Page 93 of The Crimson Lily
“Revenge tastes good, doesn’t it?” William mocks.
Maksim sneers. “This is not revenge,” he declares. “This is work.”
He uses the razor blade to pierce through the flesh below William’s eye. The next scream doesn’t even sound real. Its echo screeches between my ears like iron claws on a school’s blackboard. There’s no other audible din but the dirge of William’s pain. I know I’ll hear that scream in my next nightmare.
When I dare to look closer, I see Maksim with a blade in his hand, operating on William’s skull, excising a piece of his victim’s right eye. He uses his thumb to hold William’s face steady, the white fluid bursting around Maksim’s nail.
I just want to puke, but I keep on looking.
“Liliana!” William eventually cries for me, pulling me out of my trance.
I clear my throat when I come back to my senses. “Maksim, stop,” I say with a motion for my lover to pause.
He does as I say, and I approach the scene of torture. William turns his unrecognizable face to me, his hollow eye judging me, the other wishing me dead. The pieces of ripped skin and open cuts all over him make him look like a sick and lamentable corpse. I could end his misery right here. Give me a beretta, and I’ll do it right now.
“How could you?” William cries. “I gave you a home!” he rasps.
“It wasn’t a home, William,” I rebuke, my voice heavy. “It was a golden cage.”
Because that’s what it was. William may have pulled me out of the Springfields’ grasp, but he made me pay for his grace each and every time. They were small tasks at first. Steal this. Take this duffle bag somewhere. Send this package there. Seduce this crime lord because he owes us big money.
Then it became more serious. Go with William to Europe. Do the Syndicate’s work there. Show these men around town; they only traffic women anyway! Let’s go to Russia. Keep this safe.
“I gave you a home, Liliana, and this is how you repay me,” my big cousin whines.
My eyes must have flared for real because Maksim cautiously checks on me.
“Give me the blade,” I call to him. “Let me finish him.”
“The blade stays in my hand,” he declares.
I agitate my hand so he’ll give it to me. “Please,” I urge, blinking with impatience.
But Maksim sternly stands his ground. “This is my job, Liliana, not yours.”
He gives his attention back to William and moves to gouge the second eye. William screams in fright, struggling frantically with the cuffs, his wrists trembling and breaking on themselves.
Maksim halts, his smile even wider. “You can keep this eye if you tell us the truth.”
“Fuck you!” William jerks.
Maksim punches him hard in the chest. The chair loops backward and crashes on the ground with William in it. Both his wrists snap upon landing. Maksim comes to stand above him, a foot pressing down on William’s throat.
“Did you give the key to anyone else?” Maksim presses and releases his victim’s throat.
William coughs and cries. I can see the sparkles of his tears among the red veins of blood.
“I’m a dead man in any case,” William murmurs. “If you let me go, the Syndicate will come for me.”
“The Syndicate is dying,” I contest, looking straight at his slouched body on the cold concrete floor.
Yet William laughs in response. “Oh, Liliana, you may have won this battle, but the war has just begun. You won’t get far with one lord and a damn list of names.”
“We’ll get somewhere,” I rebuke and turn back to face Maksim. “He didn’t share the algorithm,” I deduce.
Maksim raises his chin to me, ready to listen to my reasoning.
“Why would Margaret Rose come all this way if he had?” I dispute. “Why would a Syndicate lord risk her freedom if William de Loit had shared the prized secret already?”
