Page 74 of Pretty Little Toy

An ugly sneer twists his face, but he remains silent, and the shadow of a memory comes to life inside my brain–that of another prisoner who mocked me right before his death.

“How many more of you are there?” I demand.

“Kill me, and you’ll never know.”

Reaching into my pocket, I withdraw my hunting knife and whip it open. “Bartering for your life, hmm?” I raise the knife to his one good eye. “Well, I suggest you stop trying to be smart and start talking before I decide to make your face just a little bit more symmetrical.”

Dimitri’s patchwork of normal flesh pales visibly. “Wait, I–please…” he begs, his lips starting to quiver.

“I’m done waiting!” I roar, pressing the knife to his lower lid and pricking a tiny drop of blood to the surface just so he knows how deadly serious I am.

“None! There’s none of us left!” he screams, terror in his eye as it rolls in sheer panic.

“Where have you been hiding?” I demand, easing the knife away ever so slightly.

“Th-th-th yacht,” he stutters.

“And when I send my men out to check it, will they find anyone on board? Answer truthfully. Your eye depends on it,” I warn, raising the tip of the knife to align with his pupil.

“J-j-just the d-driver.”

I jerk my head toward Vlad, who takes two men with him as they slink into the night.

“P-p-please,” Dimitri stutters, and a wave of revulsion consumes me as I realize this cowering piece of garbage is who has been giving me such a hard time for almost a year now. How pathetic.

I release his shirt, letting him slump into Fyodor’s grip once more. “You’re right. You did answer my questions, so I won’t take your eye.”

Relief makes the younger Petrov brother weak, and his knees buckle as I turn to stroll closer to the door.

“H-have mercy. I p-promise I won’t come after you again. You have my word,” Dimitri begs.

Ugh, it fills me with contempt to think I let this worm slip through my fingers so many times. I turn to face him once more. “Your word?” I twirl my knife playfully as I pretend to contemplate the offer. “Are you a man of your word, Dimitri?”

“Yes!”

I can see the conflict warring on Fyodor’s face. He wouldn’t trust the scumbag as far as he could throw him. But he knows better than to argue with me. Especially in front of our clan.

“That’s good to hear,” I say thoughtfully, approaching him again. “I value a man of his word. That means he will stay true to it, no matter the circumstances, right?”

“Yes. Yes! I would never betray you or come after you again.”

Eyeing my blade, I let the dim yellow overhead lighting flicker across its shiny surface like a flame. “I’m a man of my word too,” I say lightly, and a glimmer of hope lights Dimitri’s good eye. “Remind me, Fyodor, what was it I promised you when Artem’s head was delivered to me in a cardboard box? Do you recall?”

A wicked grin spreads across my captain’s face as recognition lights his eyes, and his hands grip Dimitri’s arms tighter. “I believe,gospodin, it was something along the lines of you flaying the men responsible alive and making them taste their own entrails.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right.” A cruel smile spreads across my face as I level a deadly stare at Dimitri. “Shall we begin?”

35

WHITNEY

I’m tentatively optimistic that I might actually get to see Ilya this weekend, and that maybe, just maybe, he might not have been avoiding me so intentionally after all. He called at five thirty Friday morning–when I was still sound asleep and answered the phone in a fog–to inform me that the conflict that’s been taking up so much of his time lately seems to have finally been resolved. He even hinted that he wants to have a deeper conversation with me about our contract, and that gives me a bit of hope that he might not want to let me go after all.

The remainder of Friday, I was wound tight, my mind everywhere but on the task at hand, and for once, Trent has to keep me focused, rather than the other way around. I can’t stop thinking about what Ilya might say, what I might say. I fluctuate constantly between excitement and anxiety. And by the time Saturday rolls around, I’ve hardly slept a wink.

I’m up before the sun, even without an alarm, and I know our date won’t start until this evening. Ilya said he would be here to pick me up at four. But my jitters get me up and out of bed early, and I brew a pot of coffee, too worked up to want to sit in the Coffee Studio and behave like a normal human being. Instead, I turn on some old-school punk rock and slurp my coffee as I watch the sun rise over Lake Michigan.

It’s a breathtaking gold-and-pink symphony of color that mimics my feelings at knowing I might actually get to see Ilya today. It’s pathetic–I’m pathetic–to be so affected by one human being. But after my conversations with my mom and Anya, I can’t hide the truth from myself any longer. Whatever Ilya might feel for me, I’m crazy about him. Sometimes I wonder if I might not literally be going mad over it.

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