Page 69 of The Bratva’s Monster

Just like that, a crazy thought enters my mind. I should be down there. I have the right to be down there.

I walk to the door and open it, pausing as I look down the wooden steps. The smell of dirt, sweat, and blood is thick in the air even from the threshold and I can hear him with his sickly deer moans.

I start down the stairs.

I get about halfway when I have to stop. Rikki and Alex have him tied to a rope hanging from the ceiling. His shirt is off and the gunshot wound in his shoulder is bleeding in a slow river down his chest. He’s leaning his head to one side, his mouth open as he moans in agony.

Rikki slaps him and he jerks to alertness as if he’d thrown water on him. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls.

I shift in my stance and the stairs creek, giving me away. Both men turn and look, but it’s Rikki who looks away, then walks over to a table in the corner that has several implements of torture on it.

Alex, however, crosses his arms and turns to me. “There’s an unspoken rule among us in this family,” he says. “If you bag them, you get to slice into them first.”

I see Rikki look over at Alex, a slight scowl on his face. He stays quiet, however.

“This man tried to take your life,” he goes on. “You can participate, you can stay and watch, or you can leave. Your choice. But the way I see things, you’ve earned your place in this room.”

I look past him to Rikki, who’s also waiting for a response with an unreadable look on his face. I can’t imagine what he must be thinking. The last time we were here, it almost broke me.

But that was then and this is now.

I sit down on the steps and focus my gaze on the bastard who tried to kill me. He looks back at me, dark glare staring right back as if accusing me of his fate.

And maybe he’s right. I did put him here in the same way that a bear steps right into a trap.

Alex steps in front of him. “So,” he says as he digs a finger into the skin right under the gunshot wound, right on top of a tattoo with the word Kiselev in Russian. Josef’s jaw clenches as he tries to hold back a moan of pain. He’s not successful.

“You must be this Josef I’ve been hearing so much about lately,” Alex says. “Stefan’s little brother, right?”

He glares at him, breathing hard as Alex leans into him, pressing harder. “Fuck… you…”

Alex smiles and looks over his head at Rikki, who’s standing behind him with a pair of jumper cables, giving him a wordless command. Rikki walks the jumper cables over and clips each one to his torso. He winces and yells out as the metal pinches into his skin, producing new tendrils of blood.

“Tough talk.” He tilts his head. “You don’t strike me as an enforcer type. You’re too young and you’re a bit too skinny.”

“Dumb as fuck, too,” Rikki says as he stands behind him. “Was that a knife on the floor of the hotel? That wasn’t yours, was it, Josef?”

He doesn’t say anything. He just glares back at him with his clenched jaw.

Alex chortles. “You thought that you were going to break in and this pretty little thing behind us was going to crumble as you stabbed her to death. Is that how you thought it was going to go?”

Josef spits at Alex, but Alex is quick, stepping to one side. Rikki slaps him across the back of the head.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Alex says. “See, I’m only asking because I’m trying to figure out how it is that Stefan would be stupid enough to send one of his fucking Sixes to try and murder one of us. I know he’s been overseas for a while, but he’s been Irkutsk for a long time and I always heard that Stefan was an excellent strategist.”

“Maybe he thought I was right for the job,” Josef says.

Alex laughs. Then he taps the rope binding his wrists, causing Josef’s arm to jerk enough to cause him pain. “Sure, that must be it,” he says. He looks over at Rikki and says, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

Rikki walks to the back of the room and suddenly, I notice where the jumper cables are set up. What looks like a black box with bars around it and a couple of switches in the front sits on the floor to the right. Rikki kicks the switches on and the lights flicker as it hums to life.

Josef looks around wide-eyed as the lights come back on. Alex steps to one side, his arms crossed. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Josef,” he says. “We’re going to ask you some questions, and if you know what’s good for you, you’re going to answer them correctly.”

“I’m not afraid of you, shithe—” He tenses and his body shakes. His tough words are replaced by a strangled yell of agony. Behind him, Rikki stands with a remote switch in his hands, his thumb on the button.

They let him shake until spit starts to foam around his mouth, then Rikki stops. “You want to try that again?” Alex says as Josef goes limp. The deer moans have returned as his head lolls back and forth. Alex pulls his head up by his hair. “That hurt a lot, didn’t it? And it was only about twenty-five amps.”

Josef whimpers and tries to stand, but his knees buckle. He hangs there helplessly as Alex wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Wet skin makes it worse, you know,” he says as he wipes the sweat on his pants.