“Stop being a pussy. This doesn’t even hurt that much. Not compared to what it’ll feel like if you keep refusing to admit what you know about Gunter Schlossberg.”
“I know nothing. I swear.”
My brother and I take turns as we work our captive over for the next fifteen minutes, but we’re just getting his denials. Joaquin and I stand off to the side, letting him rest for moment.When we decide the fucker’s break is over, I kick the guy in thehuevos—eggs is a way more fitting term than balls or nuts. That definitely wakes him up.
I press the tip of my knife just below the man’s eyeball again. This time I do it a lot harder. It’s enough for him to take me seriously. Joaquin returns to his position behind the guy. He puts his knife to the top of our captive’s hairline. He angles the blade to make the Russian understand the threat. I grab hold of his wrist, prepared to slice it like my brother did to the other one. But for now, I don’t move the blade’s tip away from the man’s face.
“Maybe I should do exactly what you did to Gunter. Maybe I should hack off your entire ear and pop out your eyeball. Maybe—rather than slitting your wrists—my brother should just hack off your hand.”
I keep pressing the tip incrementally harder until I break the skin. I’m certain his vision’s already blurry.
“You won’t do any of this shit. It’s far too messy.”
My brother and I laugh.
“Like we give a fuck about that. We have connections, so it’ll all get taken care of.”
Joaquin’s blade presses hard enough against the man’s upper forehead to break the skin. At the same time, my brother pulls the man’s hair, and I’m certain he thinks my brother’s started to scalp him.
I say a prayer of thanksgiving that Liesel isn’t anywhere nearby to listen to even a hint of this. It would just add another layer of trauma to this entire fucked-up week. It would mean she hears what the monster in me can do to someone. I’d give anything to keep that away from her.
“Look, you’re going to die regardless. Like I said earlier, you can decide whether it’s a clean kill, or we hack you to bits and run you down the garbage disposal. It’ll take us a long timewith just these little knives to carve you up. It’ll be death by a thousand cuts. What are you in the mood for tonight?”
Our gazes lock, and I know he realizes I’m not all bluster. I bite.
“I know who you are. Maksim ordered me to watch you, so I know you’ve been following a woman. I reported this to thepakhan, but he didn’t tell me to do anything else. He commanded me to observe and stay out of the way. I don’t know why you’re stalking her.”
“You accuse me of stalking? What the fuck are you doing?”
He coughs up blood, and it dribbles down his chin.
“I get it, but I don’t know anything about Gunter Schlossberg besides he’s the woman’s father. He isn’t my assignment. You are.”
“What have you told Maks?”
“That you stay outside her office and watch her. You’ve been inside a few times.”
“And after work hours?”
The man gives me a stare that isn’t a poker face one. It’s a “Don’t tell Maks I haven’t followed you night and day.” Lazy motherfucker.
I step back for a moment and cross my arms. I make sure my shirt sleeves pull tight against my biceps as I do. I dip my chin, and my brother releases the guy’s hair and pulls his knife away, leaving a shallow cut as he does it. I flex my pecs right before I drive my fist into the guy’s left rib cage at the same time Joaquin nails the guy’s right ones. Once more, he howls in pain, doubling over from it. I grab hold of the guy’s injured earlobe and yank until it looks like I’ll practically rip the ear right off.
If he was too lazy to follow me after sundown, then I’m certain Maks hasn’t made information flow in both directions. Our captive might be a senior guy here in Frankfurt, but he isn’t more than a midlevel guy in the bratva hierarchy. He likelyoversees the legit deals and some street level hustles, but he’s no mastermind. Maks doesn’t have confidants who aren’t related to him, so the man’s run out of usefulness.
As Joaquin and I observe and assess him, we know we’ve come to that point where he has no more information to give. We can torture him for the sake of it, or we can end things. We won’t get more out of him, and I have better things to do like getting cleaned up and being with Liesel—something I can’t do yet, but it’s what I want. I know Joaquin feels no personal connection to this guy, so continuing his torture appeals to neither of us.
Joaquin moves his blade to the guy’s throat. He begins to press and pull, making the man presume he’ll be practically beheaded. Instead, I chop off both middle fingers.
“Hold your hands up and say cheese.”
The Russian’s nearly passed out, but he follows my command. I snap a photo for Maks. We might send the fingers to him, or we might just threaten to. If the Kutsenkos are involved in Gunter’s disappearance, they’ll get the significance. If they aren’t, then it’s just a mutilated fuck you.
I pull the gun from my lower back holster and put it directly between our captive’s eyes. He looks up at me, and I match his gaze before I pull the trigger. Blood and other shit splatters, but it’s nothing new to any of us. I hate saying how desensitized we are, but it is what it is.
As soon as we finish with the Russian, one of our men brings us fresh changes of clothes. Joaquin and I take advantage of the bathroom and shower. We scrub ourselves, ensuring we take no biological evidence with us. While Hisham’s team comes to the Russian corpse’s house to make it look like none of us were everthere, Joaquin and I climb into an SUV to ride over to our next destination.
My brother has his laptop, so he’s plunking away on the keyboard as he hacks into the email account of the “Thieves in Law” shot caller. I’m sitting next to him, so I can see his screen. I read along as he types.
