Page 74 of Emerald Vices
Andrey watches me for one extra second. I know he’s checking to see if I’m okay, but I don’t know how to tell him that I’m more than okay. Taking action—even if it’s violent and brutish—feels so much better than being a victim.
With one last nod, Andrey turns to Shura, who’s manning the prisoners. “Bring me the detective.”
Shura unties Harris from the wall and nudges him to the center of the warehouse. A tarnished metal hook designed for raising up cattle to be butchered is dangling from one of the steel beams.
Shura and Leonty loop the rope around Harris’s hands to the hook. Someone unseen cranks on a lever and the hook rises just enough to force Harris onto his tiptoes. He groans, his face slick with sweat and blotchy, red patches of panic.
Andrey steps to my side, his breath tickling my ear. “One last chance. If you need to?—”
I turn and glare at him. I don’t even need to say the words out loud: I’m not going anywhere.
Shrugging, he lifts his hand to my face and traces the curve of my jaw. His eyes burn into mine before he turns towards Harris, and I watch him become someone else.
Like a switch has been flipped, Andrey is not Andrey anymore.
He’s not a handsome man in a stuck elevator, kissing me back to life.
He’s the pakhan of the Kuznetsov Bratva.
He’s death itself.
“Detective Harris, yes? I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”
Harris swallows. The blotchiness on his skin fades until he’s sheet-white, though he sets his jaw firmly. “You won’t get anything out of me.”
Andrey lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “What makes you think I want anything out of you?” He tips his chin towards the line of captives in the far corner. “I have them for that.”
“Then kill me and be done with it.”
Andrey carefully pulls off his suit jacket, folds it in half, and drapes it over the side of a moldy-looking chair. He’s wearing a crisp, open-collared shirt, so white and clean as to look utterly bizarre in this filthy place. A shiver runs down my spine as he paces back and forth, cracking his knuckles one by one.
“‘Kill you’?” he echoes. “You abducted my woman and threatened to hurt my children. You won’t get the mercy of a quick death.”
Harris’s eyes flare wide, but he has to blink against the sweat dripping from his forehead.
My chest tightens, but I find that I can’t look away.
Andrey unsheathes his gun and toys with it. Harris’s eyes follow his every movement. Up until, with a mournful sigh, Andrey sets it down on the same chair where he left his jacket. “My Natalia doesn’t like guns. So I’ll have to find more creative ways of punishing you.”
Andrey snaps his fingers and one of his men wheels what looks like a black, metal toolbox across the floor towards him. It reminds me of one my father kept in the garage.
But the similarities end the second Andrey lifts the lid.
My father had tools for DIY home renovation, but this case is for DIY torture. Pliers, scalpels, and a dozen other gleaming points and razored edges I don’t have words for. It’s row after row of metal pain.
Harris twists on the hook like a fish. “No! No,” he moans. “Please.”
“What happened to all that bravado, Harris?” Andrey questions calmly. “Don’t let yourself down now.”
“Listen, I was f-following o-orders…”
“From whom?”
Harris opens his mouth, except nothing but sweat and spit fly out of it. He’s stammering so hard that he’s unintelligible.
“Fucking speak, Harris.”
“You’ll kill me anyway.”