Page 84 of Poisoned Vows

She nods. “I don’t like feeling so helpless,” she says softly, not looking at me. “This feels—”

“I know.” And I do. No physical pain could ever have been as terrible as the mental torment of being strapped to that chair, watching as Lilliana and Marika were hurt, and I could do nothing about it. “It will get better. Knowing he’s gone will help.”

“I hope so.” Her hand is on my arm as we make our way out into the living area of the penthouse, to the front door, and past my security to the elevator. It’s slow going, but we get there without any major mishaps, and my security joins us downstairs before we go to the cars.

It’s a silent ride to the warehouse. Lilliana’s hands are knotted in her lap, her lips pressed together, tension running through every inch of her body. She looks like a statue, sitting there frozen, like she might shatter at any moment with a word or a touch. I want to reach for her, to comfort her, but I know that might do more harm than good.

I help her out of the car when we get to the warehouse, and she stands there for a moment in the sunlight, trembling. “Are you sure you want to go in there?” I ask her, and she nods stiffly.

“I don’t know if ‘want’ is the right word,” she whispers. “But I know I have to. So let’s get it over with.”

I’m impressed by her bravery, by the sheer tenacity of her putting one foot in front of the other all the way through that door, into the warm, fetid air of the warehouse to where her father is sitting tied to a chair, facing us and surrounded by guards.

They weren’t gentle with him, and I’m glad to see it. His blond hair is dark with sweat and matted with blood, and bruises are already blooming over his face and jaw. He looks up, glaring at us both, but I can see the terror in his eyes. He knows what’s coming for him, and unlike me, he’s not a man who can take what he’s served to others.

I see the dark, spreading stain at his groin, and I laugh.

“I haven’t even touched you yet, and you’ve already pissed yourself. Some man. Some futurepakhan.” I laugh again, and I see his gaze flick to Lilliana. “No. Don’t you fucking look at her. Look at me, you traitorous son of a bitch.”

But his gaze is fixed on his daughter, wide-eyed and pleading, as if there were a chance in hell that she’d ever help him now. “Lilliana. You can’t stand there while he hurts your father. Where is your loyalty? Where is your loyalty tome?”

Her body stiffens, jerking with a sharp flinch as she stares him down. “You mean like you hurt me?” she asks quietly, her voice a harsh whisper, rasping out of her dry throat. Like you made Nikolai watch while you beat me half to death, while you threatened me with things that no father should everthink? Except—” Her mouth twists in a smile so vicious that I never thought I would see anything like it on her face. “It hurt Nikolai, to see me treated like that. It won’t hurt me to watch him do the same to you.”

She steps back, and I know that for what it is, her tacit agreement that whatever I want to do to him, she has no argument with.

And I do plenty.

It’s not hard to get the information out of him that I need. Ivan Narokov is not a man who was built not to break. He was never meant to withstand pain. It only takes a few broken fingers and a nail before he’s telling me his entire plan—most of which I know already, since it hinged on using Lilliana to achieve his in, and then using that position to discern the information he would need in order to stage a coup.

What I really want are the names of the men who helped him. The other traitors, the ones that I will take apart piece by piece for helping Narokov kill my father and hurt my wife and sister, for their willingness to betray us in such a way.

He gives them up easily. I could likely have gotten the information from him without any further pain, but at this point, I’m hurting him for my own pleasure as well as for what it will make him say. When he’s a bruised and bloody mess, face swollen from my fist and his crying, his clothes stripped away and every inch of him marked with the bruises and wounds that he gave me, my wife, and my sister—I turn to Lilliana.

I hold out a knife to her, as he did, my expression calm. “Do you want to do it? It’s your right, if you do.”

Lilliana stares at it for a long moment. I see her lips tremble, her hands shaking at her sides. I can see her thinking, imagining how it would go, how it would feel to be the one to end her father’s life. She looks at him, almost unrecognizable now, a bloody lump of so much breathing meat. And then she looks back at me and shakes her head, slowly.

“I can’t,” she whispers, and I close my hand around the handle of the knife, holding it at my side.

“Do you want to leave while I do this?” I ask her, giving her a moment to think, and she shakes her head again.

“No. I need to see—I need to see that he’s dead. I just—I can’t—”

“I know.” I turn to him, and I see the terror in his swollen eyes, see his lips form pleas that he can’t find the strength to say any longer. I step forward, grabbing a fistful of his bloody hair and yanking his head back, pressing the blade to his throat.

I give him a moment to realize what’s about to happen. I draw it out, letting the fear sink in, letting him take in the fact that he’s going to die in a moment. Even with all the pain I’ve inflicted on him, he still looks like a man who wants to live. Who thinks that somehow this can all be undone, and he can go back to who he was before.

I drag the knife across his throat. Slowly, so he feels every inch of the blade parting his skin. I don’t flinch when the blood sprays across me. I don’t stop until his throat is laid open, and then I step back, watching him stare at me and Lilliana in mute horror as his life drains away from him.

I look at my wife, standing there shaking, her fists clenched at her sides. “He’ll never hurt you again,” I tell her quietly.

And then, I walk with her, back out to the waiting car.

Back to the home that will only be ours for a little while longer.

Lilliana

I’ve never seen Nikolai like this before. He stands in the entryway, still covered in blood, his hands trembling. When he looks up at me, there’s an expression of such desolation on his face that I don’t know how to begin to understand it.

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