Page 35 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

By the time I arrived at the warehouse, Ryker had started without me. The impatient fuck never took kindly to men who tried to hurt women, let alone kill one of ours.

Timofey's head hung forward, one of his eyes swollen shut as he turned to watch me with the one that was still functioning while I entered the freezer and closed the door behind me. "Your father never would have let another man do his dirty work for him." Timofey wheezed. "Then again you aren't half the man he was."

I ignored him, moving to the table with Ryker's favorite tools set out on display. Timofey was entirely naked, his hunched body an attempt to hide the pathetic cock and balls that had long since shriveled up and tried to crawl inside his ass. Ryker wasn't above castrating rapists, but that would come later.

I picked up one of Ryker's best knives, moving to lean forward in front of Timofey. Grabbing a fistful of his greasy dark hair, I yanked his head back until that swollen eye tried to blink at me. The unhurt one worked to glare, nearly closing shut with his attempt to be intimidating. Either Timofey already knew he would never again see the light of day, or he was too stupid for his own good.

Either way, he would be food for the fire when I’d learned everything I could from him.

"Matteo is on his way," Ryker said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the table to watch. He'd never taken kindly to me playing with his toys, but no man in his right mind would get between me and the man who'd tried to hurt my wife.

"Good for him," I grunted, touching the tip of the knife to the tattoo on Timofey's chest. "Do you know how Leonid squealed when I cut this from his body? I'm amazed that all of Rome didn't come to his rescue." Digging the tip of the blade into his flesh, I drew an outline around the tattoo that marked him a Kuznetsov. That marked him as everything I hated and needed to rid the world of.

"My father doesn't give a shit about his sons. All you're managing to do by killing us is pissing off his children. We could be your allies — "

"I don't think so," I huffed with a laugh. "I don't work with people who get off on raping kids, and your father raised you to bejust like him."

"So did yours," Timofey argued, his voice rising into a scream as I slid the knife into the skin I'd outlined, carving it off the muscle beneath. He wheezed, his breath coming in deep, soul-wracking pants. "If you can step out of his shadow, so can we."

"The problem is that I never stepped outside the shadows, Timofey. I still very much call them home," I told him, peeling back his skin as his one good eye met mine. "I just don't drag innocent people into them with me."

"Just your fucking wife," he said, spitting pink tinged saliva onto the floor.

The freezer door opened as Matteo arrived, his overwhelming presence adding to ours to fill the freezer with far too much pissed off fury. Matteo might not know Isa the way I did, but he'd met her. He liked her and had been ready to go to battle for me.

He glared at the man in the chair as if he might cut off his head himself. "I’m fairly certain his wife is none of your concern. Perhaps if you hadn't been so stupid as to threaten her, you may have been granted a swift death."

"Yeah, like my brothers? I saw the little gifts he sent home to my father. He would have tortured me either way."

Matteo raised a brow at me, making me shrug in response. I wouldn't apologize for making sure Pavel's sons knew pain before they left this earth. Not while knowing what kind of torture they put women through on a daily basis.

"He isn't entirely incorrect," I admitted. "Though an hour or two of suffering hardly compares to what I'll do to him now that he nearly killed my wife."

"Can't argue with that logic," Ryker said with a chuckle. "I'd keep you alive for weeks. Come and play with you every single day just so you remember what pain is. I have a friend who likes to fuck rapists, too. I'm sure he'd love you."

"There is one fault to your logic," Timofey wheezed, his lips twisting with a dangerous smile as he latched his one open eye onto my face. "Your precious Isabel has belonged to my brother Dima far longer than she's been yours."

I went still, the blood rushing to my head as his words washed over me like an ice bath. "What are you talking about?" Matteo asked, glaring at him and shaking his head from side to side.

I tore my eyes away from Timofey's face, moving to the barbed wire on Ryker's table as I worked to ignore the man digging his hole deeper with every word from his mouth. The barbs dug into my skin as I gripped it in my hand, moving back to where Timofey sat. I slid it beneath his thigh, chuckling at the hiss of breath that escaped his lungs as the weight of his leg sank back down and the points dug back into his skin.

"Dima wanted her something fierce. Then again, he always did like his bitches scarred," Timofey said, his voice trailing off into a shout as I wrapped the wire around his thigh and pulled it tight. The barbs shredded my skin, reopening the wounds from when I’d done similar to Maxim and adding my blood to the wire that I would use to give Timofey a scar just like Isa's.

Fury flooded me when his shout trailed off, pleading filling his eyes. "I can tell you so much that you don't know."

I turned back for the tools. "How did Dima know Isa?" Matteo asked, suspicion burning in his eyes.

"Miguel Ibarra and Franco Bellandi sold her to him when she was a girl," Timofey wheezed, his breath fading into a laugh. Matteo and Ryker's bodies vibrated with fury, with the need to avenge the child that had been handed such a shitty future as a young girl.

Timofey huffed a disbelieving breath as he studied me, understanding dawning on his face. It was Matteo's incredulous stare that turned my head his way, staring his fury in the face.

"You already knew," Matteo breathed in shock.

Straightening my shoulders, I didn't bother to nod. The only affirmation I gave Matteo was to meet his gaze and not show a hint of remorse. I might not have been able to save Isa as a girl, but I'd do everything in my power to protect her now that she was mine.

She'd been mine since the moment I’d laid eyes on her photo when my father sold her.

I just hadn't known it yet.

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