Standing straight, I spit the piece of the Russian fucker’s nose out of my mouth. The coppery tang of his blood seeps onto my tongue and I spit again.
“You taste like fucking shit!” I snarl as I tower over him. He has his hands pressed over the gaping hole in his face as he cries and begs for his life.
We have been in this tiny shit-box of a room for two hours. We had the element of surprise and we had all four of the brotherhood members overpowered and restrained within five minutes of getting through the door. But Shane was right about them being hardcore. For the first hour, they all refused to speak at all, no matter what we inflicted on them.
We’re pretty limited in terms of weapons, but both Shane and I, as well as Jakob and Rudolf know plenty of ways to cause pain. It was when we decided that we only needed one of them alive to get information that the real fun began.
So, we chose this poor fuck as the one who would sit and watch as his three colleagues were tortured to death. Even when they begged to be allowed to talk, we didn’t let up. They had their opportunity and they wasted it. So now their mutilated bodies lie scattered around the room.
“Are you ready to tell me why you tried to kidnap my wife and babies?” I snarl at him.
He mumbles something but he nods his head. I grab his blood-matted hair and pull him up from the floor before tossing him onto the bed.
“Who told you that Jessica Ivanov was still alive?” Shane asks him. He was asked this question once before when we first arrived and he told us to go fuck ourselves – in Russian – and earned himself a broken jaw. Now he has a hole in the middle of his face where his nose is supposed to be. His jaw hangs at an odd angle and he chokes from the blood running down his throat, but he will give me answers. I’ll make him write them down if I have to.
“She…told…us,” he sputters the words.
“She told you?” I snarl at him. “Who? Jessie?” I bring my face closer to his.
“She… said… take back power…” he says before he starts choking on his own blood.
I grab his throat and squeeze. “Who is she?” I snarl.
“Conor!” Shane’s hand is on my arm and I loosen my grip on our captive’s throat as Shane holds his chin up and presses a bottle of water to his lips.
“Drink!” he barks. “It will help.”
The Russian looks up at him gratefully as he swallows some of the cool liquid. When he has taken what he needs, Shane takes away the bottle and releases his grip on his chin. “I can end this right now if you tell me what I want to know.”
The Russian nods softly.
“Who told you could take back power?”
I watch my oldest brother’s face crumble before my eyes as the Russian says her name.
