Page 99 of Sins of Arrogance

“Done.” I spit on my hand and of­fer it to Brice.

He wrin­kles his nose, the princess, but spits on his own be­fore shak­ing.

He’s at the sink wash­ing away our com­bined spit three sec­onds later, re­turn­ing to hand me a pa­per towel to wipe my palm. I con­sider re­fus­ing the pa­per towel just to mess with him.

But I want to be at the end of my in­ter­ro­ga­tion with the mag­got hang­ing from my ceil­ing be­fore Ranger Rick comes to.

I wipe my hand on the pa­per towel, crum­ple it up and toss it into the bio­haz­ard trash bin on the other side of the room. A ne­ces­sity for a room like this. We dis­pose of them di­rectly of course, in­cin­er­at­ing them in the fur­nace of the Shaugh­nessy Mob con­trolled waste man­age­ment plant.

Vi­o­lence is an in­te­gral part of mob life, but that doesn’t make us bar­bar­ians. The peo­ple who make it into these rooms are of­ten high risk for car­ry­ing in­fec­tion. I have no more de­sire than the next man to be in­fected by blood borne pathogens.

Which is why I don a pair of punc­ture re­sis­tant ni­trile gloves be­fore mov­ing onto more per­sua­sive forms of in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

Gjon moans.

I smile. “Strip him.”

Brice doesn’t hes­i­tate, cut­ting Gjon’s shirt and tac­ti­cal vest un­til he’s down to his pants. We keep the tem­per­a­ture in here a cool sixty-de­grees and goose­bumps im­me­di­ately form on his skin.

My lieu­tenant goes through Gjon’s things while I grab the cus­tom forged ob­sid­ian sur­gi­cal blade out of my pri­vate drawer of im­ple­ments.

Cuts are so clean with this thing, they don’t bleed right away and the pain takes just as long to reg­is­ter. De­signed for slic­ing with­out killing (at first), it’s per­fect for pro­longed, con­trolled pain.

In other words, in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

Slic­ing a long stroke from the bot­tom of one of his nip­ples to the top of his hip, I watch the per­fect, thin line form.

Sec­onds later, blood wells and he gasps out as the un­ex­pected pain hits.

I nod. “You’ve heard of death by a thou­sand cuts?”

“Hasn’t ev­ery­body? It’s a myth.” Gjon tries to look tough, but he can’t hide the ter­ror lurk­ing be­neath the sur­face. “No­body can last that many cuts.”

“This scalpel makes it pos­si­ble. It is also very good for cut­ting away skin.” Which is too damn messy for my taste, but this mag­got doesn’t need to know that.

I make an­other cut iden­ti­cal to the first on the other side of his torso.

This time, he shouts when the pain hits. “Moth­er­fucker!”

“No de­sire to fuck my ma, but I am go­ing to fuck you up.” I pause and then smile again.

He flinches.

“You ready?” I run the flat of the blade across his chest.

“What do you want? I told you Besnik would pay.”

No, he told me his boss would pay for his re­lease. But now he uses the man’s name. I al­ready know he works for.

“I’m sure Besnik will be glad to know he gave his name up so eas­ily to save an­other shal­low cut to your pre­cious skin.” I would kill my sol­dier my­self if he was this weak.

“You have to know who he is to ask for ran­som.” He sounds like he thinks he’s be­ing clever.

I won­der.

“Who is Besnik to you?” Why is such a use­less piece of shite on a job with a man like Wraith?

No way did Ranger Rick pick this pis­sant for the mis­sion.