“She’s dead because of me,” I say. “Vanessa died, pumped full of heroin, because of me. If your sister and I never met, she’d still be smiling, singing, sharing a life with you.”
The blade presses against my skin, drawing a little blood, while she presses her tongue against the inside of her cheek. It doesn’t hurt as the blade bites me, and I wonder how much of what is coming actually will. Will I suffer enough for what I did to Vanessa?
Just as the blade is about to cut deeper and turn the few drops of blood welling from my broken skin into something much greater, she stops. Adriana cocks her head, listening.
“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind…”
“Shut the fuck up,” she says. “I hear voices at the door.”
“You think the murder suite’s been double-booked?”
Adriana doesn’t have a chance to respond before the muffled voices turn into rough shouts and the sharp sound of splintering wood as someone shoots a hole in the front door.
Chapter Four
Adriana
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “I paid extra for this room. The guy, he said everyone knows not to mess with whoever’s staying in the murder suite.”
Ricky rolls his eyes. How he can look handsome while acting like such a pompous, know-it-all ass — and also be a murderer — is beyond me. Fuck him for being good-looking. Fuck him for what he’s making me feel. Fuck him.
“Those guys aren’t guests, Adriana. They don’t know the rules about the murder suite. Though they are going to break down your door and commit murder in about ten seconds.”
I blink at him. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
“I heard their accents when they were shouting. They’re Russian.”
“And?”
“Maybe I owe a lot of money to the head of the local Russian mob, Ruslan Volkov.”
“I will not let these guys take you. You’re mine, Ricky.” A fraught decision flies through me at adrenaline speed. I sigh. “I’m setting you free. Help me fight these guys off, and we can finish what we started after.” I undo his handcuffs, undo the bindings around his legs. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Ricky stands unsteadily in the tub, flexes his wrists and grimaces. “You got any spare weapons?”
I gesture to the corner, where the dick torture device sits in a jumble. “There’s your weapon.”
He picks it up, turns it over in his hands, winces. “It’s heavy, and fucking scary as anything I’ve seen. Send me out there alone, I’ll wave this thing at them; should be enough to send them running once they figure out what it is.” Taking a closer look, he shudders. “It says ‘Stretcher sold separately’ on it.” Grunting, he hefts it over his shoulder like a heavy club. From the front room, I hear a heavy, wood-cracking kick being leveled against the door. “They’ll be in here any second. They’ll want me alive — with the money I owe, Ruslan will not let them kill me until after he collects. But you… they don’t give a shit about you. So stay behind me; let me take the brunt of this.”
The front door shudders, groans, and, with a prolonged, agonizing crack, falls inward. Several sets of footsteps echo through the room, along with raspy voices grunting in Russian. Ricky takes a deep breath, then steps out of the bathroom into the hallway. I stay behind, listening.
“I’m going to give you shits to the count of three to get the fuck out of here, or else I’m going to use this on you,” he says. “One… Two…”
More footfalls as the men come closer. One voice — both smoky and high-pitched, like a soprano singer with a three-pack-a-day habit — answers, “What the fuck is that?”
“Why don’t you take your dick out and let me show you?” Ricky replies.
A moment of heavy silence hits the room out front harder than any impact from fist, foot, or gun. That moment stretches into another, and another, until finally, the smoking soprano Russian says, “You want me to take my dick out? Why do you want access to my penis?”
Another moment of peaceful, disturbed silence.
“Your dick goes in this hole,” Ricky says. “These clamps go on it. You turn this crank, then this contraption goes down and compresses it, while this poker thing goes in your… well, I don’t know what the fuck it does, and I don’t really want to find out. But if you come one step closer, I will beat the living piss out of you, and then you’ll learn exactly what this contraption can do.”
“Enough fucking around. Take him, and don’t let him touch your penis,” says the smokey-voiced one. “And take the contraption, too. Put that in my trunk. It’s mine. Kill everyone else. Mr. Volkov wants no witnesses.”
No sooner do the words land than the room erupts with the sound of violence — thuds, a gunshot, a heavy crash, the sound of something breaking wetly, followed by a thickly accented scream. “He stuck it in my fucking eye.”
Ricky bursts into the bathroom again, blood smeared across his forehead, dripping from his knuckles, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. The device is slung over his shoulder, blood dripping from the tip of the penetrator.
