"Nothing," he said. "Not a name, not a number. He's trained."
I nodded. Looked past him.
The man was zip-tied to a metal chair in the center of the room. White plastic ties—the cheap kind, the bulk kind. Same ties I'd used on Cora.
He was conscious. His head was up, his eyes tracking my approach with the alert, calculating focus of a man who had been hurt and was preparing for more. Nico had worked him over—methodically, from the look of it. Split lip. Left eye swelling shut. Blood from his nose, dried in a dark line down his chin and intothe collar of his shirt. Professional damage. Nothing excessive. Nothing that would kill him.
But nothing that had made him talk, either.
"Go upstairs," I said to Nico. "Take a moment. Get coffee."
Nico left without comment. The door closed. The lock engaged. The fluorescent tubes hummed.
I pulled a chair to face him. Sat. Studied him.
Mid-thirties. Slavic features—the broad cheekbones, the heavy brow, the jaw that was built like a foundation. His hands were large, even bound. Thick wrists. A tattoo on the inside of his right forearm, partially visible beneath the pushed-up sleeve—Cyrillic script, old ink, prison quality. I'd seen enough bratva ink to know the grammar. The stars. The churches. The coded autobiography that Russian organized crime wore like a résumé.
This wasn't a local crew. This was imported talent.
I removed my watch. Set it on the floor beside my chair. Folded my sleeves, left then right, three precise turns each, the cuffs settling just below my elbows. The ritual of it was familiar—the specific sequence of preparation that preceded a specific kind of work. I'd been doing this since I was nineteen, when my father put a man in a chair in this same basement and handed me a pair of pliers and told me to learn. I'd learned.
The man watched my hands.
Good. He should.
"I'm going to ask you questions," I said. "You're going to answer them."
No inflection. No threat. Just the statement, the way Dante would deliver it—factual, final. I'd learned more from my brother than I'd ever tell him.
The man said nothing. His one open eye held mine with the flat, enduring blankness of someone who'd been trained to absorb pain the way a sandbag absorbed impact.
I reached for his left hand.
He tensed. The zip ties creaked against the chair arms. His fingers curled instinctively, the reflex of a body that knew what was coming even before the mind acknowledged it. I uncurled his ring finger. Held it between my thumb and two fingers—the specific grip, the specific angle. The metacarpal joint. You didn't need tools for this. You needed leverage, knowledge, and the willingness to apply both.
"Who sent you?"
Silence.
I hated to have to do this. But I couldn’t letanyonethreaten Cora.
I broke the finger.
The sound was small and specific—a dry, muted pop, like a branch snapping under snow. His body jerked. A sound came out of him—not a scream, a grunt, compressed through clenched teeth, the kind of sound a man made when he'd decided that screaming was a concession he wouldn't make. His face went white. Sweat broke across his forehead in a single wave.
I waited. The fluorescent tubes hummed. His breathing was harsh and rapid through his nose.
"Who sent you?"
He spat. It landed on my forearm—blood and saliva, warm, sliding down toward the crescent bruise where Cora had bitten me two nights ago. I didn't wipe it. Didn't react. I moved to the middle finger.
"This one's worse," I said. Not cruelly. Informationally. "The ring finger is isolated. The middle finger connects to the tendons you use for grip. You lose this one properly, you don't hold a weapon the same way again."
His eye found mine. I saw the calculation happening—the rapid, desperate math of a man weighing loyalty against function, silence against the permanent loss of something his livelihood required.
“Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
Nothing.
