Page 155 of Blood & Snow
Arkady stops in front of me and crouches down, his face level with mine.
His breath smells of tobacco and coffee.
"Is that true?" he asks.
He takes my chin in his hand and turns it back and forth like he's studying my face.
"Does Xander Morin care about you?"
I say nothing.
My throat is too dry.
My voice is gone.
Arkady grabs my hair and yanks my head back.
Pain shoots through my scalp.
I gasp, tears springing to my eyes.
"I asked you a question," he says.
"I don’t know," I whisper.
"You don’t know?" He laughs a low sinister sound.
"You sleep in his bed. You wear his jewelry. You clean blood he sheds off the walls. And you don’t know if he cares about you?"
"He doesn’t tell me anything," I say.
Arkady's grip tightens.
He pulls harder, forcing me to look up at him.
His eyes are dark, bottomless voids where no mercy lives.
It's the same expression I saw on Leonid Markov's face when he looked at me at that party.
These men are inhabited by pure evil.
No goodness dwells in them at all.
"Where does he live?"
"I don’t know."
"Where does he keep his money?"
"I don’t know."
"Where does the Pakhan meet him?"
"I don’t know," I whimper and I manage to wince in pain.
Of course I know some of these answers, but never in a million years will I give them what they need to hunt him.
By now he will have called to check on me, or sent one of his men to see the job was never completed.
