“But—”
“Will you refuse the Pakhan’s order?” I held my phone up and took a photograph of him.
“No—no. Of course not,” he stuttered, waving his gun in the air.“Let Mrs Dragunov through.”
The gates opened.
The sun shone.
Mama Popova would have been proud.
Chapter 49
Vadim
I couldn’t understand why people didn’t simply tell me what I needed to know. Torturing them was so tiresome.
More cries of pain followed as Konstantin applied the blowtorch to our uncle. I could have called on Tau for this, but it was family business.
I pulled my phone out again. Her picture on the wallpaper. The blue eyes and the nostril and that smile.
The irritation of being played for a fool made me slip it back into my pocket.
“Why do you want to know about that whore?” Sergei screeched.
Konstantin began on his nipple.
I watched it change colour before the smell of burning flesh reached me. When I glanced over Konstantin was grinning with the focused satisfaction of a man who had found his medium. He made sure the nipple was fully decimated before moving methodically to the greying chest hair.
No wonder he looked up to Tau. He would never admit it. But there were signs.
“I’ll talk,” Sergei said.
The anger had left him entirely. What remained in his voice was exhaustion and pain in roughly equal measure.
The blowtorch cut off with a whoosh.
“She was young. A stupid girl from the village. Lev didn’t treat her well and neither did the Bratva,” he said, breathing carefully between each sentence.
I imagined it couldn’t be easy to maintain focus with a roasted nipple.
“Rumours began after his birth,” he said, nodding toward me.
“What rumours?” Konstantin asked, frowning.
“Let’s just say the men were helping themselves.” Sergei’s eyes moved to my brother.“You might not even be Lev’s.”
Even hanging by his wrists, in pain, with burnt flesh, he managed the smirk.
The strike was fast and vicious—the dull thud of the metal blowtorch against his skull, no hesitation, no wind-up. Sergei’s head dropped forward and his body slumped, dead weight against the restraints.
“Wonderful,” I said, standing and straightening my jacket.“Now I have to wait for him to regain consciousness.”
Konstantin didn’t get a chance to respond.
Within seconds every phone in the room began to ring simultaneously. His. Mine. Thebykiby the door.
An explosion at the house.
