39
Rafael
Isa slept upstairs, her body exhausted and her mind settled. She knew the truth of what would happen to Pavel, and after what she’d chosen as the way Dima had to meet his end, there was nothing left inside her that would object to the torture he would suffer through.
He would experience everything he’d done to his victims, until his mind was a broken shell and only his body remained. Only then would I return to Russia and give him the mercy of death. Dimitry guided me to the bunker below ground in the woods that surrounded his house. The concrete walls of the underground room were cracked, water dripping through them and I quickly understood that it was not a bomb shelter or panic room designed to keep people out.Thiswas where the butcher of Russia kept his personal victims stowed away, out of sight from his gentle wife who likely wanted nothing to do with the violence of his life and his mission to slowly rid his home country of men like the Kuznetsovs.
He wouldn’t have any need to do it in secret now with Pavel gone.
“This is Ivan,” Dimitry said, introducing me to the man who stood guard at the door to the very back cell within the prison bunker. “He’s my warden for the prisoners with special circumstances who survive longer than a day or two. He’s willing to do what you require.”
“Ivan,” I said, shaking the man’s hand. He input the passcode to Pavel’s cell, and the door slid to the side to allow us to enter. Pavel was strapped down, his wrists bound in barbed wire above his head and looped around the metal corner posts to the cot he would sleep on. Entirely nude, there wasn’t a stitch of clothing or a blanket in sight. No luxuries would be afforded for him as my prisoner through Dimitry.
Terror blazed in his eyes as I stepped around the cot to stand in front of him. At my request, he’d not yet been raped. I wanted to watch the pain on his face, to witness him feeling, for the first time, the suffering he’d inflicted on so many others.
To watch him experience what he’d intended for my pregnant wife.
He struggled against the barbed wire binding him, flinching when it tore his skin open. He would bear the same scars he’d left on Isa, every day for the rest of his short life. “Beg me,” I ordered, crouching in front of his face and removing the ball gag from his mouth momentarily. He rolled his jaw to relax the ache, staring up at me with pleading eyes.
“Please, just kill me,” he begged, his voice pathetic and weak even though his suffering had barely begun.
“Like you killed them? Why should I give you mercy when you couldn’t spare it for your victims?” I asked. He glared up at me, finally wrapping his head around the fact that I only wanted to hear him debase himself but would never actually give him what he wanted.
I reached into my jacket pocket, removing the ball of napkin from within and holding it in front of his face. “Do you know what this is?” I asked, unwrapping it bit by bit. The grey of Dima’s remaining eye that the dogs had somehow left untouched came into view as the napkin parted. “Isa fed him to your dogs. This is just about all that’s left of him,” I said, grasping him around the jaw and forcing his mouth to open as he thrashed from side to side. I ignored his breath of relief when I set the eyeball on the chair next to the bed. The only furniture in the room, it would give him a perfect view of all that remained of his last son while he suffered day in and day out. “I made a promise that you would see all your sons dead before I came to finish you off. I always keep my promises.”
I stretched up, grabbing a knife off the wall where Ivan’s toys hung. The blade was heavy as I flipped it in my hands, walking around the cot to decide where to begin my fun.
He needed to be alive for Ivan to torture in the most poetic way, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be in pain first. I grabbed him by the hair, ripping his head back harshly until his eyes met mine. The tip of the knife pressed into the skin just below his eye, dragging down his cheek and away from it as he clenched it closed in relief. “I should take your eye and put it next to your son’s. In a way, you could watch yourself get fucked. I’ve heard you like that.”
Instead, I moved the knife down to the star tattoo just below his collarbone. Applying pressure until the tip dug into his skin and blood welled, I carved in a circle around the tattoo and then slid the blade through his flesh until it pulled free.
The strip of skin dropped to the cot beneath him, leaving me to pick the grisly piece for him to see. “I don’t have any sons for you to send it to,” he said, his voice pained.
“I think I’ll keep this one for myself,” I said with a smile, patting his cheek with my bloody hand as I shoved the flesh into my pocket. I shoved the ball gag back into his mouth. “He’s all yours,” I said, turning a sadistic grin to Ivan. I didn’t watch him fumble with his pants or anything that happened on the other side of Pavel.
I watched his face, watched his eyes clench closed in agony the moment Ivan shoved inside him.
And my vengeance began.
* * *
“Promise me you’ll come visit,” Isa said, drawing Montana in for a hug. “I’d really love to get to know you better under less bloody circumstances.”
“Of course we’ll come visit. I wouldn’t miss this little one for anything,” she said, touching Isa’s stomach affectionately. The two women were the same age despite the fact that their respective husbands were much older, their entrance into our world entirely different, and yet somehow the outcome was the same for the both of them.
Married to monsters who corrupted them with the sins of flesh and blood.
“I don’t recall inviting the butcher to my home,mi reina,” I scolded.
“Fine, then I’ll come visit them,” she said, sticking out her tongue at me and turning her attention back to her new friend.
“That, we will most definitely do,” I said, hinting at the man I planned to pay visits to regularly to ensure he was being taken care of properly. There weren’t many men I trusted, but Dimitry Turgenev was high on the list thanks to the woman at his side. They had a love like Isa’s and mine, one that most wouldn’t understand.
But we did.
I guided Isa away, getting her to the plane that was already overcrowded with people we needed to return to Stockholm. As much as I wanted to fuck her on the plane, we had a too-long journey home.
Then her ass was mine.