Now
The darkness didn’t last nearly long enough, and a splitting headache echoed through my skull only minutes after my wannabe torturers left. I pushed myself onto my side, trying to take the pressure off my wrists, but the tie was so tight around the pipe behind it that it was impossible to relieve the pressure completely.
Resting my head against the hard floor, I took a deep breath, cataloging my hurts. I’d patched myself up plenty of times. There was a lot you could do with duct tape when you had to, and I could tell that most of my injuries would feel better in a few days. My shoulder ached where I’d hauled Sofia up one-handed, and the side of my head throbbed dangerously. Those were the only wounds worth worrying about. I closed my eyes, preferring to picture the enjoyable imagery of burning Sofia’s childhood home to the ground.
The image of violence always comforted me.
I had been sixteen and a student at my father’s school of violence the first time I’d taken a life. It would be a few months before I’d taken another, but that first one stayed with you, or so they said. I wasn’t sure I agreed. When slack faces stack one upon another, they all blend together. Another symptom of a cracking mind.
Tonight, like a watercolor canvas with a maddening drip on one side, the colors were all bleeding together. Life, death, pain, and revenge. Life was an endurance test. A freak show. Something to get through as fast as possible. The only time it paused its sickening grind was around Sofia. A secret power no one in the world had over me. A lure like no other.
My obsession with Sofia was a weakness. Anything important to you was a weakness in my world, and Sofia De Sanctis had always been a precious thing to me. That weakness had landed me here, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. Chasing my little swallow through the woods, fingering her into submission, and eating her cunt for hours last night was the highlight of my fucking life.
The noise of metal scraping against stone sounded and kicked me back to life, just in time to see the door open of the small stone room I was being held in. Another visitor. I’d never been so popular. A shadowy silhouette appeared in the opening. I squinted through the darkness to see who might visit my torture chamber.
“Nikolai, I trust you are comfortable enough in your new rooms,” Antonio De Sanctis’ voice boomed across the freezing basement space. “I will have to give you back to Kirill in one piece at some point, although you killed five of my men yesterday.” His disapproving tone was cold and clinical.
“I did you a favor. They were dead weight and dangerously incompetent. You’re welcome,” I managed.
The older man sauntered toward me, giving every appearance of ease as he watched me push myself to sit upright. My head spun, either from hunger or thirst. I didn’t know, but I forced my customary smirk.
“Be that as it may, their friends will want their pound of flesh, you understand. I need you alive. Whole or not doesn’t matter to me. None of this had to be difficult. All you had to do was play your part, bleed a little, and let the city see that the Chernov bratva didn’t think they were above my family. A stain on a reputation is a cancer in our world, you know, eating away at power. Now, though, it’ll cost you more than a couple of broken ribs.”
“I don’t scare that easily, Antonio. You’ll have to do better if you want a reaction from me,” I told him flatly.
Antonio merely chuckled and cracked his long fingers. He was wiry and tanned, with his hair combed tidily back. His fingers held more than one signet ring that I was sure had left their imprints in some suckers’ faces over the years. He had an elegance that I saw echoed and expanded in his daughter. I didn’t know Renato, the only son and heir to the family, but I’d bet he was like his father.
Antonio De Sanctis looked like he’d be at home in a vineyard in Tuscany, overlooking a million-dollar estate, tasting wine, and bedding gorgeous younger women. He looked like he should live the life of a true Italian gent instead of crouching over a man like me in a stinking, cold basement outside Trenton.
“I heard that about you,” Antonio chuckled. “My men don’t mind teaching the same lesson twice.”
“Good for them,” I said, leaning my head against the wall, my shoulders burning in the backward position they’d been forced into. “So, you’re just here to watch. I wouldn’t have taken you for a voyeur, Antonio.”
My goading tone sent a wider grin to Antonio’s face. “I was just curious. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the thick of it. I have a heart problem, you know, I can’t get too excited. The days of snipping off fingertips and ears are behind me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it,” Antonio said with a disturbing fondness to his tone. “But I don’t have to explain the thrill of the hunt and the sweetness of the catch to you, do I, Nikolai? I’ve heard about you.” He leaned in, his eyes tracking me. “Anyway, how does it feel to be outmaneuvered by your own brother and delivered into my hands by your own family?”
I shrugged. “It’s just business, I suppose. Nothing personal.” I thought about telling him I rarely felt anything at all unless it came to his daughter but decided against it. No need to get my little prom queen in trouble, too.
Antonio nodded and raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad to hear you say that. This, too, is just business. A pound of flesh for the mark of disrespect that the Chernovs smeared against the De Sanctis name. That you Russian pigs could even consider degrading a family so far above you in power and reputation is a testament to how badly this lesson was needed. I’ll enjoy teaching it, as well as my men.”
His superior tone turned my amusement into annoyance and back to humor. This aristocratic old-school don thought I cared about the class hierarchy of the underworld we both walked in.
Baring my teeth in a semblance of a bloodthirsty grin, I laughed. “Don’t forget, Tony, I’m Russian. I don’t care if you’re the lord of the manor around here or Italian fucking royalty. The only good aristocrat is a dead one. Eat the rich.”
I lunged toward him with a speed that sent him stumbling back and snapped my teeth. The sound sent Antonio’s eyebrows together. It was funny. He thought I cared about his reputation or what the rest of the underworld thought of me or my bratva?
He didn’t enjoy being played with, given the way his face froze with arctic anger that grew colder as my laughter bounced off the walls.
I was still laughing when his heavy foot landed on my side, doubling me over. Heart condition or not, it seemed it was indeed possible to rile Antonio De Sanctis’ emotions.
I laughed harder when he pulled me up as far as he could and hit me hard in the mouth, again and again, until my lip split and warm blood showered across my chin.
I couldn’t help it. It was really fucking funny.
Antonio watched me like someone would a cockroach they weren’t sure how to squish without getting their shoes dirty.
I turned my head and spit a long stream of blood on the floor, using my shoulder to wipe my dripping lip.
“You know, you should be careful with that heart, Tony. Don’t get overexcited, or your daughter will be wearing black and standing at your graveside soon enough.”
Antonio’s eyes narrowed, and the irritation he couldn’t hide flashed over his features at the nickname. Then he schooled himself and smiled. “Don’t worry about Sofia, Nikolai. She’s a loyal daughter. She’ll do what she has to for the family every single time. Of course, without her help, we never would have found you. We weren’t even near the right place.” He leaned down, watching as his words found their mark. “Of course, it’s only right she should do something useful for a change. Daughters are more trouble than they’re worth. The least Sofia can do now is be a good girl and marry whomever I choose next. She’s going to regret not taking your brother. At least he was young.”
I swallowed a mouthful of bile and blood. “Don’t you know? Young just means they live longer. With a husband a girl doesn’t want, the older, the better.” The glib words felt like a lie on my tongue.
Antonio chuckled. “You’re amusing, Chernov. I’ll give you that. Fucking annoying but amusing. Since I’m not a thug like you, you’ll be fed and washed and kept in decent condition here. Let your sentence pass without incident, and you and your brother can go back to trying to kill each other in no time.”
Antonio stood and made for the door. Go back to Kirill and tear up the city to be pakhan? The idea was distinctly unappealing. For the first time in a long time-since that day in the bathroom, cradling my mother’s body in my arms-I had no idea what the future held.
I’d lost my place in the world.
My mind shifted to my little prom queen upstairs.
It was time to carve a new one.
When I woke again, the headache had subsided somewhat. Luckily for me, I was used to being hit in the head—a worrying thought for someone else, no doubt. I had little hope of living past thirty, so it didn’t bother me too much.
Heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor, and I pictured the walls beyond this room. How depressing. This was the house Sofia had grown up in? It looked like I wasn’t the only one permanently scarred by a terrible childhood. My little bird with the clipped wings and I had more in common than she’d like to think. The door pushed open, and several figures crowded in. I recognized one of them.
I summoned a smirk for my abuser. “Silvio, I was wondering how long it’d take you to come and visit me. I suppose it’s hard to find a good reason, seeing as your uncle still doesn’t know the truth about what happened to your hand.”
Silvio faltered. Time hadn’t been kind to the man. He’d run to fat and looked uncomfortably puffy. His life had been too soft, it seemed, since the last time I’d seen him. Comfort made men weak, and Silvio looked the weakest of them all. Just the sight of his empty sleeve pleased me. He’d had it coming.
Silvio watched me in silence, his beady eyes calculating. “Gag him,” he said to one of his men, his eyes never leaving mine. “I don’t want to hear him talk shit when I break his ass.”
My laugh sent his eyebrows into a scowl. “I didn’t know you played for both sides. That makes you marginally more interesting. Well, that and being the only one-handed wanker I’ve ever met.”
Silvio went red in the face. “What did you say?” he asked in a tone no doubt meant to be threatening.
“I called you a wanker. Don’t you know the term? You should travel more internationally and broaden your horizons,” I got out before one of his men fitted a filthy rag around my mouth. I could hardly complain. After I’d gagged Sofia for hours a day on end, I was due.
Silvio let out a laugh. “You know, I’ve heard the rumors about you. They say you’re mad, looney toons, but I never believed it, not till now… either you really aren’t afraid of what we’re about to do to you, which would make you mad, or you don’t think we can go too far, which just makes you wrong.”
I grunted behind the gag, and Silvio tugged it down, eager to hear my fear. He wanted me to cower and beg. It’d be a cold day in Hell when I was scared of Silvio De Sanctis.
“You talk a good game, but can you deliver? If you’re going to hurt me, get on with it. All this foreplay is getting tedious,” I murmured and then laughed.
Silvio jerked like I’d hit him, and then he nodded to his men. One of them cut my hands loose, and I enjoyed the excruciating feeling of blood seeping back into my digits.
I sagged to the floor for a blissful second before being hauled up.
“You like to talk, Chernov? Let’s see how you manage it with no teeth,” Silvio said, flexing his solid-looking fist which twinkled with thick gold rings.
That twinkle was the last thing I saw before he connected with my jaw and the lights went out.
