They look up when I walk in. Tomas makes a strangled noise. The older Cortana starts straight away: “Mr. Maksimov, listen,listen, we didn’t know, we didn’t know it was you, we’d never have.”
I walk a slow circle around the chairs. They turn their heads to follow me. I dinnae speak. My boots on concrete and their terrified breathing, the only sounds in the room. The cold of the warehouse is the only thing in the charged air.
I let my eyes go from one to the next and back. The pale blue. The flat. The thing. I let them see it.
The younger Cortana starts crying.
Aye, good. Save us all some time.
I speak. Quiet. My brogue, thicker than it’s been for days because there’s no Lisa or Jasmine in the room to soften it for.
“Ye walked out on two women in a house with an open contract. That on its own would’ve earned ye a conversation with me.” I crack my knuckles. “But ye’d have lived.”
I crouch at their eye level. One of the brothers is openly sobbing now. Pathetic piece of shite.
“But ye came back.”
The older Cortana is frantically shaking his head. “No, no, no, Mr. Maksimov…”
I stand back up, take my folding knife out of my back pocket, and slowly open it.
I have carried this blade for ten years, and it has done a lot of work.
I look at Tomas.
“Ye first.”
He pisses himself.
I cross the concrete in three steps. First, Tomas Santo. The cunt who walked. I dinnae bother with a speech. I’m behind him in a second, knife in my right hand, take a fistful of his greasy hair with my left, and yank his head back, baring his throat.
He starts babbling: “Mr. Maksimov, please, please, I have a wife, I have…”.
I dinnae hear the rest because I’m not listening. The blade goes in clean. One pass from side to side. The sound is wet and short. Tomas’s words become gurgles, then nothing. His big, sweaty body convulses against the chair and then sags. The blood pools down the front of his polo shirt and on the concrete between his boots.
I let go of his hair, and his head drops forward against his chest. I wipe the blade on his shoulder in two quick passes.
The Cortana brothers are screaming. Mikey is fuckinghowling. Johnny isroaringthe wordnoover and over like that’s ever stopped me from doing a single fucking thing in my life. The vast, empty space of the warehouse makes their voicesloud, bouncing off the concrete walls back at us.
I move to Johnny, the older brother, the one who tried to talk first. The one who, when his brother was crying, looked annoyed instead of protective. I noted that and I’ve beenholdingit. I crouch in front of him and let him see me up close. My eyes,inches from his face. His are wide. His mouth is moving, but I cannae make sense of what he’s trying to say. I dinnae try.
“Ye know what ye did.”
“I… I… please… "
I straighten up and step behind him. He gets the same as Tomas, but slower… he has a half-second to feel the cold of the blade against his throat before I move. And he makes a sound that is not human. Then the sound stops, and Johnny stops with it. Two down. I let go of his head, wipe the blade, and step into Mikey’s eyeline.
The cunt is fuckingbroken. He stopped howling and started something quieter and worse… much worse. A keening sound coming from deep down his throat, the kind a child makes when it’s run out of breath from crying. His face is wet. There’s snot down his chin. His shoulders are shaking.
I crouch in front of him and growl in his face, “Look at me.” He cannae. His eyes are squeezed shut. “Mikey. Open yer fucking eyes.” He opens them. Just barely. And they’re bloodshot. “Ye took from my girls.” He makes another pathetic, strangled sound. “Everything that was left in the safe. Whatever little money was there. Aye?” Another sound. “Even her fuckin’ wedding band.”
“…it was just… I needed… "
“It was hers, Mikey.”
“…”
“It was theirs,and ye walked into that house while my woman was alone with her kid and ye took from them.”
