume they are just as confused as I am, but none of us lets that detail show.
“Ideas?” I ask quietly, once Dima joins us too.
“The Irish?” Dimitri says, immediately lifting his shoulders like an innocent man. “I’m just saying...”
His problem with them is becoming ridiculous.
“They are our allies. They would have no reason.”
“They are the only ones who could claim this is their country,” Yaroslav adds, building on our shadow’s assumption.
“You can’t expect that bastard Tristan Romano to pretend to be English just to mislead us. He would drag Pavarotti from the grave just to make sure everyone knew he was an italiano vero.”
“But why would the Irish do this?” Sasha asks. “You’ll never see an alliance between them and the Italians, not even if they had the same mother.”
Everything they say is correct, which only makes the situation more tangled. Even though we have many enemies, right now none of them fits the profile we have outlined. We suspect all of them, yet at the same time, it doesn’t seem to be any one of them.