Then the sounds began.
First begging, the words tumbling over each other, none of them coherent enough to answer. Then crying, ugly and broken. Then screaming, the kind that fills a room and stays there long after it stops.
The rats were hungry. We had seen to that.
“You began a war that you could never win,” I said, raising my voice just enough to be heard over the noise.“Why?”
Tolam dragged his gaze from the table to my face. His jaw worked.
“You killed my family,” he hissed.
“You tried to kill mine.” I thought of my father’s face, grey with dust, utterly still.“How convenient of you to forget.”
“You were supposed to die.” Another shriek from the table made him flinch despite himself. His hands flexed against the restraints.“It should have been you.”
I considered that. It was not the first time someone had said it to me.
“There are three starved rats eating their way through your friend,” I said.“You’ll be next. All I need is a name.”
“Nobody helped me.” His chin lifted, a last performance of defiance.“I did it all myself.”
I looked at him for a moment, then turned and signalled to Bogdan, who crossed the room and poured me a drink without being told what or how much. Eleven years, and the man still knew.
I settled into my chair.
It would be a long night. The enjoyable kind.
??????
“Go home,brat,” Konstantin said, wiping his hands on a rag. It did little for the dried blood staining both of them to the wrist.
I stood, turned to Tolam and yanked his head up by a fistful of hair.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
His eyes were flat. Devoid of anything that might once have been called life.
“You killed my sons,” he croaked, his voice low and ruined.
My grip tightened.
“And you killed mine,” I said. The word came out quieter than I intended. Not a snarl. Something worse than a snarl.
“I’ll keep him uncomfortable tonight,brat.” Konstantin’s voice behind me.“Go home.”
I held Tolam’s gaze for another moment, then released him. His head dropped.
There would be no sleep for Tolam tonight. Konstantin would see to that with the particular dedication of a man who considered discomfort an art form.
I walked out.
Tikhon fell into step behind me. Bogdan was already at the car, already in the driver’s seat, the engine turning over in the cold.
The early morning air hit me like a wall—bitter, clean and invigorating in the way that only comes before dawn when the city hasn’t woken yet and the night hasn’t fully released its grip. We pulled away from the industrial estate. A new acquisition. Unremarkable from the outside. Only a handful of people knew what was inside it or who.
That was the problem sitting at the back of everything else.
Someone within the brotherhood had been feeding information to a man who used it to put a truck through my wife’s car. A member of my own hierarchy. Patient enough and careful enough to have gone undetected for long enough to cause this much damage.
