23
Rafael
Hugo and Chloe were gone by the time I shoved my way through the back doors ofLotus.I charged through the crowd as my eyes tracked around the room for the Russian bastard I'd seen in my club.
If Chloe had seen what was about to go down, I'd have to handle her. As it was, I made a mental note to tell Hugo to keep her from contacting Isa after tonight. I'd do my part to prevent them speaking to one another, and if Hugo did his, Isa would have no idea that she might have just seen her best friend for the last time.
At least if she didn't decide to stay, and thanks to fucking Pavel, everything was unraveling faster than I could control it. I'd kill him for that alone.
When my eyes landed on the Russian with the hand tattoos, shaved head, and conspicuously missing pinky, I snapped my attention to him fully and walked in his direction slowly. Giving him every opportunity to realize just how monumentally he'd fucked up by stepping foot in my club in the first place, after I’d clearly told him what would happen if I ever saw him again.
He smirked at me as I approached him, fear hovering just behind the false bravado, but whatever protection Pavel had promised him made him brave. Whatever had happened after he went crawling back to Pavel with a missing finger, he somehow thought I was the lesser evil than disobeying his boss.
A single jab to the throat disabused him of that notion, sending him reeling backwards as I grabbed him by the back of his shirt while he sputtered for breath. I carted him back inside the club and into the back rooms. One of my staff was kind enough to haul the basement door open, and I used the opportunity to throw him down the steps. I could barely hear the thump of his body as it hit each and every step over the pulsing music, and I almost wanted it to go away so that I could hear his screams more clearly later on.
But there were too many people around to hear him cry and the music would cover the sound. I owned the police, but I still didn't need the headache that would come with explaining why I'd exposed hundreds of patrons to the seedy underbelly of Ibiza.
I adjusted my suit jacket, glancing to the staff member and nodding for him to close the door behind me before I descended the steps. Darkness greeted me, welcoming me home with waiting arms as it surrounded my very being. The overhead light kicked on as I stepped down the final stairs, crackling to life with age and lack of use.
Years had passed since I'd needed to make use of this particular basement, not since I'd stopped doing my father's dirty work and taking fingers for unpaid debts had stopped being a common practice for me.
I had other people do that for me now, if the debt was large enough.
The Russian's body was sprawled out at the foot of the stairs, requiring me to step over him to start up the upgraded fireplace and turn to the table of dust covered supplies and blow them off so that I wouldn't have to go back to Isa covered in filth. I stripped off my suit jacket, folding it and draping it over a chair next to the table before I turned back to the man who writhed in pain and groaned on the floor.
"Who are you to Pavel?" I asked, without turning back to look at him. I knew exactly where he crawled along the floor.
I always knew where everyone was when they were around me, in tune to the energy in the air. The skill had been born out of necessity, trapped in a childhood where not knowing could mean a beating coming my way when I wasn't ready for it.
As the fire raged to life in the fireplace, courtesy of modern technology even if the room itself was dated, I ran my hand over the variety of fire pokers on my table. The brands on the end all varied, specifically forged for individual crimes. The one I desired was the largest of the bunch, and I touched theCuélebreonce before setting it into the coals of the fire to heat high enough that it would melt his skin.
"I'm one of his trusted men," the man coughed, watching as I turned my back on the table and leaned my hands against it. Studying him as he maneuvered himself to a sitting position, grimacing in pain with every movement he made.
"If that were true, he wouldn't have sent you here to die," I said. "He knew very well what I would do to you when I found you watching me again." His eyes went to the burning brand in the fire, and he swallowed back bile as reality set in. He wouldn't walk out of the basement alive. In fact, most of him wouldn't leave the basement at all.
Just his head.
He moved as quickly as his beaten body would allow, clambering for the steps while I grabbed one of the pokers off the table and used it to swipe his legs out from under him. His face bounced off the step as he fell, rolling down the stairs for the second time. When he landed with a heavy thud the second time, his eyelids fluttered but he didn't move.
A pity for me, since I liked to watch them struggle against the pain.
Slipping fireproof gloves onto my hands and taking the brand from the fire, I pressed it to his forehead quickly. His body jerked beneath me, his hands reaching up to grasp the metal of the poker as he tried to pull it away, and only managed to burn his flesh in the process. But the heat of the brand served to seal the metal to his skin, the heat melting his flesh until I pulled it away and stared at theCuélebreof the Ibarra family crest.
When he finally went limp and stared up at me with glassy eyes as his breathing shallowed, I stripped off the gloves and dumped the brand back to the metal table to cool off. Rolling up my shirt sleeves, I took the surgical saw in hand with a sigh.
I wished I had Ryker's hatchet. Cutting through the cervical vertebrae with a saw took longer than I wanted to spend with the bastard.
He heaved out a sigh, fear filling his half closed eyes as I leaned over him and kept my body as far from the blood splatter as I could. He didn't struggle when the first cut severed his trachea and blood poured from the wound.
Even after he took his last agonizing breath, I kept sawing until the surgical saw struck the concrete floor.
I had a package to mail.