“Misha Rublev ring any bells?”
“Fuck you,” he spat the words at me.
“No thanks, you ain’t exactly my type.” I walked behind him, stepping up to the table to drop the hammer and pick up the pliers. “There’s probably time to get that arm checked out,” I told him. “You might even get to be a doctor again.”
“I willalwaysbe a doctor.”
I laughed and shook my head. “You’ll always have the title, but not the prestige that comes from saving lives or fixingnoses, or whatever the fuck it is you do.” I didn’t wait for a response. “What happened with Alexei?”
He laughed again. “Vivian having a hard time accepting it, huh? I told her to come back to me, and I’d make it all go away.”
I looked over my shoulder at Diesel who gave me the go ahead to act. “Okay.” I held the pliers in my hand, placing his middle finger between the jaws and squeezing tight while I bent it until it cracked.
“Son of a bitch!” he cried out.
“That doesn’t sound like an answer,” I said calmly, before taking his index finger and snapping it in half. “Alexei?”
He shook his head furiously, and honestly, I was fucking impressed by his refusal to speak.
And pissed. “I can do this all day until you tell me what the fuck I want to hear.” He refused to talk after eight fingers were broken and mangled, which meant it was time to step it up. “Did you mean to kill Alexei, or did you use it to get Viv back?”
St. John clenched his jaw tight against the pain and looked away. “She either comes with me, or she’ll run from them forever.”
I wanted to shove those fucking pliers into his goddamn eye, but I didn’t. Instead I picked up a serrated knife and twirled it in my hand. “There’s another option,” I told him, poking his flesh with the tip of the knife.
“No, there isn’t.” His breathing was labored, and he was sweating like a motherfucker. He was tough, but nobody was that fucking tough.
“You think I’m scared of a knife?” he laughed.
“You know,” I began a little louder. “I always wondered what it was like to be a doctor.” I swallowed down a shaky breath and did what I had to do. “How it felt to stick your hands inside a body and just know what all that shit does.”
“Interesting.” The fucker didn’t know when to quit. “Oh!”
I rammed the knife into the forearm Viv had already damaged until the tip hit the metal arm of the chair, and then I twisted it as St. John wailed in pain. “Yeah, it is interesting but what I’m more interested in is what happened to Alexei.”
“Stop! Please, oh fuck, just stop!”
I kept going. “You haven’t answered my question yet.” I felt sick to my fucking stomach, but this was it. This asshole had tortured and traumatized Vivian enough for a fucking lifetime and this was my chance to get him to pay for those sins.
“Okay, I’ll answer… please… just… stop. Please.”
I stopped twisting the knife and pulled it out. “Talk.” I threw the knife down and waited. “Right fucking now.”
“Okay,” he panted. “Okay.” He shook his head as if that one move could take away his pain. “It was simple really. My position at the hospital made it easy to make a small change to his medical records.”
“Who ordered you to do it?”
“Nobody,” he tried for a laugh, but his pain was too great. “I knew who he was. Hell, Vivian was probably the only one who didn’t know who he was. I knew his death would put her in the crosshairs of the Russian mob.”
“And in your mind, she would be so scared she’d come running to you for protection?”
He nodded, looking away not out of shame but embarrassment. “Except she wanted nothing to do with me, so I told them she was careless, reckless, and had killed him.”
Rage consumed me whole in that moment. He was so matter of fact about ruining a woman’s life. He didn’t care. “You know that she’d rather face the Russians than be with you again?”
He shrugged. “Then she’s a dead woman.” I grabbed the hammer and slammed it down on the back of his broken hand. “Fuck!” he screamed. “Why’d you do that? I’m telling you what you want to hear.”
“Because you make me fucking sick.” I took a deep breath. “So you’re not even working with the Russians?”
