Arriving at the unimpressive building the next day, I know what the facility lacks in architectural interest, it more than makes up for in state-of-the-art secure technology.
Equal parts thrill and dread always fill me when I enter. It represents a life I swore I’d give up, but it keeps calling me back. Because right or wrong, when it comes to mind-fucking someone until they give up every last secret buried deep in their soul, I’m the best in the goddamn business.
Fingerprints and retinal scans done, I enter, heading straight to Mav before going face-to-face with Dimitri for the last time.
Her office is sparse, with nothing giving away anything about her hobbies or interests, personal life, or history. Mav is a ghost who comes and goes with the wind, never making herself too comfortable or connected. Which is why I’m surprised when a small puppy bounces up to me, sniffing my shoes, though the tiny dog isn’t much bigger than one of them.
Picking up the pup, I discover it’s a she, and her sweet little face is too adorable for words. “Hey there,” I say, cuddling her close to my nose as she licks and whimpers in my hold.
“Don’t eat her,” Mav’s sultry voice booms.
I turn around as Mav wheels herself into the room, with plenty of space for a chair that’s easily electronically propelled, though she handles the wheels herself. Maybe to work out. Or maybe for the control in the angular space. I speculate, but I don’t ask.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I tell her, setting the lovable little ball of fur in her mom’s lap.
“So, is it Mr. Byrne? Or Mr. Banks?”
“Funny.” Getting down to business, I ask, “He’s had no visitors?”
“You’ll be the first.”
Good. “Food and water?”
“Just enough to make him cranky.”
“And Paco?” I ask, letting the open-ended question linger.
In typical Mav form, she shrugs with a ridiculously suggestive smile that means the only way I’ll know more is on my own.
I huff with feigned dissatisfaction. I’ve never been one to want the answers to the test, and she knows better than anyone I’ll enjoy putting the pieces of a cryptic puzzle together myself.
Comfortable there, I walk around her desk, but ask an unspoken question with a single glance.
“Top right drawer,” she says.
I open it, smiling wide at a few full-sized Snickers bars. I grab one and wave it at her with a popped brow of appreciation. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
The halls glow with the fluorescence of some of the cheapest fucking lights on the market that manage to bring out every imperfection in the paint of the cinderblock walls. Down two halls and to the right, I know the solid door houses the man I hate.
But I turn to the other one instead. After two brisk knocks, I enter.
Alexei is dressed down in what has to be custom-made sweats for his size. He’s reading something. In Russian, I ask what it is.
“English, please,” he says, struggling with his words but speaking clearly. “I need more practice.”
I meet his request with a genuine smile. “Of course. And that?”
“My new job,” he tells me, his smile filled with pride.
No doubt he’ll be used here and there for a few special jobs like me. But with his background in mathematics and electronics engineering, his new alias has him as an online professor under a new name that no one has bothered sharing with me. But if our paths are destined to cross again, they will.
He looks up, a certain amount of hope and even happiness beaming from his expression. It’s hard to imagine the hell he lived before this. “Thank you, Austin.”
His words humble me, and I only nod. “Well,” I say, moving on to the business at hand. “Give me ten minutes.”
His eyes narrow, and a faraway look takes over his expression as it darkens. He blinks his agreement, and I leave.
Across the hall, I suck in a breath, determined to do what I have to. Ready, I open the door and step inside.
Dimitri’s weary expression perks up when he sees me, as if the competitor in him has a chance. With his shackles in place limiting his mobility, I let him cling to that hope for half a second, letting my disappointed gaze wash over his rumpled shirt and tuxedo pants ripe with sweat.
The chair that’s just out of his reach is there to mess with him, but I take the opportunity to use it, swinging it around to straddle it before him. Staring him down, I say nothing.
Weak and tired, he doesn’t hold out as long as I think he will, free-flowing his thoughts with edgy words and empty threats. “Evelyn, I’ll kill. But your precious Gaby? Well, there’s a worse fate that awaits her pretty little body.”
I tug the Snickers from my front pocket, paying more attention to it than needed as I slowly unwrap it. I wave it to amplify my point.
“You mean like the fate that awaited Alexei’s daughter, Irina?” I take a bite, keeping my face expressionless, though a myriad of thoughts kill me behind my blank stare. I just chew slowly, then swallow every bit of anger and rage in the chocolate-and-peanut bite.
The smug grin that he pastes on his face is weak at best. “You can’t keep me,” he says with confidence. “Seventy-two hours, and I’m out. Then everyone gets what’s coming to them. Alexei too.”
“Because you haven’t done enough? I couldn’t figure out why he was with you. So loyal. At first, I considered fear. I mean, you did shove a nail through his tongue, pinning him to a table until he nearly died. And when the hunger and blood loss didn’t kill him, the infection nearly did. So, yeah. Fear seems reasonable. Logical. But for all that he’s survived, he’s strong. I had a hunch it was something else.”
With the next bite, I take my time, chewing, savoring, and making a show for the hunter who’s become the hunted. My gaze narrows on Dimitri’s, because I have to see what happens to his eyes—to know I’ve killed some part of him before the others tear him apart. To satisfy some small part of my dark soul.
For Evie.
“We found Alexei’s family.”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” Dimitri says, his accent thicker as his discomfort sets in.
Waving the candy bar before him, I keep the news casual, as if reporting on sports or the weather. “No, no. We found them. It was one hell of a rescue mission, from what I heard, but we got them all. His wife, Svetlana. Daughter, Irina. Cousin, Daria. Even found the grave of his son. What did Ivan do? Try to protect his mother? Sister?”
The wad of spit that flies from Dimitri’s mouth means I’ve got him. I swerve to avoid it, looking at him with the mildest contempt as I take my last bite. I stand, shoving the chair back where it was, prepared to walk out.
“Now what?” he asks.
I know I’m going to hell for enjoying the fear in his tone. Dread fills the two words so fully, I won’t be able to sleep for a while without hearing them. But the pleasure I take in this moment is mine to keep.
I turn back. “Now? Oh, now I leave you alone with Alexei. And as much as you’ll be counting down your seventy-two hours, it won’t matter. Seventy-two hours only means something if we’re on US soil. We’re not.”
I open the door, met by the intimidation of Alexei’s large, forbidding frame, the look on his face one I’ll never forget. Forgoing my normal restraint, I can’t help but pat the man firmly high on his shoulder, knowing by the fire in his eyes and the white knuckles of his grip that he must have heard every word.