I try not to be bothered by this, but…I’m scared.
I know Nick is one of the bad guys, now. Vasily told me that he was an assassin. One of the Bratva. I’m guessing the definition Nick provided wasn’t a complete one.
Nick kills people for money. He’s as bad as the man that killed my mother and destroyed my father’s life.
And it makes me a terrible, awful person because I want him to come through that door in the next minute and rescue me. I want him to show up and hold me close and tell me everything will be okay. That he has me. That I’m safe.
And I hate myself for it.
"No more jokes for Yury? Shame." My captor studies me for a moment longer and then inclines his chin. "Maybe you are ready for other things to go in your mouth, then."
I remember his threat from the airplane. "If you put anything in my mouth, I’m going to bite it off." He can punch me or slap me, but he can't hurt me, not really. He’s too scared of his boss, this Sergei he mentioned.
His eyes narrow and he regards me for a long moment. "Go clean up in bathroom. You are disgusting with snot and blood running into your mouth."
I’ve won this round. "My hands are bound," I tell him, and I shrug my shoulders as if to demonstrate that I can’t move them. "I can’t stick my head under the faucet and clean off. And I have to pee. Can you untie me?"
"So you can fight me?"
Yes, I think, but I know that won’t get me what I want. "Are you afraid I’ll win?"
He snorts. I am triumphant when he comes to my side, but he delivers a ringing slap to my face that stuns me. He grabs my chin in the next moment, when my head is still spinning. "Listen very closely. I am going to untie your hands, but if you try to run away, I will break your arm in my bare hands. I will tell Sergei it was accident, da? You can still spread your legs that way."
I shiver. I know he is serious. "I hate you," I tell him quietly. "I hope Nick murders you." And I’m a bit alarmed at myself when I realize that I mean it. My gut is full of terror and fury, and I would love nothing more than for Nick to come through this door and destroy Yury right in front of me. I hate him so much. I hate him because I know he raped Regan. I hate him because I know he would casually break my arm as easily as he slapped me.
I hate him because it’s easier than hating myself for being responsible for all of this. All because I thought the man I was falling in love with was a computer hacker.
I am the worst kind of fool.
"You can hate me, pizda. But be smart and do not run away or it will be bad for you." And he pulls out a knife and slices through the restraints on my wrists.
I shake my arms and stand up. I want to rub my wrists, but I stare warily at Yury instead. Yury, who still has the knife out, regarding me. Waiting for me to spring, to do something stupid. He would love nothing more than if I tried to attack him, because then he would be justified in breaking my arm…or worse. So I simply say, "Where’s the bathroom?"
He points at a door in the back corner of the near-empty warehouse. "Clean your face. You are disgusting."
I go to it. The doorknob has been removed and only a hole remains, but I shut it for privacy anyhow. The toilet is disgusting, the seat broken and ringed with years of grime, but I quickly relieve myself and then wash my hands in the sink with the equally dirty cake of soap there.
There’s a mirror above the washstand. It’s cracked, broken, and filthy, like the rest of the bathroom, but I can see my face. The bridge of my nose is puffy and turning purple, and I look like I’ve been punched in both eyes. Blood cakes my upper lip, and my mouth is swollen. I carefully wash my face with splashes of cold water, but it doesn’t look much better once I get all the blood off. My wrists are masses of bruises from where the cuffs—and Yury—have held too tightly. I look terrible.
I am still better off than Regan, though. Tears flood my eyes as I think of her. It’s my fault she’s been taken, and I don’t even know where she is anymore. I’m so sorry, Regan.
My face cleaned, I’m in no hurry to go back out and see Yury again. I slide down the tile wall and crouch on the floor, hugging my arms close to my body. He can just come and get me. It’s quiet in here, and I feel a little safer with a door—even an unlocked one—between me and my captor.
My thoughts turn to Nick.
I don’t know what to think about Vasily’s words. He could be lying to me, but the tattoos on his hands and the way his eyes get cold when he’s angry look so, so familiar to me that I know he’s telling the truth. Vasily is an assassin, and so is my Nick.
I should have seen it earlier. The way he watches me. The way he has so much money. The frightening tattoos on his body.
The pain in his eyes, the loneliness.
I bite down on my knuckles to stifle the sob that threatens to choke from my throat. I am torn. Part of me wants to hate Nick for who—and what—he is. For lying to me. For letting me be so innocent and deluded even as he lies to my face. Has he been going out and killing people while I have known him? Does he murder someone and then come to me and kiss me? I am revolted by the thought. I must leave town on business, he told me, and I never thought to ask more. I’m so stupid.
Worst of all, I still have feelings for him. I think of the sadness in his eyes. The self-loathing. He thinks himself unworthy of me. And now that I know the truth, I understand why…but I can’t stop caring for him.
I can’t lie to myself—even with everything I know, I want Nick to come through that door and rescue me and hold me in his arms. I want Nick to make everything all right again. I want him to come and kiss me and make me forget.
But I’m scared of him now. Because I know the truth of what he is. He is like Yury. He is like Vasily. And I wonder if there are any other Daisies out there, huddled in warehouses, while Nick sits at a folding card table and waits for the captive to emerge from the bathroom.
This time, I can’t muffle my sob.
YURY DOESN’T COME INTO THE bathroom after me. I remain there for hours, crouched on the floor, hiding in plain sight. I hear him talking on his phone, a one-sided conversation that might be about the weather or sports, for all the laughing he does.
Soon, though, I hear another voice. A woman’s voice. She coughs and says something in Russian, and Yury responds. The woman’s voice becomes whiny and pleading, and Yury’s tone grows short.
Then I hear another man’s voice. His Russian sounds different than the others, flatter.
And then, I smell food. It smells like french fries. My mouth waters.
Wary, I get to my feet and peer through the hole where the doorknob should be. I can see nothing. I will have to leave my sanctuary to see what is going on. My stomach growls, reminding me that I haven’t eaten, and I’m terrified, but I’m even more terrified of not knowing what is going on.
I open the door and emerge from the bathroom.
Yury is still sitting at the card table. He’s got a cigarette hanging from his lips and an ashtray parked on the table in front of him. Two other men are in the room. I recognize Vasily again, but the other man is a stranger. There is also a woman here. The woman is scrawny and bony, shivering in a heavy fur coat that looks like it was fished out of the garbage. Her face is caked with heavy makeup, her blonde hair stringy.
The men are wearing long coats, their faces expressionless as they regard me. The new man holds a bag of McDonalds.
They all turn at the sight of me emerging. The dark-haired man regards me for a long moment and shakes his head. "Christ, Yury. I thought we weren’t supposed to fucking hurt her. Sergei wants to sell her. She looks like shit, man."
I am startled—he’s speaking English, and it’s completely unaccented. This man—this newest assassin—is American?
Yury takes a drag on his cigarette and gives the newcomer a thin smile. "She is clumsy. Has accident." He shrugs. "Why do you care?"
"Because I get a cut when she gets sold," the man says bluntly. He tosses the bag on the table. "Some fine dining for yo
u while you wait."
Yury grunts, and his gaze flicks to the skinny blonde woman in the coat. "I see you brought me present."
"Galina has not paid her debts to Sergei, and now she messes herself up on krokodil," Vasily says. "Is only a matter of time. So Sergei says to bring her here. She wants to work off her debts." The man smiles thinly. "Problem is, no one wants her."
"So why bring the pizda to me?" Yury looks only mildly interested. His gaze flicks over the woman. The rest of them are ignoring her…and me.
"Because Sergei said so," the American says bluntly. "I don’t give a shit what you do with her. I just don’t want her to be my problem."
Yury nods. "I will think of something." He pats the folding chair next to him, and the woman thumps into it.
"Sergei sent us here to relieve you of guard duty. We’ll take her off your hands for a bit." The American gestures at me.
My eyes widen and I take a step back toward the bathroom. Yury is the devil I know. I’m scared of him, but I’m even more terrified of this new man because I haven’t seen him before. He might be four times as sadistic as Yury. How can I trust any American that works with these horrible men?
"Nyet," Yury says. "We are having fun, aren’t we?" And Yury looks over at me.
"Fuck you," I say, my voice trembling. And I flinch backward in anticipation of someone attacking me.
But the men only regard me with the same cold, shuttered expression I’ve seen far too often.
"See?" Yury says in a flat, mocking voice. "Fun. She likes me. And I am sure she will be friendlier once she has something to eat. She will be good to me, then."
I won’t suck him off for food. I won’t. I ignore the growling of my stomach.
"Whatever," says the American. "So you’re going to stay?"
"Da. You may run off." Yury flicks his cigarette at the others. "I will call if I grow too bored. And until then, I will just play with my present."
The smile he gives the skinny woman makes me feel cold inside.
"All right, then," the American says. He looks at Vasily, nods, and begins to leave. The big blond man stays beside the front door, guarding it. Vasily isn’t leaving.
A moment later, it is just me, Yury, and the woman—Galina. Vasily remains by the front door, but he could be a statue for all the attention he gives to the situation.
Galina and Yury remain seated at the table, and Yury looks over at me, where I hover near the bathroom door, trembling and uncertain. He points at one of the metal folding chairs. "Sit."
Should I fight him? Disobey? My face throbs, and I can see no advantage. There was nothing I could use as a weapon in the bathroom, and the warehouse is equally empty. After a moment’s hesitation, I approach and sit across from Yury and the woman.
He nudges the bag of fast food toward me. "Eat."
I watch him to see if it’s a trick, and when he doesn’t move, I hesitantly reach for the bag with one bruised hand.
He gives me another thin smile and takes another puff from his cigarette.
There is a hamburger and fries in the bag and a napkin. I dig through the bag, hoping against hope that there is a plastic knife—something, anything—but there is not. After a moment’s disappointment, I grab the burger and unwrap it, taking a huge bite before they can snatch it away from me.
Yury watches me with amusement. "Americans have such disgusting manners."
I ignore him, wolfing down the food. There’s no drink, and I’m incredibly thirsty, but I don’t complain. After I eat the burger, I start on the fries.
Yury continues to watch me eat. The woman seated next to him seems to be rather out of it. Her expression is glazed and vacant, and she sniffs repeatedly as if she has a cold. As I eat, Yury cocks his head. "Give me your hand."
I still. This is the trap. I watch him, waiting.
He makes an impatient gesture. "Give me your hand."
Trembling, I extend my hand toward him. I expect anything out of this man except for what he does. He takes my hand in his and examines my fingernails. Then, he looks over at Galina and says something in Russian.
She obligingly sticks her hand out for him.
He pulls out his knife and grins at me.
My stomach churns.
Galina continues to sit there like a zombie.
"I think we will send Nikolai a little message. A little, how shall we say, ‘Hurry up.’ What do you think, pizda?"
I swallow hard. I want to know what he means, but I’m afraid. "What are you going to do?"
He examines Galina’s fingers and makes a face, angling her hand toward me. It is covered in dark spots, and in several places, it looks scaly and gangrenous. "She has much love for krokodil. It is a cheap fix when you are too broke to afford the good stuff." He puts her hand down and gestures that she should give him her other hand.
Galina does, just as easily and blankly as before. It’s like she doesn’t realize he has a knife in one hand. I wonder if she realizes anything.
He examines Galina’s new hand and then looks over at mine again. Then, he takes her ring finger and carefully pares the nail down with his knife. "The good thing is that Galina still has a decent finger or two, da? It makes our little message easier."
"What message?"
"Sergei says we cannot harm you. His buyer likes his packages whole. I understand this, but I think Nikolai needs a bit of incentive, yes? And what is more incentive than sending him his woman’s finger?"
My hands clench into fists and I hide them between my legs, horrified. "No!"
At the door, Vasily calls out a lazy warning in Russian.
Yury rolls his eyes and waves a hand at me, ignoring the other assassin. "Stupid pizda. Did you not hear me say that I cannot touch you?" He points the knife at Galina’s blank face. "But this one, she owes many, many dollars to the Bratva. And she has nothing left to pay with but her flesh." He sneers at the woman’s hand. "Her rotten, rotten krokodil flesh."
As I watch, he carefully places Galina’s hand on the table.
The woman could be a zombie for all the attention she pays. She stares blankly ahead, a hint of a smile curving her mouth.
When Yury lowers the knife toward her finger, I jerk to my feet. "No! Please don’t."
"Do not worry," Yury says with an evil smile. "She is so strung out she will not feel a thing. And this will make your Nikolai work faster, da? So is beneficial to all."
He poises the knife just above her knuckle.
I run out of the room and back to the safety of the bathroom, but not before I hear Galina begin to scream.
I throw up in the sink until I have nothing left.
Chapter Thirteen
NIKOLAI
I SIT COACH THE NEXT flight out. It was the only seat I could get. I wouldn't arrive until tomorrow otherwise, and even that delay is too long. Despite the crowded conditions—the male next to me with the runny nose and the cough and the girl to my right who thought I might want to show her around when we arrived in Moscow—I sleep. I force myself. I ruthlessly push aside Daisy's screams of pain and her ugly tears. I refuse to replay the words of Sergei as he talked so casually of raping Daisy and of selling her to a syphilis-ridden pervert in Dubai.
None of those things matter. What matters is that she is alive. Until she no longer breathes, my sole concern is rescuing her. After that…
Well, after that I would enact a vengeance upon the house of Petrovich and anyone else who had touched Daisy. It would be known throughout the world from Hong Kong to New York, in all the dark spaces, that if you touched something of Nikolai's, vengeance would come to you and to your family and that it would not be in the form of death. It would be in the form of financial ruin, permanent maiming. It would be people returned to you with their limbs cut off and their bodies riddled with drugs. It would be so you could look every day upon the slow, wasted bodies of your loved ones and remember that all of this could have been avoided if you had just left me alone.
That is t
he message I would deliver to Sergei, to the Bratva, to everyone.
But to do this I must sleep. And I do.
But I am unprepared for the horror that awaits me at the airport. At the gate, a curvy flight attendant from Atlant-Soyuz Airlines approaches me. She is pretty from a distance but up close you can see the signs of krokodil use, green scale-like spots are evident around her chin and near her ears. Soon she will not be able to hide the marks, even with makeup. Soon the body tissue will grey and die and her skin will peel away, leaving only bone.
"Mr. Andrushko?"
"Da." I nod in acknowledgment.
"This is for you." She holds out a box but her hands are shaking. The pupils of her eyes are tiny pinpoints and tears threaten to spill at any moment. I don't want to take the box. I want to shove past her and get on with my mission, but I reach out for it anyway.
A stone settles in my stomach and each step toward the airport parking lot is like walking through cement. I choose a car from the back of the lot, pick the lock and start the engine. I drive a little ways and then pull over. Inside, I see a small electronic device with an LCD screen and a bloody tissue. My hands shake when I lift the tissue-wrapped package out of the box. And when I see the severed finger inside, I wrench open the door and heave. What little I have ingested splatters the frozen ground on the side of the road. My god, Daisy. What have I done to you?
I lurch back to the car and pick up the video screen and watch as Yury forces his finger inside my Daisy's mouth; I watch as her tears and terror are captured by some laughing, cock-sucking, miserable human being who will be flayed by my knife as soon as I reach them.
I don't want to watch the rest of the video but I force myself to. The scene shifts from the plane to a concrete room. The sound cuts out, and I can't hear her scream as a knife is produced, but I cry out when a close up of Daisy's finger being cut off flashes across the screen. But tears and puking will not save her. She has nine fingers, so what? At least she is alive.
I force myself to watch the video ten more times, looking for any clues that I can find. The finger looks desiccated already, not like any of the fingers on Daisy's hand. But the death of a limb can change the appearance. I push it out of my head. None of that will help me now.
Last Hit (Hitman) Page 22
