“No. No. You’re not doing this to me anymore. You want to fuck something?” he hisses. “Go fuck your toys.”
Then he pushes me away and, before I’ve gained my footing, the door swings shut. I stumble back into my bed and hide underneath the covers.
But there’s no hiding from my thoughts. There’s no hiding from fear. There’s no hiding from the pain.
So I lie in bed—and endure.
8
URI
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.
I jerk awake in a bleary daze. I must’ve fallen asleep at my desk, right on top of a sheet of contact numbers for informants I spent the night calling to accrue as much data as humanly possible about slave ring activity in the city.
I glance at the time and curse under my breath. That’s three hours wasted on sleep. Useless, worthless sleep that gets me no closer to Polly.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.
The sound is my phone vibrating with a call. It’s an unknown number, which means it’s definitely one of my informants. I grab the phone and do my best to iron out the sleep from my voice.
“Mr. Bugrov, this is Fredrich.”
“What do you have for me?”
“Unfortunately… nothing.”
The word feels too cruel to be true. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
“I poked around all the active auctions taking place last night, sir. There was no girl who matched the description you gave me.”
I grit my teeth together. “What about the next few days?”
“There’s only two taking place that I know of. One uptown, one downtown. I did manage to get my hands on the catalogs. I’ll send both to you now. If she’s not on those lists, then either it’s a private sale or she’s somewhere else entirely. I’m afraid we’ve exhausted every other possibility there is.”
“Send me the lists. I’ll look over them now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up and I watch my phone like it’s a ticking time bomb until it pings. I open the text thread and open the first of two documents he’s sent me. There are thirteen girls on the downtown auction block. None of them are my sister.
I move on to the uptown list. Six girls. No Polly.
Fuck me.
I stand up as new rage floods through me. I need to punch something. And I know just the punching bag to use.
I storm downstairs, through the too-empty hallways of my home, and burst outside into the gardens. It’s cold outside but I barely feel the pinch as I make my way towards the shed.
This mudak is going to talk—one way or another.
I turn on the brightest lights and storm down the steps. Alan is writhing on his thin mattress as though the light is physically hurting him. Boris, on the other hand, is sitting stoically on his iron chair, restrained with barbed wire at the wrists and ankles, looking at me through narrowed eyes that aren’t the slightest bit disturbed. It’s like he’s been biding his time, waiting for me to show up.
“Back again so soon, Uri?” Boris mumbles with a self-satisfied smile. “Must’ve missed me terribly.”
Alan struggles upright, eyes wild and afraid as he watches, wondering which of them I’m going to go for first.
I stride to Boris. “Who did you sell my sister to?”
Boris laughs. When he finally subsides, he puts on a show of trying to remember. “Hm, you know what? I’ve forgotten. Help jog my memory, will you?”
I slug him in the stomach. I feel the dry crunch of bone breaking beneath my fist. Boris grunts wordlessly, his torso going concave instantly, but the barbed wire keeps him from doubling over too far.
“God have mercy,” Alan gasps, cowering deeper into his side of the cell.
“God won’t help you, Alan. He won’t help either of you.” I turn my attention back to Boris. “I cracked a rib that time, Sobakin. You sure you want me to break another one?”
His breathing is coming in punctured puffs but he still manages a noncommittal shrug. “Do what you see fit.”
His face is already minced meat from last time, but I take my knuckles to it again. Blood spurts and more bones are reduced to dust.
When I finally stop to take a breath, Alan has his face buried under his pillow and Boris’s head is lolling uselessly from his neck. I grab him by his thinning hair and force his face up towards mine. “Are you ready to talk now?”
Boris spits out a mouthful of clotted blood and two destroyed teeth. “What do you want to discuss?” he asks calmly. “The weather? The Lakers game? Catch anything good on television lately?”
My knuckles are raw and bloody but they clench tight all over again. Apparently, it will take a lot more than simple torture to get him to crack. Which means I need to get creative.
I let go of him in disgust and stalk towards the weapons cabinet I keep padlocked in the corner. I unlock it and pull out one of my handcrafted Swiss blades. When I test the edge with the lightest of touches, my finger comes away marked with a thin line of blood.
Alan’s eyes go wide when he sees the blade catching the fluorescent light. Boris looks unmoved. “Going to carve me up for dinner?” he drawls.
“Have you ever been flayed, Boris?” I ask, grabbing a chair and pulling it towards him. “They say it can be so painful that you start begging for the exposed part of your body to be cut off altogether.”
He looks intrigued. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You underestimate me.”
“No,” he snaps, showing his teeth. “You are the one underestimating me. Mind over matter, my friend. Mind over matter. Torture me all you want—my mind won’t feel a thing.”
Grinding my teeth, I grab his arm and pull it towards me. “We’ll see about that.”
I start at his forearm and bear down until his skin comes up in nauseating ribbons. I watch his face the whole time. He’s chalk-white and shivering at the jaw but he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t so much as attempt to pull his arm away. And he doesn’t plead for me to stop.
When I hold up the band of skin I’ve carved off, Boris opens his eyes and gives me a tight smile. “Your workmanship is admirable, Uri.”
Despite his mind over matter bullshit, there’s pain etched all over his face. He’s sweating like a pig and his eyes are loose marbles in their sockets.
“I’ll keep going then.”
His jaw clenches. “Go ahead. I can take it.”
I push off my stool so hard that it topples to the ground. “But why would you want to?”
“Because this is exactly what I wanted.” The red veins in his eyes darken and throb. “Your pain. Your fear. Your inner turmoil. That was always the goal.”
I nod and rise, dropping the bloodied knife onto the table at my side. “You want to see me suffer? The feeling is mutual. But I think I’ve been going about this wrong. You hurt me by taking the one I loved. I ought to pay you back in kind.” I lean in so close that I can smell his raw, oozing flesh. “I will find the people you love the most. I will find the people you hold dear and I will make you watch as I carve the skin from their fucking bodies.”