Page 67 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

“Y—yes,” the man says. He’s a sweaty, heaving mess. He has already been worked over thoroughly enough to mark him for life. His big, hooked nose will never sit straight again, that much is guaranteed.

“Then you know what I have come for.”

“No! I don’t—fuck, shit, I don’t know.”

“Come now, Dmitri. Don’t play me for a fool.”

“No, no, I do not know,” he whimpers. His bottom lip is trembling now. How pathetic. I want badly to slice his throat open here and now, just so I don’t have to look him in the face anymore. But I need answers. I need to know where the bodies of my brother and father are. And I need to know some things about Luka Volkov.

“That is very much a shame,” I say coolly. I crouch down on one knee to look the man in the eyes on his level. His stench is repulsive. He must have pissed himself. “Because if you do not know what I have come for, then you are no use to me.”

“Please, please,” he begs, “I have a family.”

I laugh bitterly. “Do I look like the kind of man who gives a fuck?” I point at Dante. “Doeshelook like the kind of man who gives a fuck?”

Dmitri tries to look over his shoulder at Dante standing behind him, but Dante slugs him in the face with a closed fist. “Face forward,” he growls like a feral beast. “Don’t look at me. I am the least of your concerns, friend.” No one has ever made the word “friend” sound more sinister.

I wonder if I have underestimated the toll that Sergio’s and Father’s deaths have taken on Dante. He was always a loose cannon, but lately, he has thrown what little caution he once had to the wind. When I told my brothers of the intel we’d received about this lieutenant, an area chief for the Volkov Bratva, and how he liked to drink and grab ass at that shit-hole club, you would’ve thought it was Christmas morning by the way Dante’s eyes lit up. And when we arrived on the scene, he was in the club almost before the car had stopped moving. That damn knife never left his hand as he killed, killed, killed, until we found the man we were looking for. It doesn’t look as though those lost souls dulled his appetite for blood in the slightest.

Now is not the time to worry about my brother. Besides, I feel much of the same rage. I just happen to burn inwards, whereas he cannot contain his anger. Two sides of the same coin, I suppose.

I grab Dmitri’s cheeks in my hands and pull my face close to his. “I want you to tell me what you know about Luka Volkov,” I say, enunciating each word crisply. “I know that you understand what I am saying. And I know that you understand what will happen if you do not answer my questions.”

“I—I can’t …” he whispers in a high, strained voice.

I glance up at Dante and give him a short nod. Standing, I turn away and face the opposite wall.

Behind me, I hear a squelch, a crunch, a scream. I wait until the scream recedes into agonized whimpers before I turn back around and look down on the bloodied man once more.

“I did not want to do that,” I tell Dmitri sadly. “You forced my hand.”

“Please, God …” he moans.

I laugh for the second time this evening. “There is no God here, Russian. There is only me.”

I can sense Leo and Mateo looking on uncomfortably from the corners of the room. Neither of them likes to get their hands dirty in moments like this. That is fine—Dante prefers to handle the hands-on work himself anyhow.

Dmitri, Dante, and I go back and forth like this for a while. Blood is spilled, moans are ripped out of the Russian’s quivering lips, but eventually he tells me part of what I want to know. As much as he can, at least. It is clear that there are some pieces of information he is simply not privy to. That is no surprise. Luka Volkov would not be much of a mob boss if he wasn’t careful with who he confided in.

Still, it is enough for now. I have what I need to bring Luka to the negotiating table.

“You have done well,” I tell the slumped, trembling man before me. I pat him on the head and hand him a rag. “Clean yourself up.”

I rise once more and go to leave the room. I can feel the man’s relief when he thinks the worst is over. Whether we kill him or let him go, at least the torture has concluded, or so he thinks.

I almost feel bad that it is a fake out.

“Oh,” I say, softly but just loud enough that he can hear me. I peek over my shoulder and see Dmitri stiffen up like a board. His eyes find mine as I pivot to face him again. “I forgot to ask. Tell me, if you would be so kind, where I might find the bodies of my brother and father?”

He shakes his head. His mouth is moving, but no words come out.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up.”

He tries again. His second attempt at speaking is hardly better than the first, but I think I hear him say, “Ushel …”

“What did you say?” I snap. I pounce back over to him and wrench his face up. “Repeat yourself.”

“Ushel,” he says. The lights in his eyes are fading. “Ushel, ushel.”

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