Page 42 of Brutal Mercy

“Do you have proof that’s what he was going to do?” Ares located one of Diego’s men. The bastard was about to set fire to one of the Russian Mafia’s warehouses in the city when my brother caught him. How fucking dumb could they be? These motherfuckers are playing right into our hands.

“Please, do you think I’m not thorough? What do you take me for, a rookie?” Ares looks offended.

He’ll get over it. “We both know if I’m inviting Orlov here to ask him to form an alliance with us. We need definitive evidence to offer up on why it is necessary.”

“I still don’t see Roman Orlov forming an alliance with anyone who isn’t family.”

“Exactly.” Family is key to our victory. But there are many steps in this war I’ve held against my chest. And will only reveal them when the timing is right.

We exit the elevator, now a football field below ground. Right as we step off, there’s a handful of electric golf carts waiting for us. We climb onto a golf cart and drive it down the mile-long corridor to the holding cell. The hallway and holding cells are rigged to implode and self-destruct should there be any hint of an investigation or FBI raid. And if someone tries to enter who doesn’t belong, it will disable the entire system. If the system isn’t rebooted, it will self-destruct in twenty-four hours. They’re fail-safes Ares and I had Dominic install, with Ares overseeing the project. My brother knows tech and demolition from his four-year stint in the Army.

Ares parks the golf cart in front of a heavy metal door. We head through a series of doors. In the first room, there are showers and closets with a supply of extra clothes in case I get blood on me. It happens often enough that it’s easier to do the decontamination here before we leave and burn the clothes we wore along with the body. This way no damning evidence leaves the shed.

I can’t tell you how many times I wind up with blood on me. These fuckers can’t even die well. In the next room are the control panels for the holding cells beyond. Including lights, oxygen, and fire, because after every kill, we burn everything in the room. It’s not perfect in eliminating all traces of DNA evidence, but it’s damn close. And then the final fireproof room. It’s little more than concrete walls and floors with fireproof retardant wall panels and flooring on top of it.

But visits to the shed aren’t pleasurable pursuits.

It’s business.

In the center of the gray room, a man is tied to a chair. His black hair is filthy. He’s got a black eye forming on his right eye. And his jeans are soiled. Fucker already pissed his pants. His tan skin has a sickly cast, and his belly protrudes over the waistband of his jeans. He’s out cold.

“I think it’s time we wake our guest, don’t you?”

Ares walks over and smacks the guy awake.

“What the hell?” he sputters, jerking awake and struggling against the restraints.

My brother already has a tray with the supplies I need arranged on it. I shrug out of my dress shirt and toss it over the spare metal chair in the corner, letting the fucker see my back so he knows who the fuck he’s dealing with. My back is a study in ink with a dark depiction of the god Hades on a throne made of skulls.

Because I’m the King of fucking Torture.

And I peel back the genteel layers I display in public to the depraved psycho who resides beneath as I select one of my favorite instruments. It’s a wickedly sharp curved six-inch blade that’s a peach when removing body parts like fingers and toes or when I gut them. The curved blade nicks multiple internal organs with a single jab, ensuring they will bleed out.

I swivel around with the knife in hand and waltz to his side. Fear enters his black eyes as his gaze dips to the blade and then back to me. Because he knows he’s going to die. “I have questions for you, Paulo. And for each one you answer satisfactorily, you will remain unharmed. If there are any questions you hesitate to answer or just plain lie to me, I will start removing body parts.”

“Please, I didn’t do anything,” he protests, squealing like a scared pig.

Why do they always act like they didn’t do anything when they sure as shit did? I know my brother. If he drags one of the enemy’s men to the shed, they’re guilty as fuck, and he has the proof. We don’t bring innocent men down here, only the vilest denizens of society.

I tsk. “See, Paulo, this shit is what I’m talking about that really pisses me off. Because that response is a fucking lie. And you’re going to learn that I don’t fucking appreciate liars. We already have you on film getting ready to set fire to an Orlov business. What the fuck do you think Roman Orlov will do to you once he discovers your treachery?”

Paulo blubbers with tears and snot running down his face, his body trembling in fright. It’s something you learn when you take life. Just how many people become sniveling cowards at the end. How many people scream and cry for a savior that never comes.

Viciously, I grip the pinky finger on his right hand and jerk it away from the rest, stretching it painfully near the breaking point.

“Oh god, please, no!” Paulo screams when I ease my blade against his flesh.

“There’s no god here, only the devil you see. And I won’t save you. You sealed your fate when you went to work for the cartel.”

If anything, the guy sobs even harder. Fucking wimp.

With a sneer of contempt, I slice that little piggy off.

Paulo shrieks in agony, his wails echoing in the room. Blood gushes from the wound. I glance at Ares. He’s ready with gauze to wrap up the bloody stump.

I mean, I can’t have him bleeding out before I’m finished questioning him. Torturing a man for information takes time. You have to break their spirit. Make them believe there’s a glimmer of hope if they offer up the goods.

Besides, he won’t be my kill, but Orlov’s. Paulo will be a gift I drop in the Russian Mafia don’s lap. That doesn’t mean I don’t plan on torturing him until he squeals all of Alvarez’s secrets.

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