“You’ll be my eyes and ears inside his operation. And when the time comes, we’ll hand everything over to the people who can use it.”
Understanding dawns slowly, and with it, a new kind of terror. Death would be kinder than what I’m offering him. But it’s not a choice. There is nothis-or-that;there isthis,or getting filleted and left to die in this miserable little room.
“Do we have an understanding?” I ask.
Harold blanches. “No. No, no, no—I can’t! Aleksei willkillme. The second I start poking around those files, someone will notice, they’ll talk, and then—” He makes a slashing motion across his throat. “There’s no way to hide something like this. It’s impossible!”
I let him babble for a moment. The sweat beads at his temples and his pupils dilate with each ragged, pitiful breath.
“Aleksei will kill you anyway,” I remark when he runs out of steam. “Once you’re no longer useful, you become a liability. You’re a loose end, Harold. And my brother doesn’t leave loose ends.”
“But Iamuseful! I’ve been useful for years?—”
“That’s exactly the problem. Years of dirty secrets locked inside that skull of yours.” I tap the flat of the blade against his forehead, light as a kiss. “You’re already a dead man walking, just like me. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
Harold’s knees buckle as he slides to the floor. He collapses at my feet and wails, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”
I move before he can keep fucking whining.
My hand shoots out, snares his wrist, and slams it flat against the seat of the chair he just vacated. His fingers splay out, pale and trembling against the worn wood. I pin his knuckles with my palm, pressing down until I feel the small bones grind together, and bring the knife point to rest just beneath the lip of his pinky nail.
Harold goes absolutely still.
“Do you know what happens when you sever the digital nerve?” I ask conversationally. “The initial pain is sharp. White-hot, they say. Like being branded alive. But that’s not the interesting part.”
He whimpers.
“The interesting part is what comes after. The numbness that spreads up through the hand. Phantom sensations will wake you in the dead of the night foryears—burning, tingling, the ghost of a finger that works but doesn’t, not really, not ever again.”
The whole room seems to tremble with his violent shaking.
“So here are your options.” I ease the pressure on his hand just enough for him to feel the blood rush back into his fingertips. “Option one: You help me bring down Aleksei. You gather the evidence, you play your part, and when it’s over, I personally ensure you enter witness protection. New identity. Enough money to start over somewhere his reach doesn’t extend. Maybe Costa Rica. I hear the weather’s nice.”
His breath hitches. Hope is a dangerous thing to offer a drowning man.
“Option two: You refuse. And then you face consequences frombothof us—me now, and Aleksei later, when his empire inevitably collapses. Because empires like thisalwayscollapse, Harold. And when they do, everyone in the blast radius gets buried in the rubble.”
His eyes keep pinwheeling in their sockets. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t just kill me anyway?”
“You don’t have any guarantees,” I say coldly. “But between me and my brother, I’m the only one who still remembers what mercy looks like. That’s going to have to be enough.”
I see the moment I win. Harold’s tears slow and his trembles fade.
Satisfied, I remove the knife from his hand and sheath it at my side. Then I reach into my jacket, pull out a burner phone, and drop it in his lap.
“Continue business as usual,” I instruct. “Attend your scheduled meetings with Aleksei. Accept his phone calls. Do whatever he tells you to do.” I tap the phone with one finger. “But in the meantime, you find your way into that safety deposit box. When you have the key… you know what to do.”
Harold stares at the phone in horror. It might as well be a noose around his neck.
“There’s one number programmed in there,” I continue. “Mine. You use it when you have something worth sharing. And Harold?”
He looks up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“If you try to warn Aleksei, I’ll know. And what I do to you then will make tonight feel like a fucking spa day.” I start to leave,then stop with my hand on the curtain as something else occurs to me. “Also… Stay away from girls who look like they’re still in high school. Consider it a condition of our arrangement.”
I go back down the way I came. On the main floor, Def Leppard has given way to some pulsing electronic track. Nude bodies gyrate under red lights.
I stop in a bathroom halfway down the service corridor, crank on the sink, and wash my hands, even though there’s no blood on them this time. Just feels like the right thing to do.
