He opened his eyes. A lock of her blond hair, daubed with his blood, lay between her eyes. She was breathing hard.
“Do not move,” Mila said. “Do not raise your hands. Do not do anything except breathe and listen.”
He gasped and he listened.
“I know what you did to the women in the machinists’ shop,” she whispered. “I know. I know what you are. In the old days, Piet, you would have been the captain of a slave ship. Or a Nazi commandant, whipping laborers to death. You are cut from the same foul fabric. I know what you are. I know every inch of what you are.”
He moaned and writhed. His knee. The thought that he might never ever walk right again scratched past the pain in his brain.
“The bar has a concrete floor. The walls are soundproofed. None of that is an accident,” she said. She ran the edge of the telescoping baton along his shattered knee. “You will tell me what I want to know or I will rape you with this baton.”
A cold terror enclosed his heart. He looked up at her and saw, in a flash across her face, all the women he had sold. Past her shoulder he saw the red prince, in his portrait, the splatters of paint marring his face. He could see his own blood splatters, low on the bar’s front.
“Do you understand me?” Mila said.
“Y-yes.”
“Where is Sam?”
He babbled out the address of the brewery and directions. She moved the baton toward his groin. “Please… please…”
“Shut up. You don’t get to ask for please. You don’t get to ask for mercy. Those are human concerns, and you are a human being in species only.” She stood. He sobbed, clutching his knee, moaning in pain.
“Stand up,” she said.
“I can’t, I can’t, you bitch.”
“It would take ten of you to make a real person. You shot one of the Moldovan girls in the calf when she fought you,” Mila said. “I know. She told me. She managed to stand. I’m just seeing if you’re made as tough as those women were. Stand—or the baton goes up your sorry ass. Ten. Nine. Eight…”
On two, he was on unsteady feet, shuddering in pain and rage.
“Listen,” he said. “It’s not my fault, it’s just a business… I had to make money. My parents are ill…”
“Shut up,” she said. “You are Piet Tanaka. You never knew your father and your mother is a dead whore. I don’t care that you hurt right now. No one cares. You made your choice about life. Your whining bores me.”
Tears leaked from his eyes. “I told you, I can provide information…”
“Those girls you send. To Israel, to Britain, to Spain, to Africa. They don’t get mercy. They don’t get to cut a deal. They don’t get traded to the police. They get used up and then they get killed. They get raped two dozen times a day.”
“Please…” Piet tried again.
“I think you need to know what it’s like. To be taken into a dark room and know that you are only there to be used. To be hurt. To be treated as less than human.”
Piet grabbed the brass railing along the floor, in front of the bar, squeezing it in agony. He sobbed.
She pulled a phone from her pocket and dialed a number. “Hello? Nadia?”
Nadia was the name of one of the girls. He remembered: the redhead.
“I have him. He has a broken leg, a broken nose, and he’s beat up good. He can’t get away from you. He can’t hurt you. Do you want me to bring him? You all could do with him what you like.” A pause that lengthened. “Are you sure? It might make you feel better. No. All right, then.”
She rang off. “The women don’t want to ever see you again. I guess they’re better than you.” Mila shrugged. She closed the baton.
“Please… please.”
“The women are also better than me.” She pulled a gun from the small of her back and she shot him in the crotch. Pain beyond imagination. He screamed and writhed and howled and clawed at the concrete.
Mila began to count. Leisurely. “One-Amsterdam. Two-Amsterdam. Three-Amsterdam,” while Piet sobbed and shuddered on the concrete. When she reached eight—one count for each young woman she’d saved from him—she put a mercy bullet between his eyes. He jerked, his corpse hissed out a purring breath, and lay still.
She didn’t look at him again. She picked up the phone and called Henrik. He answered on the