Page 17 of Under His Heel: A Kidnapping

Tracht shook his head in annoyance and turned back to Alex. He kissed Alex’s temple again, and Alex once more flinched and whimpered.

The kidnappers would pay for this. How convenient that they’d left all of their torture implements on display. Alex’s bloodied tooth lay on the tray alongside them, right next to a branding pen.

Tracht dropped both the tooth and the branding pen into his pocket and left.

==

“Where’s Scarface?” Anja Nilsen asked. “Thought you’d be eager to get him out.”

“No. I assessed the damage. He’s catatonic. A few more minutes won’t hurt him. I want to deal with the person who did this first.”

She shrugged and motioned into the other room. “In there. I’ll watch.”

Not a request. That was fine. Tracht didn’t particularly care.

The ringleader of these professional saboteurs was a woman.

“Do you have a name?”

“Fuck you,” she spat, and she smiled. “What are you gonna do? Want the payout from the job?”

“You don’t recognize us?” Tracht asked, and that was disappointing. “That’s sloppy on your part.”

“I’ll say,” Anja Nilsen said. “Atalanteans always think they can ignore Cadmus customs.” She gave a sarcastic bow. “Anja Nilsen, at your service. In general, it’s good manners to ask the local leaders when you’re going to start working in their jurisdiction.”

“Never heard of you,” the woman said, but Tracht suspected she was lying. In her line of work, there was no way she hadn’t heard of the Nilsens.

“You had a lot of fun with Alex,” Tracht said quietly.

She turned her attention back to him. “Who?”

“My bondservant.” Tracht held up the branding pen. “You cut him up and tortured him. He’ll be useless for weeks.”

He saw her brow furrow in confusion. “Yours—not Anna Tracht’s?”

“I’m her brother. And I’m a lot less nice and forgiving than she is.”

He set the branding pen into the corner of her eyelid. She flinched, but to her credit she didn’t make any noise beyond a mild grunt, despite the burning.

She didn’t start screaming until he burned through the skin of her eyelid entirely.

==

“Thanks for leaving enough for me,” Anja Nilsen said, afterward. She hooked her arm around his. “You’re a lot more interesting than I thought. We should have fun together sometime.”

“I’m not interested in women.” Tracht gently extricated his arm. “I suspect you may well be more extreme than I am, in any case.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “That was plenty extreme. I mean, I’m going to have fun making her disappear for a long, long time, but damn, you laid some beautiful groundwork.”

He automatically looked back at the closed door where they’d left the woman—he hadn’t bothered to ask for her name, but he assumed Anja Nilsen knew.

“Will you be leaving now?” Tracht asked. “I’ll call Vasilis as soon as you’re gone.” He paused. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t mention your role in this.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. Just remember that you owe me one. I’ll collect within the year.”

The Nilsens took all the members of the little saboteur gang with them—mostly incapacitated, with their leader bleeding and looking the worse for wear. Tracht waited until they were all gone, and then he waited another fifteen minutes to call Anna.

“I found Johan.”

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