Page 74 of Kings of Cruelty

“What…” I begin.

Nikolai gently takes my other arm. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

Konstantin slides the doors shut behind us. “Sierra. I am glad you are fine,” he says in a brusque tone. He looks over at James. “Yura and I debated on how to punish thismudak.But we decided you get to choose. He hurt you.”

“So did you,” I tell Konstantin, but my voice is shaking as I stare at James’s bound form.

Nikolai coughs. “Sierra…”

“Don’tSierrame,” I snap at him. I don’t look at him, though. I can’t look away from my ex-boyfriend, the man who’d tried to beat this baby out of me simply because it wasn’t his.

“I…” Konstantin starts, but he shakes his head. “Tell me how you want to hurt this man. Everything else, we will discuss after.”

I want to discuss everythingnow, while I still have my phone and I can call for help, but… Somehow, that doesn’t seem as important as making James pay for all the shit he’d put me through.

“I don’t—” I begin, then cut myself off. “I thought he’d be dead already, honestly.”

“Me too,” Nikolai says. “But Kotya and Yura want you to have a say in how it happens.”

Oh.

Now I understand what Yuri had meant.

“Yura took how many lashes for accidentally hurting me?” I ask, and my voice is oddly distant. “This fucker tried tokillmy baby. If you hadn’t interrupted, he could’ve killed me, too.”

Konstantin’s fists clench. “Yes.” He walks over to James and wraps his hand around James’s neck. James cries out, the sound muffled from the gag, and his face turns red.

“You are going to die,” he says to James. “How much it hurts depends on how kind Sierra feels.”

I don’t feel kind at all.

I’m angry and frustrated, and I hurt all over, and there’s no remedy for that. Once again, I can’t even take anything good for the pain because it might hurt the child that’s growing inside of me.

The child that almost died the night before.

My resolve hardens. Maybe some of my fury is misplaced because I’m still absolutely livid with Konstantin, because I feel helpless, but I can’t bring myself to care.

“What are you going to do with his body?” I ask, staring at the handsome face that had utterly taken me in.

“It will be disposed of,” Konstantin says. “In pieces, after we’ve done with it what we need to do.”

A strange sense of calm comes over me, and I slowly let out a breath. “Let’s skip to that part, then,” I say, locking eyes with James. “The pieces.”

“You don’t want us to do anything to him?” Nikolai asks, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Zaya?—”

“I didn’t say that,” I interrupt him. “I didn’t say to kill him before you cut him up.”

I can’t believe I said that.

Moreover, I can’t believe Imeanit.

The men are all silent—except James, who starts struggling even harder and shaking his head.

“We can do that,” Konstantin says. He glances over at his table saw. “I won’t mind cleaning the blood from my tools.”

I expect to feel familiar panic from the idea of blood, so much fucking blood, but it doesn’t happen. I’m numb. Maybe I’ll have nightmares after. Maybe I’ll regret it.

I touch my stomach, thinking about how terrified I’d been while he kicked me over and over, trying to extinguish the life from my body.

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