Page 30 of Knot Their Princess

Garen practically skips to the back where a large metal door greets us, then claps his hands and rubs them together excitedly. “Who gets to go first?”

Killian is stationed there, and his lips twitch.

I sigh and look at Cade. “You already tried, yes?”

His affirmative nod is grim. “I had better luck earlier, but no dice this time.”

I roll my head to loosen my neck.

“Well, now, hold on, mate.” Garen steps in front of me and gestures to my torso with a wave of his hand. “You had your chance earlier.”

I look down at myself, finding the fine spatter on my white shirt, visions of sucking Sin’s thumb into my mouth and tasting the soured copper there that she’d swiped from my cheek. I had to get to it before she discovered what it really was.

“All right. But if you get out of hand—”

“You wound me, good sir.” Garen clasps his hands at his sternum with wide, innocent eyes, breaks into a wild laugh and turns the lever on the door, pulling it open.

The freezing air flows into the kitchen, and Killian moves to hold the door open for us to pass through and further guard from the outside once we’re in there.

The lighting is motion-sensitive, and bright white light fills the room as we travel through it to the back, around the sliced pig carcasses and hunks of beef dangling stiffly from hooks in the ceiling. Before we reach our destination, the muffled screaming has already begun.

In my younger days, I’d revel in the sound, but later, it began to annoy me. And this sound agitates me above all others.

“There he is, boys!” Garen extends his arms and spins, dancing around the gagged man bound to the chair, blood dry and brown on his skin and the gag.

Cade and I stay back, observing.

Mikhail’s dark eyes are wild, the whites tinged red from strain or the pummeling I’d given him earlier in the night. Or, both.

Garen yanks the gag from Mikhail’s mouth with glee and bends in close to his face. “Now, Mikhail, are you ready to answer our enquiries?”

Mikhail’s whole frame shakes, a mix of fear and the onset hypothermia. We’d left him in here for anywhere from ten to twenty-minute intervals, two assistants pulling him out along with his chair, then putting him back in after he thawed. The timing was completely random. The purpose of keeping him here wasn’t to freeze him to death, but to let him know we could. Let him think he could be completely forgotten and left to die.

If we didn’t need him, he’d already be just another carcass in the deep freezer.

Mikhail’s teeth chatter, his voice taking on a stutter from his shivering. “I-I d-don’t…” he coughs, wild eyes flicking around the room at each of us.

“You don’t know what we want from you?” Garen muses. “I know that’s a lie.”

His back-hand comes faster than a blink, and Mikhail screams, shrill and echoing.

After all these years, I know the strike only hurts so bad because of the freezing that’s settling into his cells. At this point in the process, every feeling is heightened.

He’s lucky we didn’t give him a metal chair. Garen certainly wanted to.

“P-pleasssse,” he groans. “T-tell m-me…”

I raise a brow at Garen, his grin hikes up high on one side, and his scent shifts along with his now-rough voice.

“No, mate. It’s you who’s going to tell us.”

Mikhail Petrov is scummier and slimier than any of the other business associates I’ve interacted with in my lifetime. The things he’d confessed to after some more prodding were… enraging.

“Get him cleaned up and let him go back upstairs by morning.”

Killian nods at me as he and his partner enter the freezer, adjusting their black gloves.

“Do we really need to let him go?” Garen’s attitude settles somewhere between disappointment and fury.