After the door closed, I returned to sit beside the bed. I reached out to smooth her furrowed brow, but my fingers froze just before making contact.
What right did I have to touch her? I'd just treated her like a beast. Even if she'd eventually surrendered and responded, it was only because I'd forced her to.
"I'm sorry."
The words felt foreign on my tongue.
Kholod Morozov never apologized.
But now, seeing her body marked and wounded because of me, the words emerged unbidden.
What good were apologies? Could they erase the marks on her body? Could they undo what I'd just done to her?
No.
I stood and walked toward the door.
"Rest well," I told her sleeping form, then turned and left.
"Boss, he's downstairs." Dmitri waited at the entrance to the underground passage.
"What's his condition?"
"Still alive."
"Lead the way."
We descended the narrow spiral staircase, the air growingprogressively colder and damper, thick with the mingled scents of blood and disinfectant.
This was the manor's deepest basement, prepared for special circumstances, buried so far underground that even a nuclear blast couldn't reach it. At the end stood a massive steel door.
Dmitri pushed it open. The metallic tang of blood hit me immediately.
Lorenzo hung suspended by chains in the center of the room, toes barely grazing the ground. His clothes had been torn to shreds, revealing a torso covered in wounds—whip marks, burns, knife cuts, layered upon layer.
His face was even worse—swollen eye sockets, shattered nose, lips beaten nearly to pulp.
He hung his head, breathing barely perceptible.
"Is he conscious?"
"Intermittently," Dmitri reported. "We administered adrenaline, but he won't last much longer."
I approached him and lifted his chin.
His eyes opened to mere slits, pupils dilated and unfocused.
"Lorenzo Conti," my voice echoed in the empty chamber. "I'm going to ask you several questions. Answer truthfully, and I'll grant you a quick death."
His lips moved, producing indistinct sounds. "...kill me..."
"I will. But first," I released his chin, "tell me who orchestrated today's events."
"...don't know..."
"Don't know?" I picked up pliers from the nearby table. "Perhaps you need more encouragement."
I clamped the pliers around his right index fingernail and yanked hard.
