The pain in my hands feels good. Clean. Simple. Each impact grounds me further in the present, pushes the piano music further into the background where it belongs.
"Easy, brother," Alexei says from somewhere behind me, his voice carrying that particular amusement he gets when violence is imminent. Like he's watching a sport he enjoys. "Don't want to end the party too soon. We just got here."
He's right. I'm hitting harder than necessary for an interrogation. Letting emotion bleed into the work.
I step back. Shake out my hands. The knuckles are already starting to swell, skin split across two of them. Blood decorates my shirt. An imperfection in an otherwise carefully maintained appearance.
I should care more about that. Usually I would.
Tonight I don't.
Zakhar moves into my peripheral vision, and I hear the whisper of metal before I see the knife. He flips it once, casual and practiced, then crouches in front of the bleeding man with the particular stillness that precedes violence.
My brother's presence is a comfort. We've done this dance countless times. Each of us knows our role, our rhythm, the choreography of interrogation perfected through years of shared brutality.
"I'm going to ask you a question," Zakhar says, his voice so calm it becomes terrifying. The kind of quiet that makes people nervous because they can't predict what comes next. "And you're going to answer truthfully. Are you working with Eryan Nis?"
The man laughs, though it comes out wet and broken through blood and damaged tissue.
"I don't work for ghosts," he says, grinning through split lips. "My boss is real. Flesh and blood. And he's going to take down the Severyns very soon. Take possession of everything that belongs to you. Your docks. Your shipments. Your warehouses."
He pauses, and his grin widens into ugliness.
"Including that bitch you married, Severyn. Heard she's a real piece of work. Uppity cunt who thinks she's better than everyone. Once we're done with you, we'll make sure she gets proper attention. The kind a whore like that deserves. Maybe we'll pass her around, see if she's as good as she looks."
The words are still leaving his mouth when Zakhar moves.
One hand shoots out, grabs the man's hair, wrenches his head back hard enough that I hear vertebrae crack. The other hand forces his jaw open with brutal efficiency, fingers digging into pressure points that make resistance impossible.
The knife flashes once in the flickering light.
Then the howling starts.
The sound of pain echoes through the warehouse, bouncing off steel beams and concrete walls, amplifying until it feels like the building itself is screaming. Consequence made audible. Lines crossed and prices paid in flesh.
Blood pours over Zakhar's hand, hot and dark. The severed tongue falls to the floor with a wet sound I feel more than hear, landing in a spreading pool of crimson.
The man's howls dissolve into gurgling, choking sounds as blood fills his mouth faster than he can spit it out.
The three of us stand in a circle around the kneeling, mutilated man. Brothers forged in survival, bound by violence, united in this moment of righteous brutality.
We've stood like this before. We'll stand like this again.
This is what we are. What we've always been.
Zakhar looks at me, and his eyes carry fury barely leashed. I recognize it because I feel it too.
"No one talks about her like that," Zakhar says, voice rough with emotion he rarely shows. "No one."
I nod. Agreement. Acceptance. Understanding.
I would have done the same if Zakhar hadn't been faster. Would have cut the words from that man's throat before they finished forming, erased the insults from existence with steel and violence.
The truth of that lands with unexpected weight.
Somewhere, sometime, Victoria stopped being a transaction.
She became mine to protect.
