Chapter 5
Gavril
I clasped my hands behind my back, a cold mask of indifference on my face as I walked around the strung-up body. The man was shirtless, and small rivulets of blood ran over his chest from the cuts on his face. His mouth was gagged and his hands bound at the wrists by a set of chains that suspended him about three inches off the floor.
Enough to put pressure on his shoulder joints to hurt, but not enough to cause permanent damage.
Dark hair hung limply on his sweaty forehead, and the stench of piss and sweat filled the air, but it was the look of defiance in his eyes that pissed me off the most. I stopped before him, ripping the gag out of his mouth and letting it fall to the floor.
“Are you ready to talk now?” I asked coolly. “Or are you going to make me do this the hard way, Sergei?”
Sergei Puzanov glared at me, licking his lips to wet them from the gag. “Nothing you can do will make me talk, Kirilenko.”
I chuckled and picked up the jumper cables, holding them over the battery. There was another cable that was woven into the chains that held Sergei’s wrists. The moment I touched the jumper cables to the battery, a shock would run through his body and hopefully get him to start talking.
“Last chance,” I said casually, lowering the cable end to the battery.
He didn’t respond, and I touched the cables to the battery. Sergei roared in pain as the electricity coursed through his body. I only did it for a few moments, and when Sergei’s body finished convulsing, I grabbed his chin. His eyes were glazed over in pain now, some of the defiance now replaced with terror.
“Tell me how you knew that Sveta was a fake.”
“Yob tvoyu mats!” he spat out. Fuck your mother.
I had a strong suspicion that the Krasnaya Bratva and Jon Hampton had somehow connected and formed an agreement. After all, he was the only person who had contact with Naomi and knew the truth. And he had the means to be involved without fear of retaliation from the Bratva.
I just needed to hear it from one of them, and when my men had told me that they had captured Sergei during one of the small scuffles, I had thought he would be helpful.
“Davai, Seryozha,” I switched to his diminutive name, my fingers digging into his chin. “You have already lost everything. Telling me isn’t going to give you anything but a swift death.”
His jaw set and his eyes cleared, giving me the answer I hadn’t wanted to see.
“Ladno,” I ground out, dropping my touch and reaching for the cables again. “The hard way it is.”
The next jolt sliced through his body, and the inhuman sounds coming out of his mouth made me flinch a little, but I didn’t let up. All my rage at what was happening poured into my hands, and when I finally forced myself to stand back and glance at Sergei, I swore.
I had fried him.
Disgusted with myself and the lack of control, I threw the cables down and walked out of the room. “Get rid of the body,” I told the waiting guards as I passed. “Send his hands to Konstantin as a present.”
“Yes, pakhan,” they said before moving into the torture room to do as I instructed. Ivan was waiting by the car when I walked out into the night, the cool air doing nothing to affect the rage inside of me.
“The mansion,” I ground out before climbing into the car.
He shut the door behind me and I relaxed against the seat, my hands clenched into fists on my thighs. Fuck, I hated this feeling of hopelessness. It had been a long time since I had felt it, back in the aftermath of Katya’s death and her betrayal. I hadn’t known what to do with myself then, and I didn’t know what to do now.
I felt like a fucking failure.
At least the war hadn’t escalated past a point that I couldn’t manage. The small groups of my Bratva had successfully held back Konstantin’s men so far, and if these small skirmishes were all that the man was going to give me, then I felt like I had already won. Besides, I had a heavier presence in LA that he had underestimated.
But if the Feds were about to insert themselves into my fucking business, I would be screwed.
That was why I needed to know so badly the extent that Jon was involved. I needed to know what I was up against. I was fucking lucky that the other organized crime bosses had kept to our agreements. So far, none had seen this as an opportunity to go after me. There was some honor among thieves, after all.
But blood was in the water, and I wasn’t sure how long their neutrality would last.
There was still one matter that I couldn’t get around, and it was the fact that I couldn’t find my fucking wife. With each passing hour, my anxiety grew at what Hampton could be doing to her.
What she was enduring.